[This Romantic Comedies in the Time of Social Distance series suggests good rom-coms to watch at home during our current crisis. Some are directly apropos and some will take you away from it all, but none of them suck.]
You may not think of Spike Jonze's Her as a romantic comedy - perhaps because it's also a sci-fi pic, a social satire, and a character-driven drama - but "Man falls in love with his computer's operating system" is about as contemporary rom-com as it gets, in my book, and the movie, despite its often melancholic tone, is filled with mordant wit and features some genuine LOL laughs.
It's also, viewed from one's shelter-in-place couch, weirdly resonant with the current moment. Watching it now can induce a surreal nostalgia for the not-quite past, given that the urban near-future it imagines is cavalierly populous and crowded, but simultaneously it's a film about isolation and its discontents. It depicts a love story between an emotionally-disabled guy (Joaquin Phoenix), channeling other people's emotions in his gig as a professional personal letter-writer, and his disembodied female-voiced OS (Scarlett Johansson), but practically everyone on screen is engrossed in a screen, rather than dealing with the humans in their proximity.
As an exploration of how to sustain a relationship when one of you is only present via technology and not physically there, Her can serve as a metaphor for the relationships many of us are trying to sustain in the time of COVID-19. And ultimately, it's a clear-eyed, hesitant affirmation of hope, and the fundamental importance of human connection. Sound relatable? Take a look.
The Spike Jonze screenplay is brilliant, and Joaquin Phoenix performance was excellent, but HER surprisingly disappointed me. I wasn’t moved by the story and I got bored. Maybe I should watch it again…
Posted by: Stephane Guero | April 30, 2020 at 02:27 AM