“Her” – Movie Analysis

Her

Directed by Spike Jonze

Released 18 December 2013

 

When he is not writing letters, Theodore is busy playing video games or hanging out with his friends, Amy and Charles, given his lonely life after his divorce. He even bought a new OS1 (intelligent operating system). In a short while, he finds himself occupied by the OS1’s voice. They began having feelings one would have towards a real woman as they started spending much of their time together as a normal couple would do. Perhaps this is because of Samantha, the OS, who helps him solve issues through powerful intelligence. Much of today’s world is accomplished through computer systems, and voice recognition and Theodore understands that there is not much he could do with his feelings for Samantha. He is trying to hang on to his marriage despite the divorce from Catherine and is having trouble moving on to other relationships. These self-destructive habits are driving Theodore towards cutting his connection with the world around him. Instead, what he is trying to look for as a means of satisfying him is somebody to connect with. Indeed, contact is an essential part of this life but only becomes health when the relationship is real and reasonable. From the filmmaker’s unique and imaginative point of view, the love story is unusual. It depicts the potential dangers of intimacy that is experienced in the modern world. From here, we will explore how the combination of several cinematic tactics in the film — color tonality, framing that uses shallow depth of the field, frequent use of montages, and constructed mise-en-scene — contributes to communicates the loneliness and isolation of modern technological existence which portrays complex ideas of human interpersonal relationship in the contemporary world. I will also examine how this film falls into the context of the Judith Butler Phenomenology and Feminist theory.

Without a doubt, technology is rapidly growing and gradually disconnecting people from the reality of face-to-face interactions and connections. As displayed throughout the movie, it is engraved in the human nature to feel connected and interact with ordinary human beings who relate to today’s world and troubles. True to this, the advancement of technology is widening the gap in the interactions between people. As a result, people are getting too attached to unusual things that are believed to replace the real human nature of interactions possible. The film shows us some evidences on how technology is creating delusional perception about intimate relationships between people and technology itself. Samantha comes back online and tells Theodore that she was down as part of an upgrade. She tells Theodore that she has been talking to 8316 people as their operating system and she has also fallen in love with 641 of them, including him. The mentioned themes have been well combined and illustrated with cinematic effects to explore the intimacy between people and technology. The dire need to connect with others to rid themselves of loneliness had forced people to hasten the evolution of technology in creating artificial intelligence.

Joaquin Phoenix plays the role of Theodore where he demonstrates his heartbreaking ordeal as his vulnerability with his tender and tentative character behind those round glasses and a heavy mustache. His superego effect brings out the human nature of being a man while no one thought that Scarlett Johansson starring as Samantha would bring out the exquisite subtlety, playful, and sexy side who even though easily broken brings out an infectious influence in her enthusiasm. Samantha’s original role was voiced by Morton before Scarlet replaced her to bring out an almost-close sense of humanity in a computer. Therefore, that was no ordinary computer that Theodore had begun falling in love with.

The future use of technology conjured by the director, Spike Jonze, is a warm one as opposed to his cybernetic dystopia where an excellent cinematic theme and background was well displayed and combined throughout the film. Los Angeles city was visualized with extra additions from Shanghai to bring out bright colors and soft lighting. The mise-en-scene that identifies Theodore, particularly his costumes is captured as pleasantly retro. Furniture is made of burnished wood while men’s pants are made of wool and are high-waist. The handheld phone that Samantha’s resides in is designed in elegant like a cigarette case with a vintage ambiance. The vision of the future is so enveloping that makes one feel occasionally engulfed in its world.  

The film is based on a series of two shots that are adjoined to cause a cumulative effect to include two lovers on one shot. Since Samantha is not a real person, the primary challenged was burdened on Theodore who had to show there was indeed a profound connection. Therefore, slow zoom-ins and jump cuts enable the audience to study the character’s face in displaying his emotions. Even though there is an imbalance between the two shots when showing the two lovers together, the camera reverses back to the original medium-close up.

From the cinematic point of view, the theme of loneliness is portrayed when the camera puts him as the center of focus with the rest of the world cut out. Theodore is in denial that his marriage is ending and is cherishes all the good memories he had with his Catherine. As a result, the focus of his memories gradually pulls him away from reality and connections from other people such as his possible relationship with Olivia Wilde. Isolation and loneliness are what he has to encounter and accept before he moves on with his life. Here is when shallow depth of field technique is used in the movie. This can be seen through the scene when Theodore standing on his balcony facing the high rises buildings of the city as his background. The city background and LA’s skyline is out of focus while Theodore is captured in focus. We depict here that there is a disconnection between two subjects as this technique makes them feel detached from one another. This technique highlights nonspecific glimpses of everyday life, of people and environments that may not be of fascination to Theodore. The shallow depth of field directly follow moments when Theodore and the city become both infocus as Theodore begins to accept situations and recognized that the answer to his loneliness doesn’t lied in the pursuit of what he wants. Film shift into moments of deep focus, connecting Theodore and his world as a reflection of how in reality, the cycle of life is seasoned with progression and degeneration as an inevitable journey. His relationship with Samantha does not last long as it ends sending Theodore back to decay where he is now able and ready to move on with his life. Further, many shots are taken in symmetrical framing putting Theodore in the center of the frame, focusing on him as the sole subject in the midst of crowd on his back. Evidences of this framing can be depicted in the scene where Theodore walks through the beach, the filmmakers positioned him in the center wearing long work attire while people surroundings him wearing beach attire. The use of these stylistic pattern is reflective of how Theodore is trying, to learn to ‘see’ the world again, to be a part of it and to find a truth within the noise of life.

The intimacy between the characters are captured through progressed designed elements of color. One of its purposes is to communicate characters who does and who doesn’t fit in its current society. Theodore’s peers are all dressed in more subdued colors, yet Theodore uses bright colored clothes, for example is his peachy red shirt to signal the notion that he doesn’t fit in and had failed to realized the important presence of his surrounding. However, when Theodore’s clothes start to look like those of his peers, it signifies how Theodore has changed to become more open to his surroundings and start accepting the reality of his relationship. The film then captures beautiful flares that gave a romantic theme during intimate scenes. Thousands of lights flares also bring out the color ambiance of how the city appeared. The movie also shows specific colors to scenes where different shades of red and brownish tone were used throughout the film on clothes, walls, and furniture that romanticize the whole perspectives.

One of the most important aspect in the movie was to bring out to affect the communications of emotions to stare at Theodore’s face. It almost looks as if his mouth is saying something even no word is coming from it. The evident can be found in the opening scene of the film when Theodore starring directly to the camera in silence. The aim is for the character’s silent face to be understood where the medium close-ups are on and off. Moreover, conversations between Theodore and Samantha are established from an off-balance shot that is perfectly centered. The closeness of the camera placement and movement enables facial expressions to be processed where an audience provides facial patterns with regularity. The medium-close up to the final extreme close up as the acquiring information from the facial expressions takes place gradually giving a melancholic twinge that shows a painful realization at the end of the film. The film also uses Montages as one of their techniques. Montages in the movie have given us context and teach us Theodore’s fragment of thought including past, desire, and life that he earns for. It is presented in the scene for example, when Theodore was contemplating in bed and this scene is placed right after his past memories with his ex-wife cuddling in bed. I am being brought to real places from Theodore’s past, but re-imagined through his eyes in present moment. It signifies how he has become a slave due to the fact that he has been living in the utopia he longs for while also trying to make peace with the past and work out some of his unresolved issues.

Judith Butler, an American philosopher and gender theorist, discusses in “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” that while philosophers rarely think about acting in theory, they still understand the use of semantic meanings with theories of performance and acting. The feminist approach has been critical in explaining sexuality and their physiology. Butler claims that there are compelling ways of gender acts in social fictions. The reality is that nothing about gender waits to be expressed even though it is politically and socially acceptable to represent women. Regardless of the progressive dominance of patriarchy and the predominance of sexual differences, the binary gender system has not yet been given. While Simon de Beauvoir believes that a woman is not born but socially constructed, Butler is on the front line fighting for feminist views and rights and gives a strict definition that gender is developed from societal roles and perceptions. In this regard, sexuality is not passively scripted and limited to the physical appearances of the body but preferably determined by nature, language, and symbols overwhelming the patriarchal society that has dominated the years. Gender is what is put on a daily basis, but the continuous act may be mistaken while expanding performances of different types. In other words, the current perception of gender is defined not only by the physical body but also by the modern societal norms. In many cases, sex is determined to be a social construct thereby taking any role or form despite having different anatomical features. In this case, gender is not only determined by societal roles and physical appearances but also through technology. For instance, Samantha’s feminine role was depicted through the use of a computer. This means that the gender role of being a female was taken over by the use of machines. Samantha is a computer that is designed to talk and behave like a female person who even shared emotions and fell in love with Theodore. This means that modern films depict gender as par how they behave and relate with others and not on the basis of their sexual orientation. Her movie followed this analogy to depict gender in forms of sexual orientation as well as technology.

Her movie is one of a kind and watching the unabashed declaration of love to a non-human soulmate is new and rarely unseen. The main character is so sincere and drained of the torture in the roles he has to play with utmost effectiveness in order to communicate the story to any audience. The different scenes and emotions have to be displayed in a balanced manner that stirs up emotions and empathy from the audience. Theodore is merely an ordinary man whose premise sets the stage for a very unusual love story that involves humans and a computer. The film displays a product brought out in remarkable quantity and quality with a rare combination of cinematography, brilliant acting, excellent costumes, and properties. In the midst of pure fiction, there are real human experiences such as the heartbreaking divorce between Theodore and Catherine. The film unwinds in an inevitably sentimental moral manner in an evolving landscape that is envisioned by technology where both men and women are having relationships with operating systems that are designed to act like human beings. This further gives a sense of fear to humans that technology is evolving in a fast manner and may possibly overtake the humankind. The film draws a distant and futuristic conventional comic detachment that pieces different aspects together while metaphorically explaining how and where the future society is headed to.