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Her (2013), R, 4 stars

Joaquin Phoenix listening to Scarlett Johansson's attractive voice.
This movie is basically an important outlook of what everybody can turn into while they are surrounded and obsessed with technology 24/7. Let's face it, we are in the futuristic world full of technological products and resources that can entirely make our lives quite suitable. However, when a person is a recluse or lonely in the world, he or she will be afraid of social contact and will be totally isolated from the population. So, what will this person have left? Technology. But, let's be specific. Wouldn't he or she want an operating system with artificial intelligence that would sound like the opposite sex? Well, Theodore Twonbly does in this extraordinary film.

Theodore Twonbly (Joaquin Phoenix) is an introverted person who works as a writer helping people with difficulties by sending their love letters expressing their true feelings. He is unhappy because he is in the middle of an impending divorce from his wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara). Because he is so distant and sad, Theodore decides to purchase a talking operating system with artificial intelligence. He has to answer a few questions about his life and love life. Therefore, he wants his OS to have a female identity and she names herself "Samantha", voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

Theodore and his "companion", Samantha, bond and they discuss about love, life and other important issues regarding his divorce with Catherine. Then, he gets an e-mail from his friend, Amy (Amy Adams) that she set up a blind date with an acquaintance of hers (Olivia Wilde). He and Catherine discusses this and she basically talks him into the date. However, Theodore's date with the nameless woman in the movie does not go so well. So, Theodore and Catherine talks to each other again and discuss relationship, especially, his and Amy's brief relationship in college. His intimacy with his operating system forms stronger and it develops into a relationship.

Theodore and Amy (Amy Adams) having a great time.
I do not want to spoil this review with any further details because I think that this is a brilliant and original film. Also, I think that this is an honest outlook of how a human being, either male or female,  is overly obsessed with technology, if not one device. We are definitely in an age of technology and we cannot advance and guide ourselves in life without it. If technology were extinct, then, I would have typed this review on a typewriter. Her shows us the state of modern relationships of how we identify ourselves in our own physical and psychological nature. The listener would be distracted by some sort of technology by not being attentive to the communicator and therefore, it hurts the relationship between two co-workers, and worst of all, maybe a relationship.

Joaquin Phoenix is perfect in this role playing a lonely person who seems to go nowhere and not get rid of the fond memories between Theodore and Catherine. I mean, it is brilliant to see how he really persuaded the viewer to witness a real relationship between a human being and an OS, rather than being a fake caricature with a computer in a conventional plot. Amy Adams is having a solid year with this movie and American Hustle and she is really different from her other roles and she is lovely.  Scarlett Johansson gives one of the best voiceover performances ever ranking with Robin Williams' voiceover work in Aladdin as the genie. Her voice really embodies the range and tones of Samantha's emotions that Theodore can face with awkwardness and sensibility.

It brings me to the questions that I faced with after seeing this movie. How can operating systems in the future express their love? How can they define love? How can it make itself delve into sexual pleasure? Those are intellectual questions and there are others also that seem to be discussed with over a cup of coffee where there would not be any right answers or wrong answers. The intellectualism illustrates that this was an important and ambitious movie.

Spike Jonze has to be one of the most creative and unconventional storytellers in recent cinematic history. He has created great intellectual movies such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. I thought that Where The Wild Things Are was a disappointment. This is the first time where he wrote this screenplay alone. I have to applaud his efforts to really be involved in this project and make the movie what it is. The movie looks fantastic with a terrific science-fiction look of our future that makes it look modern and true. The story is sweet and intelligent as to what we are definitely heading into in terms of technology. I thought the ending was just right for its tone of the movie. This is another brilliant movie of 2013 and another brilliant movie from Spike Jonze.

****

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