REVIEW - HER

It is, to the narrow, restricted human brain, a tale of heartbreak. That's why it seems to register most in the chest, and in the tear ducts. A film critic ought not to think in such narrow terms, and ought to be more analytical, supposedly. But that is what is needed to see Her for what it truly is, even though that's far from necessary in order to be touched quite meaningfully by it - a tale of overcoming heartbreak. A tale of what we're left with when our reason to exist disappears or turns against us, or rather what we make of what we're left with. And the human brain is abandoned, as the heart takes over, so full of joy and/or pain. It is so terribly easy to go on loving someone no matter what they have done to you. It is so terribly easy to love in the first place, even a disembodied voice, an electronic consciousness, a manufactured product. What is and what isn't real is irrelevant - again, it's what we make of what we have, and how wonderful to have love at all. So Spike Jonze manufactures wholesale a sentimental romance, its futuristic trappings merely to facilitate his film's (excellently thought-out) quirks. Hoyte van Hoytema's dusky, luminescent photography and K.K. Barrett's sets in soft shades of cherry and tomato red and fallow brown, Joaquin Phoenix's downy vocal tone and his gaze so warm and wistful... it's the sweetest, coziest film of the year, and that's why the sharp edges that emerge from within do so much damage. Yet one must be broken down in order to be rebuilt, and thus perhaps Her is the best rebound romance ever shown on screen. Theodore goes from living in the past, haunted by memories, to living in the present, overjoyed yet blind to the danger in his unusual circumstance, to living in the future. Sadness is tinged with hope in the end, and such poetic optimism is hard to resist.