Review of Herø (2001) by Liam C — 31 Jan 2015

Spike Jonze is an incredible filmmaker. He might not make full feature length films very often, but whenever he does they are excellent and thought provoking. 'Her' is an absolutely beautiful film.

This is a very 'out-there' subject matter with quite a lot of odd moments and in the wrong hands could have gone really bad really quickly but seeing as how Spike Jonze wrote and directed this, solely for the first time as well, there is nothing to worry about and he won an Oscar too, awesome. The first thing that is noticeable is just how beautiful the film looks, it just reminded me of 'Lost in Translation', funnily Scarlett Johansson was in both and it has been 10 years between films. The film has a beautiful creative style and it's very visually muted to fit the feel of the film and it's just beautiful to look at.

The script for the film is funny and intelligent, the characters are written so well that I was in the films world within minutes and really emotionally invested; it's no wonder why it won the Oscar. While both funny and intelligent it is also very strange and weird, some scenarios are odd and some of the things that characters blurt out caught me off guard at some points, especially that little video game character that was actually voiced by Jonze himself.

What has Joaquin Phoenix done to keep getting ignored by The Academy time and time again? I've read a few theories why that is but in this film he, once again, does an excellent job. He jumps head over heels into the character and gives a compelling portrayal of a lonely man. Everyone else in this film is excellent, even the people that are only in one or two scenes do excellent jobs; Spike Jonze knows how to direct actors. He essentially locked Amy Adams and Joaquin Phoenix in a room together on a daily basis to get them to grow closer as friends and the scenes where they do interact are great! Chris Pratt also did a great job, he was very likeable. Scarlett Johansson though? Wow. She was excellent and very real; you'd never guess that all of her dialogue was dubbed in during the editing process of the film because the original actress felt out of place to Jonze. I read that after I saw the film and not once during the film did it ever feel like that, she was totally natural. Theodore and Samantha have an excellent relationship, they are written so well and it feels very real, both should have been up for Oscars like everyone at the time everyone thought they would be. However, I did think that they were going out from the start of the film, because I thought that was the whole point of the OS but again, they are written well and it all developed naturally, which is good. The cast for this film is really good and actually has a few surprises in there that aren't shoved in anyone faces but Chris Cooper's scenes were completely edited out.

The film deals with quite a lot of themes and prejudices and it is all very thought provoking, it presents a multitude of ideas to discuss and leaves it up to the audience to come to their own conclusions. Seeing the different reactions to Theodore's situation was very interesting and realistic, I loved one of the characters reaction to Theodore telling them that the person he was seeing was an OS because he just accepted it, like any nice person would and it made me smile. Like I said before, the film is very realistic but in a way that I haven't seen very much, it honestly feels like a film from the future that we get to see now; it's like a looking into a window of our future. The way relationships are today with modern technology is forever changing and I could see this scenario actually happening in the not too distant future. This is a very good example of a sci-fi film as it treats the technology in a realistic way and isn't like much else in its genre. The film felt quite cruel at points though because of some of limitations of the relationship and during the film I had some flashbacks to 'A.I' because of some of the cruel undertones that film had. Saying that, this film is much, much better than that film, just in case that scared anyone off, but I can't deny that it reminded of it.

There was a point at 1 hour 26 minutes where I thought it could have ended and I don't mean that in a bad way like I was bored with the film but it's the way one of the scenes ended at that point seemed like it could have been an ending but it goes on to have a very powerful conclusion that was excellent. Funnily enough the original cut of the film was 150 minutes but Steven Soderbergh came in to assist Spike Jonze and his cut was 90 minutes! I also thought there was going to be a scene where Samantha didn't respond and I knew exactly what moment it was going to happen in the film when the scene began but even when it did, my heart was still in my mouth and it was a very tense scene, this film just does everything right. I also found it funny that the earpiece Theodore has makes a 'Metal Gear Solid' sound effect.

It took me a foolishly long to finally watch this film but I am finally grateful that I have and it's another film off the list. Spike Jonze should be commended for crafting one of the most realistic relationships I have ever seen, especially because one of the actors did all of their voice work after the fact and it is truly incredible. How he was ignored for Best Director is something I'll never know but I could sit here forever and talk about how he was ignored for the masterpiece that is 'Adaptation.' and talk about how that film, Nicolas Cage and Charlie Kaufman were vastly underappreciated but I digress. It might less mind-bending than his previous works but that doesn't take anything away from the overall experience. Beautiful, smart and fantastically acted, Her is an excellent film and one of the best of 2013.