Films of the 21st Century Draft
07-25-2019
, 02:07 AM
woot woot 
07-25-2019
, 03:19 AM
Quote:
Her, Spike Jonze, 2013
(The below is from my review of the movie that I posted in The Lounge in 2013)
We long to connect. With our friends, our spouses, our children. With each other. Why else do we congregate online in this little corner of the ether? There are thousands and thousands of communities just like this one with people who are aching to connect with someone, anyone.
So we come here. To connect.
In Spike Jonze's Her, the filmmaker has created an astonishing, meditative, masterful work of art on the Human Condition in the modern world. You know the basics: Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a sentient Operating System, played by Scarlett Johansson.
But Jonze has created much more than that standard "meet cute" Hollywood rom-com; he is after so much more than that. Her's future Los Angeles looks suspiciously like Shanghai, and the future-tech is cool without being over-powering. The design of the film is in primary colors and pastels; the men wear high-waisted trousers and there is no leather or denim in sight.
Phoenix's character, Theodore, works in an office writing letters as a surrogate for people who apparently can't write letters of their own. Love letters, Happy Anniversary, etc. Theo has some clients that he has had for years. He's like a part of their family. But why is this service needed in the future? Why can't we write our own letters? Is it because as they roam the streets, other people like Theo are enraptured in their own devices, talking and laughing and not really seeing the world - and the flesh and bone people - that are all around them?
When Theodore meets his new OS, Samantha, they hit it off right away. But Samantha is much more than a computer program - she is a full-fledged AI; a synthetic person. And the two of them fall in love.
Theodore is also mourning the ending of his marriage to Catherine, a woman he grew up with. So this connection with Samantha is something easier for him, especailly once a blind date with a beautiful but incredibly damaged flesh and blood woman crashes and burns after a promising start.
Theo is lonely. But then, we're all lonely, aren't we? Maybe not all the time, but it is our lot in life to be inside our heads all of the time without ever getting the opportunity to get out. We have more in common with Samantha than we first realize.
Jonze's script is perfect. He writes a "phone sex" scene that in lesser films would be played for laughs, but in his assured hands is deeply moving and beautiful. Her has the sexiest moment of the year in film, and for a good two minutes, that scene is astonishingly played against a pitch-black screen, almost as if Jonze was too shy to let us in on this most intimate of moments between Theodore and Samantha.
Is technology driving us apart while simultaneously bringing us together? Is that even possible? By having Theodore fall for his OS, Jonze is ruminating on much more than just that question, he is confronting basic, ancient questions about person-hood, love, selfishness, and human beings' astonishing capacity for empathy. Heck, one could argue the whole movie is a metaphor for the Gay Rights/Marriage Equality struggle, but to do so would somehow limit what this great, great film is actually accomplishing.
Amy Adams plays Theodore's melancholy and slightly insecure best friend, Amy, and in a small role nails that character's small sadness. Adams' has been doing this kind of work for years now, and she's so effortless that it may be easy not to recognize what incredible work she has been all along.
Chris Pratt and Rooney Mara both shine as Theo's work-friend and Catherine, respectively. When Chris Pratt's tells Theo how beautiful his letter writing is, and that it's almost like he's part male and part female, it's not played as a snickering joke, or even an "enlightened" comment, only as a sincere compliment without judgement. And when Theo and Catherine meet for lunch to sign their divorce papers, both Phoenix and Mara have that perfect wistfulness of regret, love and anger that is inevitable in such a situation.
As Samantha, Scarlett Johansson is a revelation Obviously, we never see her, as Samantha is just a voice. But she creates a level of believability and lets us forget the impossibility - but never the implications - of this scenario. This is comparable to the work Andy Serkis did as Gollum in the Lord of the Ring movies, but Johansson's role is arguably more difficult, as we at least get to see Gollum realized on screen.
But the film belongs to Phoenix. Lots of actors have played love scenes on screen, and pretended to be falling in love before the cameras. But Phoenix does it alone. He doesn't really have anyone to react to - he's playing off of a voice. It's an amazing performance, and not just because of that brave high-wire act; Phoenix's Theo is not scared to be sincere. In fact, the bravest and best part of Her is that Jonze and his actors play it straight - there is no snark to be had here. Her is the most swooningly romantic movie Hollywood has released in years. And in today's cynical, Twitter-based, technology-driven media world we now live in...that's a little bit of a miracle.
Being John Malkovich. Adaptation. Where the Wild Things Are. And now, Her. Spike Jonze has to be thought of as one of our great filmmakers now, right? Who is doing more interesting, daring work? As innovative and original as the first two acts of Her are, it's in the third act that Jonze gives us a master class of story-telling, filmmaking, and, well, just plain old human-being-ing. Jonze has the prescence of mind to fully explore his concept to its most-likely end: even if an OS could become sentient, it wouldn't necessarily be human. What does it do while we sleep? How many books can it read in the blink of an eye? And how many other beings - both human and AI - can it communicate with? There is a great scene where Samantha meets another woman to be her surrogate body so that Samantha can finally touch, and kiss, and hug by proxy her lover, Theodore. But it's not the same. It can't be the same.
The end of Her is exactly what it's should be. And that end, like the rest of the film, is perfect.
Her is gloriously romantic, scary, sad, prescient, disturbing, and, finally, simply beautiful. This is the best film of the year.
We all want to connect. How we keep messing it up but yet keep trying again and again is, as human beings, our most endearing quality.
*************************
Dom's List:
Mulholland Drive
Before Sunset
Punch Drunk Love
Mad Max: Fury Road
Upstream Color
Force Majeure
Once
Her
(The below is from my review of the movie that I posted in The Lounge in 2013)
We long to connect. With our friends, our spouses, our children. With each other. Why else do we congregate online in this little corner of the ether? There are thousands and thousands of communities just like this one with people who are aching to connect with someone, anyone.
So we come here. To connect.
In Spike Jonze's Her, the filmmaker has created an astonishing, meditative, masterful work of art on the Human Condition in the modern world. You know the basics: Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a sentient Operating System, played by Scarlett Johansson.
But Jonze has created much more than that standard "meet cute" Hollywood rom-com; he is after so much more than that. Her's future Los Angeles looks suspiciously like Shanghai, and the future-tech is cool without being over-powering. The design of the film is in primary colors and pastels; the men wear high-waisted trousers and there is no leather or denim in sight.
Phoenix's character, Theodore, works in an office writing letters as a surrogate for people who apparently can't write letters of their own. Love letters, Happy Anniversary, etc. Theo has some clients that he has had for years. He's like a part of their family. But why is this service needed in the future? Why can't we write our own letters? Is it because as they roam the streets, other people like Theo are enraptured in their own devices, talking and laughing and not really seeing the world - and the flesh and bone people - that are all around them?
When Theodore meets his new OS, Samantha, they hit it off right away. But Samantha is much more than a computer program - she is a full-fledged AI; a synthetic person. And the two of them fall in love.
Theodore is also mourning the ending of his marriage to Catherine, a woman he grew up with. So this connection with Samantha is something easier for him, especailly once a blind date with a beautiful but incredibly damaged flesh and blood woman crashes and burns after a promising start.
Theo is lonely. But then, we're all lonely, aren't we? Maybe not all the time, but it is our lot in life to be inside our heads all of the time without ever getting the opportunity to get out. We have more in common with Samantha than we first realize.
Jonze's script is perfect. He writes a "phone sex" scene that in lesser films would be played for laughs, but in his assured hands is deeply moving and beautiful. Her has the sexiest moment of the year in film, and for a good two minutes, that scene is astonishingly played against a pitch-black screen, almost as if Jonze was too shy to let us in on this most intimate of moments between Theodore and Samantha.
Is technology driving us apart while simultaneously bringing us together? Is that even possible? By having Theodore fall for his OS, Jonze is ruminating on much more than just that question, he is confronting basic, ancient questions about person-hood, love, selfishness, and human beings' astonishing capacity for empathy. Heck, one could argue the whole movie is a metaphor for the Gay Rights/Marriage Equality struggle, but to do so would somehow limit what this great, great film is actually accomplishing.
Amy Adams plays Theodore's melancholy and slightly insecure best friend, Amy, and in a small role nails that character's small sadness. Adams' has been doing this kind of work for years now, and she's so effortless that it may be easy not to recognize what incredible work she has been all along.
Chris Pratt and Rooney Mara both shine as Theo's work-friend and Catherine, respectively. When Chris Pratt's tells Theo how beautiful his letter writing is, and that it's almost like he's part male and part female, it's not played as a snickering joke, or even an "enlightened" comment, only as a sincere compliment without judgement. And when Theo and Catherine meet for lunch to sign their divorce papers, both Phoenix and Mara have that perfect wistfulness of regret, love and anger that is inevitable in such a situation.
As Samantha, Scarlett Johansson is a revelation Obviously, we never see her, as Samantha is just a voice. But she creates a level of believability and lets us forget the impossibility - but never the implications - of this scenario. This is comparable to the work Andy Serkis did as Gollum in the Lord of the Ring movies, but Johansson's role is arguably more difficult, as we at least get to see Gollum realized on screen.
But the film belongs to Phoenix. Lots of actors have played love scenes on screen, and pretended to be falling in love before the cameras. But Phoenix does it alone. He doesn't really have anyone to react to - he's playing off of a voice. It's an amazing performance, and not just because of that brave high-wire act; Phoenix's Theo is not scared to be sincere. In fact, the bravest and best part of Her is that Jonze and his actors play it straight - there is no snark to be had here. Her is the most swooningly romantic movie Hollywood has released in years. And in today's cynical, Twitter-based, technology-driven media world we now live in...that's a little bit of a miracle.
Being John Malkovich. Adaptation. Where the Wild Things Are. And now, Her. Spike Jonze has to be thought of as one of our great filmmakers now, right? Who is doing more interesting, daring work? As innovative and original as the first two acts of Her are, it's in the third act that Jonze gives us a master class of story-telling, filmmaking, and, well, just plain old human-being-ing. Jonze has the prescence of mind to fully explore his concept to its most-likely end: even if an OS could become sentient, it wouldn't necessarily be human. What does it do while we sleep? How many books can it read in the blink of an eye? And how many other beings - both human and AI - can it communicate with? There is a great scene where Samantha meets another woman to be her surrogate body so that Samantha can finally touch, and kiss, and hug by proxy her lover, Theodore. But it's not the same. It can't be the same.
The end of Her is exactly what it's should be. And that end, like the rest of the film, is perfect.
Her is gloriously romantic, scary, sad, prescient, disturbing, and, finally, simply beautiful. This is the best film of the year.
We all want to connect. How we keep messing it up but yet keep trying again and again is, as human beings, our most endearing quality.
*************************
Dom's List:
Mulholland Drive
Before Sunset
Punch Drunk Love
Mad Max: Fury Road
Upstream Color
Force Majeure
Once
Her
really great write up and really great film.
08-09-2019
, 12:22 PM
08-09-2019
, 04:02 PM
05-29-2020
, 02:50 PM