January
01
Tags
‘Her’ (Spike Jonze, 2013)
‘Her’ (Spike Jonze, 2013)
Caveat Spectatorus: there are a couple details revealed about the film that *may* be spoilers. But do come back later!
There is so much to see.
The near-future urban world of ‘Her’ has been exquisitely imagined: holographic video games, softly illuminated elevator panels, sleek intra-building walkways, clicking earbuds – and not a detail feels borrowed or cinematically second-hand. This is not so much an imagined future as a sneak peak at a likely trajectory. Even the beltless, high-waisted men’s fashion of this imagined future feels believable. It is a world of comfort and convenience, cleverly commingled with the buildings and things of Now. It is a vision stylishly designed in Cupertino, but without being so smugly chuffed with itself. Everything may have been created by Apple here, but nobody in this Garden cares anymore or expects otherwise.
As exceptional as the art decoration and cinematography are in the rendering of this lonely, high-tech world, this is not a study in the Observed World of things, places, or even the human face. And rarely have close-up faces been shown in a film with more depth of feeling. We are made witness to our uncanny human ability to translate into feeling the minutiae of movement in facial features. There are moments in the film – I’m thinking particularly of a happy drunken date that goes off the rails – where we look at the human face with a kind of musical, sight-reading ability. Our own sensitivity to what is occurring in others is a marvel. But this story is not about what is seen and, in one of its most compelling sequences, it goes out of its way to dispense with images altogether. The screen simply goes dark.
To be human is not to see.
‘Her’ is a study in the limits of language. It is an inquiry into navigating the DMZ of human relationships with language, one of our few tools. The characters in ‘Her’ create stories for each other from language – in letters, in video games, in email message text. We are at once exquisitely sensitive and completely cut-off from each other. The characters navigate the impasse along the fragile bridge of language. Everywhere language is a salvation of sorts: in the repartee with a gaming character, in the writing of letters for the inarticulate, in the signature on divorce papers, in the descriptions of the physical world to the female consciousness trapped in his computer. Language can bridge something, sometimes, for some. But the failings of language are the tragic flaw: poems don’t save anyone, and even for the most sensitive and articulate, words are an imperfect medium. The hero is ‘his own favorite writer some days,’ and yet he is utterly adrift in feelings. Language is the wrong tool for him – and, it turns out, for her.
To be human is not to speak.
We need something, one character argues, that is ‘post-verbal.’ ‘Her’ is an extended inquiry into bridging our humanity and hints at its own solution, a solution outside the world of what films intrinsically render through image and language. In the final shot two characters look at a sunset from a rooftop. Neither character speaks a word. One of them rests their head on the other’s shoulder. Sensitive people see things and sensitive people say things, but mostly they feel things. You can delight a disembodied lover with the notion of what it is to kiss the side of her eyes, your lips touching on her lashes, but it must be felt to be known. What we really need, one supposes, is something pre-verbal. The answer isn’t in the escape of enlightenment or the silence between words, but in the simplicity of physical connection shown in the last frame.
To be human is to touch.
Do you think you should put a spoiler alert at the beginning of this essay? I saw a preview for this movie, I now think. But I had forgotten that when I started to read what you’d written. And then at the point where you describe the screen going black I thought to myself “Oh, that’s powerful.” I also hoped the effect would not be diminished if I end up seeing the movie first-hand, since I now know that’s coming. But I kept reading. I stopped before the end, however, when I suddenly recalled – from the preview I’d seen, I think – the central sad premise of the story. I don’t want to know anything about how it ends, not yet anyway. Maybe, if nothing is lost from reading this, you could say that at the beginning. Otherwise, you enhance the movie.
By the way, if you haven’t stumbled across Walter Pater’s impact on art criticism you might enjoy looking into it sometime. Pater didn’t paint her portrait, but in writing about Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa he made it The Mona Lisa. Criticism is its own art form. A dispatch from reader-land.
The spoiler concern is interesting, and one I’ve thought about, not just with regards to two details I have in here, but also about how reviews work generally. I love movie reviews but find they invariably color the film at crucial moments because they plant “Easter Eggs” in the film whether you like it or not. A moment’s poetry becomes consciously called-out when you’ve already read about it. I think everybody who reads a review of a film they haven’t seen is playing with this danger a little bit and pays the price for it – a little bit. For me, the self-awareness of a moment in a film is worth the delight I have in reading an ecstatic review. So, there is some spectatorus emptor here.
Having said that I thought about two moments I called out in this sort-of review and wondered whether they were too much information. I mention the black out and I mention the final image. I don’t think the black-out can be predicted in the film, but I do think my calling it out will make it vulnerable to the issues in the previous paragraph. It will be less enjoyable having background on the moment, than if you get the poetry “direct” let’s say. The final image is the one I thought about the most. It does not give away the characters. In fact you can’t guess the characters either from the moment. So I felt like I didn’t ruin anything there. You are going to see this movie, though, and I have a feeling I’m going to get a final verdict – which I’m open to.
In the interest in not ruining things I may call out that there is a potential spoiler alert and a definite spectatorus emptor. 🙂
Final thought: this is a little bit of a hodgepodge of thoughts about the film anyway and is really for somebody who has already seen it, rather than a film review. I’ll be interested to know what you think.