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Her
(2013)
Her explores the possibility of a romantic relationship between a human and a machine and although something like that might sound unrealistic at first, the setting of this film made it seem like the opposite. It was a perfect combination of being futuristic enough for the human-machine relationship to be believable, while still staying close enough to the real world to make it seem like this is something that could truly happen. Combine that setting with great performances by Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore and Scarlett Johansson as Samantha, and you get an unusual romance that nevertheless feels very real.
Spike Jonze has done a great job by managing to make sure that all parts of this film fit together very well. The dialogues are beautifully written, the performances, and especially Joaquin Phoenix's, are very convincing and emotional, the soundtrack and sound effects complement what we see and make it even more emotional and all of that is bundled in a perfect looking package, which has a distinct style with beautiful colors.
The direction that the story takes near the end was different from what I expected and for me, it took away from the realism of the rest of the film, so I was a bit disappointed by that.
Also, the scenes between Theodore and Chris Pratt's character Paul felt a bit unnecessary and they didn't add much to the story for me.
Although I had these problems with the story itself, I think the story was told in a great way. I loved the dialogue, the performances and the look of this film. On top of that, it's about a very interesting subject which I think will become more and more relevant as technology continues to improve and as humans will keep growing more dependent on machines. I'd recommend this film and I think it would be really interesting to watch this again in the future to see how it holds up with reality.
Her explores the possibility of a romantic relationship between a human and a machine and although something like that might sound unrealistic at first, the setting of this film made it seem like the opposite. It was a perfect combination of being futuristic enough for the human-machine relationship to be believable, while still staying close enough to the real world to make it seem like this is something that could truly happen. Combine that setting with great performances by Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore and Scarlett Johansson as Samantha, and you get an unusual romance that nevertheless feels very real.
Spike Jonze has done a great job by managing to make sure that all parts of this film fit together very well. The dialogues are beautifully written, the performances, and especially Joaquin Phoenix's, are very convincing and emotional, the soundtrack and sound effects complement what we see and make it even more emotional and all of that is bundled in a perfect looking package, which has a distinct style with beautiful colors.
The direction that the story takes near the end was different from what I expected and for me, it took away from the realism of the rest of the film, so I was a bit disappointed by that.
WARNING: "Major spoilers for her" spoilers below
In a conversation between Amy and Theodore about halfway through the film we discover that Theodore isn't the only one that's starting to grow very close to his Operating System. Amy then says that she was scared that the only reason the Operating Systems behave as they do is because of how they were programmed and that's what I thought was happening too. I did like that the Operating System slowly became more intelligent and with that seemed to drift away further and further from Theodore but when the Operating Systems started to create new OS's and became something they couldn't describe in words anymore, the story started to lose its realism for me.
The realization that deep connections between OS's and humans were starting to get fairly common, made me think about how powerful the company that has created the Operating System must be now because they could potentially deeply influence a lot of people. Another scene that made me think about this and which I thought was very powerful was when Theodore discovers that his relationship isn't as exclusive as he thinks when we see him looking around on the street and all everyone is paying attention to is the devices they are carrying. I would have liked to see the film go a bit more into this direction and show more about the effects of these technological advancements on daily life.
The realization that deep connections between OS's and humans were starting to get fairly common, made me think about how powerful the company that has created the Operating System must be now because they could potentially deeply influence a lot of people. Another scene that made me think about this and which I thought was very powerful was when Theodore discovers that his relationship isn't as exclusive as he thinks when we see him looking around on the street and all everyone is paying attention to is the devices they are carrying. I would have liked to see the film go a bit more into this direction and show more about the effects of these technological advancements on daily life.
Although I had these problems with the story itself, I think the story was told in a great way. I loved the dialogue, the performances and the look of this film. On top of that, it's about a very interesting subject which I think will become more and more relevant as technology continues to improve and as humans will keep growing more dependent on machines. I'd recommend this film and I think it would be really interesting to watch this again in the future to see how it holds up with reality.