Point-By-Point: Her 6/10

It's not often that I don't know how to respond to a movie. Even if it's just a firm "meh", I usually can at least put a finger on what I'm feeling in regard to what I've just seen. It's been a few hours since I walked out of the theatre after having seen Her; I still have no real idea if I liked it or not. I respect it, surely, but liked it? I don't know.

To be fair, I was inordinately intrigued by this movie's premise from the minute I heard about it. My real job involves building natural language models for a company that creates virtual assistants (albeit corporate-focused ones) and I couldn't wait to see what someone's imagined future related to these products looked like. My CEO even got in on the hype surrounding Her and talked to the New Yorker about the human connections that get created by the current generation of interactive virtual assistants. If for no other reason than professional fascination with this type of programming, I was perhaps set up for disappointment in the finished product.

Anyway...

The Good:

Spike Jonze is an immaculate filmmaker. This movie is beautiful: the colors, the soundtrack, the sense of place, all are realized with elegance. As well, Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson both turn in nuanced, confident performances, which can't be easy when most of your lines are delivered while talking to an earbud (the former) and as an entirely voiceover performance (the latter). Theodore Twombly (Phoenix) isn't  a particularly likable character, but he is a recognizable one. The dialogue reflects this -- it's intelligent, with just the right amount of that comfortable smuttiness that friends can generate.

I genuinely liked the world that is set up by Her. It's not particularly original, but it feels very real and like an understandable extension of where we are in 2014. I'm not sure I'm sold on the idea that computers are moving in the direction of wholesale voice-control, but this movie illustrates what it could look like in a very straightforward way.

The Bad:

For a movie ostensibly about the revelatory power of connection and its necessity for full human flourishing, our hero has very little, if no real emotional arc. He's a man-child -- stuck in a (self-acknowledged) world of video games and online porn -- and doesn't seem particularly interested in changing that. You never get a sense that he's learned anything from his experiences with Samantha, but rather that he just used this sentient operating system as, perhaps, the ultimate distraction: a video game that can be made pornographic when it suits. 

One of the movie's conceits is that Theodore writes beautifully sensitive, poetic letters for strangers but can't express his own feelings to the people he cares about. This is not a new theme (think Joseph Gordon-Levitt writing Hallmark cards in 500 Days of Summer or Jack Lemmon's consumption of old movies in The Apartment), but one that could have been used very effectively here. Unfortunately, when that denouement comes, it's unsatisfying and seems to contradict the overall implication drawn by the conceit itself.

The Ugly:

Honestly, one of my favorite little touches is the trousers that all the men in this movie seem to favor: high-waisted, wide-waisted wool slacks with welted pockets. As far as I know, this is not a current style, and it makes for a subtle, interesting futuristic note. They're not pretty, but I like that someone took the time to design them (and evidently, they're real now!)

In more serious criticism, I continue to be frustrated by the message that this movie. It seemed to want to say that relationships are what you make of them, and that emotional connections are more about you than the person to which you feel the connection. Unfortunately, the message that comes across is that the best relationships are those that do not challenge you or your interests. 

Points Pondered:

• Is voice-control really the way that computers are going? Yes, I can now talk to the Xbox and turn it off by saying "Xbox off"... but no keyboards? No touch screens? No phone screens at all? I'm not convinced.
• This movie made me realize how many personal conversations and interactions we have every day in plain sight. We just assume that no one's listening. 
• It seems like a computer with a (very human, thinking/feeling/reactive) personality would be more trouble than benefit. What happens when my OS gets peeved with me and hides email? Or deletes files? How do you reset it? Can you override it? It's all very fluffy and consensual in Her, but I feel like there's a dystopian corollary here that could be interesting to explore.
• For more on this same theme, I highly recommend searching out the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back" -- it's a beautiful, heartbreaking meditation on something similar.