14 Love Stories: HER

Happy February!  We're halfway through the late winter doldrums, and that means its time for candy hearts and movies about young beautiful people trying to score.  Don't give me any of that anti-Valentine's Day crap.  I'm single and even a bit cynical, but I think that just makes it better.  The nice thing about Valentine's is that, being about romantic love, there's a whole genre of films appropriate for holiday viewing; the trick is finding the good ones!  I'll give you a few of my recommendations, 14 to be exact.  I don't know if these are really the "best" romance movies ever, and I few of them I'm sure are not, but I personally love each one.
  
Sometimes the weirdest loves are the best loves.  Not always, but sometimes, and if you just trust the good ones, it's as good as it gets.
HER  (2013)
Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson (voice role), Rooney Mara, Chris Pratt, Olivia Wilde, Matt Letscher 
Rated R for language, sexual content and brief graphic nudity.
Availability: Now Playing in Theaters

Although Spike Jonze's HER is one of the best films of last year and hugely deserving, it just isn't likely to win its current Best Picture Academy Award nomination, because it isn't the kind of film that wins.  However, it is the kind of film that lasts.
Appropriately in comparison to its bare-basics title, HER is a very simple story with intriguingly complex implications, but none of which ever get in the way of its heart.  It's the purest form of "high-concept" plot, the type of story easily, perhaps too easily, pitched in a simple what-if scenario.  The thing about high-concepts though, is that it can make a film very easy too market, or impossible to.  You have to trust the concept and the people behind it.  Jonze has a strong history with high-concept, with collaborations with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman that include BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (a puppeteer discovers a portal into actor John Malkovich's mind that lets him experience the actor's life) and ADAPTATION (a screenwriter, struggling to adapt a book, writes a screenplay about a writer writing a screenplay about a writer writing a screenplay...).  Those are some pretty extreme versions of high-concept; more wide-appeal examples include JURASSIC PARK (dinosaurs are cloned and run amok in modern times), SPEED (a bus must maintain a speed of 50 mph or it will explode) and GROUNDHOG DAY (a weatherman is trapped in a time loop on Groundhog Day).
HER, written by Jonze, is similar to one of Kaufman's scripts, but without the extremities of Kaufman's personal style and third acts.  In HER, the high-concept is, "A man falls in love with his computer".  Ah, see now we run into a bit of trouble convincing the world how great this movie really is.  A man falls in love with his computer?  Oh puh-leaze, so says someone before they have a panic attack, realizing that they left their cell phone at home.
HER takes place in the near future.  The year is unspecified, but there definitely have been a few changes in the world, not especially drastic ones though.  This is still a world very much in reach.  The digital age has evolved further, and now each person is practically all synced up into their own digital system, the key components of each include a mobile wireless ear-bud that every person on the streets wears, a handheld pocket device that resembles a folding pocket mirror with two screens, and their home base, where their houses are heavily digitized, with each wall a computer system in itself.  Even personal letter-writing has developed with the awkward impersonality of the advanced digital age, and Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) makes a living writing heartfelt, intimate "handwritten" correspondence for people.  Theodore isn't exactly a dork or a especially socially awkward or shy, although there's a marvelous mislead at first before we realize how the entire world's fashion sense has changed.  Theodore has been in only one major romantic relationship his whole life, having married his childhood sweetheart Catherine (Rooney Mara), but now he's nearing the end of a prolonged and painful divorce.  His major social connections are with his neighbors, Amy (Amy Adams), an aspiring documentary filmmaker, and her overbearing husband, Charles (Matt Letscher), and his goofy co-worker, Paul (Chris Pratt).
One day, Theodore notices an ad for a brand-new operating system (the unifying presence of each person's digital life) featuring the first-ever artificial emotional intelligence and lifelike personality custom created for the user.  Intrigued, Theodore gets one and after installing it, he's asked a couple of personal questions, and the resulting custom-made O.S. dubs herself "Samantha" (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).  Gradually, as Samantha learns more about the world and herself, she starts to fall in love with Theodore and he with "her", and they begin an unusual relationship that brings Theodore back to who he was before the divorce.
HER encompasses a wide understanding of relationships from all over the spectrum, celebrating, exploring and embracing them with a keen but non-judgemental eye.  It's a great date movie, a great singles movie, a great girls' night movie and a great guys' night movie.  It's gut-bustingly hilarious much of the time, perpetually engaging and emotionally soothing.  Don't cheat yourself out of this movie.  It's wonderful; go see it.
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