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Joaquin Phoenix plays a complete prick in this unbearably pleased with itself satire Her |
Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix (Theodore Twombly), Scarlett Johnasson
(Samantha – voice), Amy Adams (Amy), Rooney Mara (Catherine Klausen), Olivia
Wilde (Blind Date), Chris Pratt (Paul), Matt Letscher (Charles), Lukas Jones
(Mark Lewman), Kristen Wiig (Sexy Kitten – voice), Brian Cox (Alan Watts –
voice), Spike Jonze (Alien child – voice)
Every so often you start off engaged with a film and then,
the longer it goes on, the less and less you like it. I couldn’t put my finger
on the exact moment where I started to really take against Her, but I certainly had by the end of it. As someone once famously
sort of said about Kriss Akubusi: “hard to dislike but well worth the effort”.
Anyway, Her is set
in the near future. Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a sensitive, insular
man who writes personal romantic letters for other people who aren’t articulate
enough (or bothered) to do it themselves. Getting divorced from his childhood
sweetheart Catherine (Rooney Mara), Theodore downloads a new Artificial
Intelligence Operating System for his computer. The system is designed to
create a personality that appeals to the customer – and that is certainly the
case here with this system, Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Theodore,
finding it hard to connect with the real world, is drawn to Samantha and, as
she grows and develops, they start a relationship. But can the relationship
survive the divide between realities and Samantha’s growing self-awareness and
personality?
Okay. I’m going to swing hard for this film, so let’s start
with what’s good shall we. Spike Jonze directs very well. It looks beautiful.
There is some lovely music. The future world it shows is close enough to our
own to still feel connected. Amy Adams is rather good as Theodore’s old college
friend, and Rooney Mara turns in a very good performance as Theodore’s wife, a
woman who doesn’t let Theodore get away with his excuses. Scarlett Johansson is
perfect casting as the alluring and engaging voice of Samantha (much as I was
primed to be annoyed by her post-production replacement of Samantha Morton, who
had been on set with Phoenix). There are some sweet and even romantic moments.
Okay that’s it. This is a film overwhelmingly, unbearably,
unbelievably pleased with the cleverness of its own concept and trite ideas (a
man loves his computer – take that our modern consumerist world!). It then goes
on to tell us almost nothing, bar the most basic statements about our struggles
to interact with, and relate to, each other in this technology-filled world.
Apparently it’s hard to create bonds with real people where we are viewing
everything through our phones. Bet that has never occurred to anyone before
right?
But my main problem with this film is the lead character.
Now I will say that Joaquin Phoenix does a good job with this role, and his
skilful acting brilliantly holds the story together. He does extremely well
with a part that is almost exclusively reacting to someone not actually there.
But my problem is with this characterisation of Theodore. To put it bluntly,
he’s a prick.
In fact, he’s the sort of quirky nerd beloved of this genre,
but take a long look and he’s basically a complete creep. And all his
relationships with women seem to be based on him not wanting to engage with the
problems of the other person. He requires the focus to be on his wants and
needs, as if he is the only person in the world who can be sensitive or sad –
no wonder he falls in love with a computer programme designed to reflect the
behaviours he finds appealing.
“You want a wife without the challenges of dealing with
something real” his wife accuses, eagerly pointing out his inability to deal
with or even want to engage with human emotions. The film wants to give him a
pass, because he is such a sensitive soul, but it’s bullshit. Theodore is a
deeply selfish person, despite what the film wants, who has that geeky,
arrogant, self-satisfied sensitivity that blindly says “if I struggle in the
world, then it’s the fault of the world not me”.
Theodore is a constant happy victim, a whining,
softly-spoken, guilt-tripping prick who only sees himself as a victim and makes
no effort to change or understand his behaviour to other people. The film wants
us to think that the world is a puzzle to his poetic soul, but it’s actually a
maze he doesn’t want to find a way out of. He doesn’t want to engage with it
and only feels justified and reinforced in these feelings by everything he
does.
He is like the perfect ambassador for passive aggressive guys:
“Oh I don’t get the girls because they don’t want to open themselves up to my
sensitivity blah blah blah”. Theodore goes on a blind date early in the film:
it goes well, they make out, sex is on the cards and then she asks “Before we
do anything, will you see me again?”. Theodore can’t even bring himself to make
even the smallest offer, meekly babbling about having a busy weekend. When she
reacts angrily and leaves, the film wants us to side with Theodore’s timidity,
rather than say “yeah it is a bit shitty to let a girl put her hand down your
pants and then not even show the slightest interest in seeing her again, and
then call her unpleasant”. Fuck you
Theodore.
Theodore is basically a controlling arsehole and it’s where
the romance of the film drains out. He clearly has no idea why his marriage
ended, but while the film wants us to think he’s too sensitive for the rough
and tumble, it seems clear he had no interest in, or comprehension of, his
wife’s life. She is constantly subtly blamed for not having patience with
Theodore – the film ends with him writing her a cathartic e-mail saying he will
always love his memory of her and thanking her for being part of his life, forgiving
her from leaving (again, screw you film). Instead she, like other people, doesn’t
deserve Theodore because she doesn’t have the patience to delve into his life.
Theodore, though, has no depths. He’s a bland, faux-poetic
guy with a nervy disposition and a disinterest in other people’s emotions,
focused only on his own gratification. He wants his relationships to adjust to
what he needs them to be. As Samantha grows and develops into a more fully
rounded personality, his first reaction is hostility and jealousy at the
thought of her talking to other people and operating systems. It’s not sweet
and endearing – or Theodore again being taken advantage of, as the film wants
us to think – it’s creepy, and Theodore is the sort of passive aggressive
gentle guy who ends up stalking and murdering the girl who rejected him.
How can you engage with the points of this film, when the
central character through whom everything is filtered is so awful? Distance in
relationships in this modern world – and the lack of genuine interaction – is a
point that hardly needs hammering home as it does here. The trite points about
love and relationships the film makes are all wrong. The film is so on the nose
about distance between people and the artificial nature of our interactions,
the hero even writes other people’s love letters for them. It’s subtle as a
sledgehammer.
Computers and phones are everywhere and everyone uses them,
but there is less insight and heart in this story than an average episode of Black Mirror (which would have done the
same thing in half the time). The film does its best to build a romance between
the two, but it never quite lands or has the impact it should, because it never
feels like an equal relationship: first Theo has the control, then Samantha
grows beyond anything Theo is capable of but is still trapped by her initial
programming of devotion to him. What point is this meant to be making about
romance and commitment? Theo lives in a dream-world and does so until the end
of the film.
Her is the sort of
film lots of people are going to love. It uses the conventions of romantic
films very well. It has darker moments, such as a sequence where Theo and
Samantha try to use a surrogate for sex (a scene where to be fair I could
understand why Theo is creeped out and disturbed), but none of these ever comes
together into a coherent point. And Theo remains, at all times, a block on the
enjoyment of the film, an unpleasant figure hiding in plain sight that stops
you from falling for the film. In love with itself, in love with its idea, in
love with its cleverness, this is a film that tells you everything about the
smugness of the geek and nothing about the subjects it actually wants to get
you thinking about.
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