“her” is marketed as a romantic science fiction comedy drama
“Theodore is a lonely
man in the final stages of his divorce. When he's not working as a letter
writer, his down time is spent playing video games and occasionally hanging out
with friends. He decides to purchase the new OS1, which is advertised as the
world's first artificially intelligent operating system, "It's not just an
operating system, it's a consciousness," the ad states. Theodore quickly
finds himself drawn in with Samantha, the voice behind his OS1. As they start
spending time together they grow closer and closer and eventually find
themselves in love. Having fallen in love with his OS, Theodore finds himself
dealing with feelings of both great joy and doubt. As an OS, Samantha has powerful
intelligence that she uses to help Theodore in ways others hadn't, but how does
she help him deal with his inner conflict of being in love with an OS?”
- IMDB
The film is written, directed and produced by Spike Jonze,
most well known for directing the 2009 Where the Wild Things Are adaptation.
The film primarily stars Joaquin Phoenix as the lead and Scarlett Johansson as
the voice of Samantha, the artificial intelligent OS. The film seems to be set
in a not so distant future with technologies that we currently already have or
very close to having. I appreciated that they didn’t choose to use tech that
seemed too far-fetched because it seems like this is a trend that is getting
worse.
Everything from the set design to the character clothing
appeared to be very well thought out. The film had a very notable colour scheme
of pastel colours that contrasted with the different shades of orange that was
used throughout the film. The location used for filming amalgamation of Los
Angelo’s and Shanghai, again gave a very real attempt to transport the viewer
into the directors’ vision of the future.
Joaquin Phoenix portrayed the character perfectly well. The
audience was able to feel both sympathetic while acknowledging his
self-destructive ways. Personally the stand out performance in the film to my
surprise was from Scarlett Johansson who played the voice of Samantha. Her
performance completely sold this idea of artificial intelligence and how one
can fall in love with something that doesn’t exactly exist.
Another wonderful film to watch.
4/5 Stars
0 comments:
Post a Comment