![]() The only instances of music was when Theo explicitly requested Samantha to play a song for him. The quiet approach to the soundtrack was also a nice touch. It helps the audience to understand the bigger picture and forwards the thematic content. Moreover, the consistent flashbacks that portray Theo and Catherine’s happy life together, add a whole deeper level of understanding. The sun flares in the close-up shots also gives the film a romantic and wistful feel. This enables us to sympathize with Theo we understand his isolation, happiness, and his rollercoaster of emotions. ![]() The constant intimate close-ups of Theo, as in the opening scene, gives the feeling of a one person romance and forces the audience to focus and stare straight at him. The work of the cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema, adds depth and meaning to the film in more ways than one. Instead, it results in an illusion of a relationship for him. Ironically, the advanced technology, which promises to connect us more easily to the world around us, is the reason for Theodore’s lack of human experience. As a true work of science fiction, it sets up a world of upgraded technology with earpieces and holographic video games. With such a great storyline, the visual storytelling echoes its sentiments. The writing, directing, acting, and cinematography of Her is beautiful. I want to discover myself.” She succeeds in her job of making Theo feel as lively and joyful as ever, but eventually does it too well when she begins acting as a buffer between Theo and his human relationships. She expresses this when she says “I want to learn everything about everything. Samantha soon assimilates humanity’s tics and begins to feel emotion, or at least the simulation of it. The insightful, witty, and sensitive female voice, portrayed beautifully by Scarlett Johansson, gives herself the name Samantha and is soon organizing Theo’s life, acting as both his personal assistant and therapist. Desperate for any personal connection, he falls for the seductive skills of an artificially intelligent operating system who offers unquestioning allegiance to him. He holds an ironic day job where he composes personal love letters for those unable to express their emotions. Set in the Los Angeles of the nearby future, Her, Spike Jonze’s exquisite new movie, follows the story of Joaquin Phoenix, who plays the heartbroken Theodore Twombly after the end of a relationship. Can humans have a genuine relationship with an inhuman entity? It is a placeholder, standing in, as a pronoun does, for whatever we want.A story of a melancholic man who falls in love with his computer. After all, Samantha’s voice is like a pronoun: her. One could argue that Jonze knows just what he’s doing with this fade to black-that he is foregrounding Samantha’s role as the dark screen upon which we can project our erotic and romantic fantasies. After this confrontation with embodied female angst, Theodore retreats into the eternal, incorporeal comfort of Samantha, and they have sex, and the screen goes dark. Midmakeout she erupts into a fit of clock-ticking anxiety: Is Theodore going to sleep with her and not call back? At her age, she has to worry about men “wasting her time.” Confined by matter and mortality, she is a stand-in for Theodore’s own existential concerns. ![]() ![]() But her embodiment, we soon learn, is not a blessing but a buzzkill. Theodore’s only human date, Amelia (Olivia Wilde), is perhaps the one vision that Her presents of embodied female sexuality. ![]() She is otherwise relegated to Instagram-filtered flashbacks, in which her physicality is as much a figment of Theodore’s imagination as Samantha’s is. Theodore’s ex-wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara), is given one scene of hardened, careerist dialogue. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |