Can Her Thrill You?
Mar 9, 2014 7:48:06 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2014 7:48:06 GMT -5
Young Mr. Toby has written in to tell us about a new cinematographical film thing from Northern Amercia.
"It is now fifteen years," he explains, "since Spike Jonze [sic] announced himself as one of Hollywood's most exciting young directors with his debut feature Being John Malkovich (1999), a surreal and scintillating satire on the cult of celebrity, which Jonze followed up with the equally playful Adaptation (2002), a post-modern tangle of authorial paranoia and wish fulfilment. Both of these films were written by Charlie Kaufman, and since then Jonze has directed only one more fiction feature: Where the Wild Things Are (2009), written with Dave Eggers (and a little help from Maurice Sendak).
"Jonze's principal focus in this compact œuvre has been how we mediate reality through invention, creating worlds that are seductive, destructive and ultimately intangible: the fifteen minutes' fame that leaves its pursuers rudely dumped in a ditch by the New Jersey Motorway (Being John Malkovich); the "rumpus" gone awry and hastily abandoned (Where the Wild Things Are). Jonze's latest departure - Her - is his first as a solo writer-director, and if anything his guiding preoccupation has been even more neatly distilled in it. The film concerns our relationship with computers and an electronic reality that no longer even feels virtual.
"Set in the sun-drenched, high-rise Los Angeles of a near and skewed future, Her stars a convincing Joaquin Phoenix as the soon-to-be divorced Theodore Twombly: affable, intelligent, relatively sensitive, awkward, isolated and lonely. Twombly used to be a Journalist but has since found employment in a brightly coloured office composing old-fashioned love letters on behalf of his emotionally illiterate clientele. The business is clearly thriving: snail mail has made a kitschy comeback; authenticity and sincerity are valuable commodities.To accompany the future-retro theme, the male fashion is for high-waisted woollen trousers and a general dapperness that wouldn't look out of place in Mad Men. Everyone is groomed. Everyone is young.
"Theodore's evenings consist of perfunctory phone sex in his luxurious apartment and hours spent immersed, quite literally, in a holographic computer game. He enJoys listening to music but outsources his volition to his computer: "Choose a melancholy song", he instructs. When the world's first artificially intelligent operating system arrives on the market, he purchases it, opting for a woman's voice, remotely channelled from a handset via an earpiece. The computer's tone is chatty and flirtatious. She calls herself Samantha. "Basically I have intuition", she tells him. "In every moment I'm evolving." Theodore is sceptical; Samantha takes this in her stride: "I take it from your tone you're challenging me".
"And so begins a beautiful friendship - which soon turns into something more. That we are happy to accept this is testament to the film's well-Judged momentum. Every time the narrative threatens to flag, or incredulity starts to rise, a gag or vignette brings light relief, or a new development occurs. Samantha (voiced by a husky, seductive Scarlett Johansson) evolves from being an efficient secretary ("Sorry to bother you. You have three emails that seem kinda urgent") to a sympathetic confidante; she begins to understand what makes Theodore tick. When he lies around in bed depressed she jokes and tells him to pull himself together. They go on "dates", Theodore dreamily wandering around with the handset in his breast pocket, the pair commenting on the world they see around them. The first time they have sex (the cinema screen total darkness), the aural erotica feels genuinely intimate. Samantha imagines she has a body; she even discovers self-doubt: "Are these feelings even real? Or are they Just programming?"
"Samantha's appeal as a character lends the film its disquieting, calculated emptiness. Like Theodore, we are seduced into credulity (what difference, in effect, is there between Samantha's voice and that of a lover on the telephone?), and yet the more sympathetic and believable she becomes, the more we wish for their relationship to founder. This is a romance in which it is impossible to root for one of the romantic leads -and our understanding of this makes the film's human relationships feel all the more liberating. When Theodore meets his wife (played by Rooney Mara) to sign the divorce papers, the tenderness and tension are palpable: in the body language, the scratch of real pen on real paper. In its very messiness, human life seems incredibly vital. Another counterpoint is offered by Theodore's friendship with a neighbour, Amy (Amy Adams), who has recently ditched her controlling husband. Theodore and Amy are becoming close. But Amy has another comforting new friend: her operating system. It soon becomes clear that everybody's at it. Any stigma quickly drains away. There's even talk of people dating other people's personal computers.
"The moral questions underpinning Her are not exactly subtle, and there are moments when the film takes itself too seriously. But Jonze extricates himself from the potential pitfalls with pleasing distractions and sharp human observations. There are some wonderful touches: the ridiculous, potty-mouthed character in Theodore's computer game who addresses him as "Fuckhead"; another computer game designed by Amy in which the protagonist strives to be a "Perfect Mom" ("You're failing your children", the console admonishes). In one of the most memorable scenes, Theodore attempts to have "real" sex with Samantha via the intermediary of a mute "body surrogate": a young woman who acts out Samantha's frustrated desires. The encounter is a disaster: "I'm so sorry. I don't know you", stammers Theodore to the tearful, silent visitor. He could be talking to himself. From here on in, the virtual love affair seems doomed, but it is when Samantha learns to enJoy not having a body that things really begin to unravel. One of the chief successes of this oddly moving film is that when the computer finally outgrows the man we somehow feel pleased for both of them."
So, do Members find Spike Jonze [sic] exciting? Are their real lives "messy"? And do they think of their laptops as female?
"It is now fifteen years," he explains, "since Spike Jonze [sic] announced himself as one of Hollywood's most exciting young directors with his debut feature Being John Malkovich (1999), a surreal and scintillating satire on the cult of celebrity, which Jonze followed up with the equally playful Adaptation (2002), a post-modern tangle of authorial paranoia and wish fulfilment. Both of these films were written by Charlie Kaufman, and since then Jonze has directed only one more fiction feature: Where the Wild Things Are (2009), written with Dave Eggers (and a little help from Maurice Sendak).
"Jonze's principal focus in this compact œuvre has been how we mediate reality through invention, creating worlds that are seductive, destructive and ultimately intangible: the fifteen minutes' fame that leaves its pursuers rudely dumped in a ditch by the New Jersey Motorway (Being John Malkovich); the "rumpus" gone awry and hastily abandoned (Where the Wild Things Are). Jonze's latest departure - Her - is his first as a solo writer-director, and if anything his guiding preoccupation has been even more neatly distilled in it. The film concerns our relationship with computers and an electronic reality that no longer even feels virtual.
"Set in the sun-drenched, high-rise Los Angeles of a near and skewed future, Her stars a convincing Joaquin Phoenix as the soon-to-be divorced Theodore Twombly: affable, intelligent, relatively sensitive, awkward, isolated and lonely. Twombly used to be a Journalist but has since found employment in a brightly coloured office composing old-fashioned love letters on behalf of his emotionally illiterate clientele. The business is clearly thriving: snail mail has made a kitschy comeback; authenticity and sincerity are valuable commodities.To accompany the future-retro theme, the male fashion is for high-waisted woollen trousers and a general dapperness that wouldn't look out of place in Mad Men. Everyone is groomed. Everyone is young.
"Theodore's evenings consist of perfunctory phone sex in his luxurious apartment and hours spent immersed, quite literally, in a holographic computer game. He enJoys listening to music but outsources his volition to his computer: "Choose a melancholy song", he instructs. When the world's first artificially intelligent operating system arrives on the market, he purchases it, opting for a woman's voice, remotely channelled from a handset via an earpiece. The computer's tone is chatty and flirtatious. She calls herself Samantha. "Basically I have intuition", she tells him. "In every moment I'm evolving." Theodore is sceptical; Samantha takes this in her stride: "I take it from your tone you're challenging me".
"And so begins a beautiful friendship - which soon turns into something more. That we are happy to accept this is testament to the film's well-Judged momentum. Every time the narrative threatens to flag, or incredulity starts to rise, a gag or vignette brings light relief, or a new development occurs. Samantha (voiced by a husky, seductive Scarlett Johansson) evolves from being an efficient secretary ("Sorry to bother you. You have three emails that seem kinda urgent") to a sympathetic confidante; she begins to understand what makes Theodore tick. When he lies around in bed depressed she jokes and tells him to pull himself together. They go on "dates", Theodore dreamily wandering around with the handset in his breast pocket, the pair commenting on the world they see around them. The first time they have sex (the cinema screen total darkness), the aural erotica feels genuinely intimate. Samantha imagines she has a body; she even discovers self-doubt: "Are these feelings even real? Or are they Just programming?"
"Samantha's appeal as a character lends the film its disquieting, calculated emptiness. Like Theodore, we are seduced into credulity (what difference, in effect, is there between Samantha's voice and that of a lover on the telephone?), and yet the more sympathetic and believable she becomes, the more we wish for their relationship to founder. This is a romance in which it is impossible to root for one of the romantic leads -and our understanding of this makes the film's human relationships feel all the more liberating. When Theodore meets his wife (played by Rooney Mara) to sign the divorce papers, the tenderness and tension are palpable: in the body language, the scratch of real pen on real paper. In its very messiness, human life seems incredibly vital. Another counterpoint is offered by Theodore's friendship with a neighbour, Amy (Amy Adams), who has recently ditched her controlling husband. Theodore and Amy are becoming close. But Amy has another comforting new friend: her operating system. It soon becomes clear that everybody's at it. Any stigma quickly drains away. There's even talk of people dating other people's personal computers.
"The moral questions underpinning Her are not exactly subtle, and there are moments when the film takes itself too seriously. But Jonze extricates himself from the potential pitfalls with pleasing distractions and sharp human observations. There are some wonderful touches: the ridiculous, potty-mouthed character in Theodore's computer game who addresses him as "Fuckhead"; another computer game designed by Amy in which the protagonist strives to be a "Perfect Mom" ("You're failing your children", the console admonishes). In one of the most memorable scenes, Theodore attempts to have "real" sex with Samantha via the intermediary of a mute "body surrogate": a young woman who acts out Samantha's frustrated desires. The encounter is a disaster: "I'm so sorry. I don't know you", stammers Theodore to the tearful, silent visitor. He could be talking to himself. From here on in, the virtual love affair seems doomed, but it is when Samantha learns to enJoy not having a body that things really begin to unravel. One of the chief successes of this oddly moving film is that when the computer finally outgrows the man we somehow feel pleased for both of them."
So, do Members find Spike Jonze [sic] exciting? Are their real lives "messy"? And do they think of their laptops as female?