Is there an Algorithm for Love?

Her is a love story unlike any ever made in Hollywood.  Set in the indeterminate near future in Los Angeles, it traces the arc of a relationship between Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) – a shy and nerdy Cyrano de Bergerac who writes vicarious personal letters for a living – and Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) the disembodied artificially intelligent personality of his new computer operating system (think Siri on steroids).  If this sounds bizarre, it is; and writer/director Spike Jonze allows the borderline creepiness of the concept to settle just long enough before allowing the transformation from bizarre to believable to wash over both Theodore and the audience.  The result is a film that is something of a cross between Annie Hall and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and fully the equal of these two quite different cinematic masterpieces.

Phoenix delivers a remarkable performance, which along with his performance in The Master last year (2012) cements his credentials as one of the elite actors of our age.  In much of the film, he is the only actor on screen yet he is able to carry the film with a rich and subtle performance that doesn’t overwhelm the extended solo close-up shots of him talking with Samantha.  Johansson, whose voice is at times sultry and intelligent, playful and pained, gives life and emotional credibility to Samantha, and may earn her the first Oscar nomination for an actor who never appears in a film.  Not to be overlooked is Amy Adams (who also appeared with Phoenix in The Master) who shines in a supporting role as Theodore’s platonic friend.

Her, incredibly, is only the fourth feature film directed by Jonze, after Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are; and it is his first original screenplay.  Each of these films revolves in some way around psychological interiority, which is notoriously difficult to translate cinematically.  In Her, Jonze shows a confidence and emotional maturity that is missing in his previous efforts, which elevates the film from the quirky to the universal.  He is casual and believable in depicting the future Los Angeles (using Shanghai as a doppelganger) and the technology that is just over today’s horizon.  The cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema is used effectively, with a slightly surreal futuristic overexposure; particular images (e.g., a spray of pollen in the sunlight; steam rising from a manhole cover) give resonance to the emotional tone of the film.  Also noteworthy is Owen Pallett’s score, with help from Arcade Fire on the soundtrack.  As Steven Spielberg suggested in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in the relationship between the human and the trans-human, music is the universal language.  If there is a criticism of the film, it is in the editing: at 119 minutes the film is about ten minutes too long, and drags just a bit in the third act.

Jonze, like Woody Allen (his closest model), is a thinking romantic; and like Stanley Kubrick (pause for a moment of reverence), leaves the viewer both emotionally moved and intellectually stimulated.  The questions raised by Her are not merely those of technology and artificial intelligence, or of our Pygmalion-like love of our creations, but are questions about the human condition:  Is what we call “love” merely a projection of our selfish desires on another?  Is it merely a psychosocial construct to cover up the ultimate solipsism of pure subjectivity?  Is love genuine or artificial?  In other words, is there an algorithm for love?  Ultimately, Jonze manages to affirm both love and humanity in the bittersweet realization, as Allen noted in the famous ending to Annie Hall, that whether love is real or illusory, “We need the eggs.”

Rated R with strong language and graphic cybersex, Her is yet another great film in what is turning out to be one of the strongest years in cinema of the 21^st century.  4.0 stars out of 4.0.