The movie’s official poster calls Her
“A Spike Jonze Love Story.” The decidedly unofficial “honest”
movie poster created by Uproxx calls it “a two-hour closeup of Joaquin
Phoenix’s face.” More on that in a bit; for now I’d like to focus on the
official tagline. Jonze (of the
genre-bending—and genre-shaping—Being John Malkovich and
Adaptation) is a
filmmaker with an astute sense of the absurd. His films are genuinely
provocative, brazenly original and bravely inquisitive, and Her, Jonze’s screenwriting debut, is no
exception. But the film also offers one of the loveliest romances ever to have
graced the silver screen. The fact that it transpires between a man and his software
only increases my admiration for the delicacy and depth of feeling packed into
the relationship, a brilliant conceptual gag that proves nonetheless sincere
and completely plausible. Wildly inventive, challenging and engaging, this subtly
profound film follows its own quirky, amusing course. It’s a melancholy, eerie
love story unlike anything else you’ve seen this year—or ever.
In Her’s opening shots,
Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix in a quietly heroic, beautifully hushed performance),
is making an unabashed declaration of love to an unseen beloved. The actor, as
well as his character, is unaffected, sincere, disarming. We quickly discover,
however, that his lovely words are not addressed to his beloved at all, that this
is what Theodore does for a living; the character is a latter-day Cyrano writing heartfelt
notes-for-hire at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com (the handwriting all
computer-generated, of course). The cuteness is instantly turned to cynicism,
in a movie that is both visionary and traditional, tender and cool, passionate
and wispy. Like the lingering analog affection for handwriting in a digital
age, Her argues for both the past and
the future, with a soulfully poetic spirit that’s become extremely rare in
American cinema.
