Month: October 2018

High Plains Drifter

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High Plains Drifter (1973)

Dir. Clint Eastwood

Written by: Ernest Tidyman

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Billy Curtis, Geoffrey Lewis

 

I was introduced to High Plains Drifter when it was described to me by a professor in film school as “the movie in which Clint Eastwood paints a town red and calls it Hell.” While this curt description leaves out some of the nuance of the plot, it is, at its essence, what the film is about. Though we didn’t screen High Plains Drifter in the Film Westerns class during which it was first mentioned to me, the attitude of that particular professor did a great deal to help form my own viewpoints on movies, and watching this particular film always reminds me of him. Prof. Best was as likely to recommend a Kaiju movie as he was Kurosawa, and was more interested in comics than he was in literary classics. His open-minded approach to movies and to art helped to open up my own thinking on what could or should be considered valid as a subject of academic study. If Prof. Best could champion Star Trek, Godzilla, and anime, then why shouldn’t I seek to explore the artistry in whatever text I might see fit. Breaking out of the ivory tower mentality of academia was freeing, but it was also a development that likely pushed me away from continuing to pursue my education beyond my undergraduate studies. When I entered into a graduate program at Pitt, I found that the canonization and attention to classical theory completely turned me off, and I longed for the freedom that I had found studying under Prof. Best. I’m always reminded of him when I watch High Plains Drifter, not just because he was the person who first introduced me to it, but also because it is typical of the type of B-movie that he would have found artistically valid and criminally under-considered.

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High Plains Drifter opens with a lone stranger (Eastwood) riding into the mining town of Lago. Upon his arrival, The Stranger is warned by the town’s saloon keeper that range types such as himself don’t often stop in Lago, finding the town to move too quickly for them. He insinuates that The Stranger ought to keep moving, and a trio of rough types in the saloon follow him across the street to the town barber shop, where they menace The Stranger. He takes the three by surprise, spinning out of the barber’s chair with his pistol drawn, and quickly dispatches of the trio. After having witnessed his lethal capacity, the town’s sheriff offers The Stranger the job previously held by the three roughriders that he killed, defending Lago from Stacy Bridges (Lewis) and his gang of outlaws who previously menaced the town and who are soon set to be released from prison. The Stranger learns that the town’s previous marshal was whipped to death in the street by the Bridges gang, and he is plagued by dreams of the marshal’s torture. The Stranger reluctantly accepts the job of defending the town, with the caveat that if he protects the town that the townsfolk must give him anything he wants. He takes full advantage, buying rounds for the whole bar at the saloon, loading up on supplies at the town store, and appointing Mordecai (Curtis), a dwarf, to the position of sheriff and mayor of Lago. The Stranger begins to devise a plan and instruct the townsfolk on how to defend themselves from Bridges’s gang. The Stranger’s plan involves painting the town red and staging a welcoming party for the gang, during which the townsfolk will ambush them. However, when Bridges and his outlaws are about to arrive in Lago, The Stranger rides off, leaving the townsfolk to fend for themselves, and the gang overruns the town and begins to burn it down. The Stranger returns to the town, emerging from the flames, to stalk and murder the Bridges gang. The next day, The Stranger rides out of town as Mordecai is engraving the previously unmarked grave of the murdered marshal.

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That plot summary of High Plains Drifter is a bit more involved than the one-sentence summary that had first piqued my curiosity about the movie, but its essence can really be boiled down into the fact that it is a movie in which Clint Eastwood paints a town red and calls it “Hell.” When I eventually got around to seeing the movie sometime in my early 20s, I found the pervasive strangeness and otherworldly tone of that abstract but powerfully evocative summary informed the film completely. High Plains Drifter seems equally influenced by Eastwood’s directorial mentors Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, and by Italian horror masters Dario Argento and Mario Bava. The film initially seems to hew close to the blueprint that Leone and Eastwood had established in the “Dollars” trilogy, but it quickly adopts a rather unsettling tone and it contains supernatural elements that are rare in the Western genre. It contains a level of violence, gore, and nihilism that would have been thought unseemly for the All-American film genre just five years prior. This is a revisionist Western, through and through, and it establishes Eastwood as a director who would continue to be interested in exploring and shifting the boundaries of the Western genre. Though it’s a bit of an uneven effort, High Plains Drifter is only Eastwood’s second feature in the director’s chair, and it deserves special commendation as a wholly unique vision of the West and of the Western film.

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High Plains Drifter isn’t a great movie; in fact, I think many people would say that it isn’t even a very good movie. It doesn’t really feature any standout performances, as Eastwood is essentially reprising his Man With No Name role, and the rest of the cast suffers from sorely lacking character development. These are stock Western characters, meant more to stand in for types than to differentiate themselves from one another. The movie’s production value is also fairly low, although its sets are decently impressive, featuring full buildings rather than false fronts, which gives the town of Lago some sense of depth. Rewatching High Plains Drifter, I was struck by the sense that some of the scenes weren’t finished, featuring abrupt endings, seeming extraneous to the plot, or just not quite matching up with the tone of the rest of the film. However, I still find this to be an incredibly enjoyable viewing experience. While it isn’t perfect, High Plains Drifter nails the right balance of pulp, action, and horror, even peppering in moments of levity. It’s schlocky and campy, but I’ve always found something intriguing about Eastwood’s injection of the supernatural into a Western revenge story. It’s a fresh take on the Western and one that I’m pretty happy to explore whenever the mood strikes me. For a movie that was introduced to me in such an inauspicious way, it’s one that has become a go-to Western, despite its obvious flaws.

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I don’t know if High Plains Drifter is underseen, or if I just don’t know that many people who like Westerns, generally, but I think that it’s a really fun movie that deserves a little more attention. It isn’t as iconic or groundbreaking as Eastwood’s work with Leone in the 1960s, or as paradigm shifting as something like The Wild Bunch, but it continues the revisionist ideas of the West that those films started to explore. It’s a refutation of the idyllic vision of American society in the Old West, and despite its supernatural overtones, it’s a position that rings true to me as a viewer. Watching this movie and High Noon in succession for this project, I was struck by the honesty that the townsfolk of Lago who would stand by and watch their Marshal whipped to death in the street are a natural extension of the cowardly townsfolk of Hadleyville who abandoned Marshal Kane, leaving him to face his fate alone. The major difference is that in a classic Western such as High Noon, the basic decency and virtue of the hero is assumed, whereas in Eastwood’s savage vision of the West, decency has been stripped away in favor of vengeance. I think it’s also interesting that both of these films drew the ire of none other than John Wayne, who posited that they both misrepresented the good, honest people of the Old West. I don’t bring that up to paint Eastwood as some sort of progressive in contrast to the virulent, reactionary Wayne. I think that Eastwood is presenting the same sort of paranoid, cut-throat world view that was on display in Dirty Harry, but something about the transposition to the Western setting makes it easier for me to stomach as a viewer in 2018. There are a couple of other Eastwood films that I’ll be writing about for this project, and I’m sure that my relationship and consideration of him as an actor, star persona, and director won’t get any less complicated, but I think that High Plains Drifter is a movie of his that I can pretty wholeheartedly endorse. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a really fun Western that inverts many conventions and traditions of the genre, and it offers enough stylistic variance to please fans of other genres, as well.

High Noon

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High Noon (1952)

Dir. Fred Zinnemann

Written by: Carl Foreman (from the magazine story by John W. Cunningham)

Starring: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges

 

It’s a bit surprising to me how few Westerns I’ve written about so far in this project. There will certainly be more upcoming, but, for a favorite style of mine, the Western genre is somewhat underrepresented in my collection. High Noon is one of the most classic examples of the golden age of Hollywood Westerns, and it stands out in contrast to the later Westerns of Sergio Leone that I’ve already written about, and even to the contemporary output of Western auteur John Ford. High Noon is something of a morality tale, and an allegory for the HUAC hearings led by Joseph McCarthy, with the film using the quintessential American film genre to subvert conventionally understood “American values” of the time. It’s one of the most important movies of its time, both for its content and message, and for its unique presentation of a story unfolding in real time. Watching it for this project, however, I was left wondering how a movie like High Noon might connect with modern first-time viewers.

High Noon takes place in the span of a couple of hours on the morning that Marshal Will Kane (Cooper) is married to his new bride, Amy (Kelly), and is preparing to leave the town of Hadleyville for a new life on the frontier as a storekeeper. However, that afternoon brings the news that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), a murderer whom Kane had jailed, has been released and is set to arrive in Hadleyville on the high noon train with a score to settle. The town elders, along with Amy, a Quaker pacifist, urge Marshal Kane to flee the town and Miller’s gang, but he finds himself duty-bound to protect his town until the new Marshal arrives. In the short amount of time that he has left until Miller’s train arrives, Kane tries to round up a posse of deputies to head off the gang, but one by one, the townsfolk turn their backs on him, including his deputy, Harvey Pell (Bridges), and his new bride. When high noon comes around, Kane is left alone to defend the town he swore to protect, despite their unwillingness to fight alongside him.

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Taken on its own merits, High Noon is a pretty great Western. It features Gary Cooper in a signature performance, one that would codify the trope of the stern, virtuous lawman. The cinematography is beautiful black and white, and it captures the essence of the stock frontier town perfectly. In fact, I think when most people picture a town’s main street from a Western movie, it’s the main street of Hadleyville that they envision, complete with Marshal Kane striding across the boardwalk towards his fateful confrontation. The film’s theme, “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling,” is featured throughout the film, echoing its plot points, and kicking off a trend of Western films featuring country theme songs. The film builds suspense throughout, delaying the gratification of its central conflict until the final few minutes, but constantly teasing its villain’s arrival through the highlighting of clocks and other markers of the passing of time. This device of a film playing out in (almost) real time must have seemed incredibly novel at the time, as the audience is put into the same mindset as Kane, counting down the minutes and seconds until Miller arrives, bringing with him vengeance and destruction. In short, High Noon is one of the most influential and innovative Westerns of its time period. Though there are a handful of other 1950s Westerns that could stake claim to this title, it’s not hyperbole to mark High Noon as the archetype of the classic Hollywood Western film.

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Digging below the surface of the film’s production, and exploring its historical context, one in which cowboys became culture warriors, reveals a deeper level of significance and importance to High Noon. Screenwriter Carl Foreman, a one-time member of the Communist party, had been called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and had refused to implicate others, resulting in his blacklisting from Hollywood. The incident resulted in the dissolution of his partnership with Hollywood mogul Stanley Kramer, and in Foreman’s eventual expatriation to Britain along with a handful of other blacklisted screenwriters and directors. Though High Noon was currently in production when Foreman was called to testify before the HUAC, it isn’t difficult to read between the film’s lines and see it as a critique of the Red Scare, generally. Like those accused of Communist sympathies and associations in McCarthy’s witch hunt, Kane is abandoned and disowned by longtime friends and family. Though she returns to his side in the end and plays a pivotal role in Kane’s defeat of Miller’s gang, even Amy abandons her husband. Kane is forced, largely, to stand on his own, defending his values and principles in the face of unpopular public opinion. The film’s political allegory was publicly acknowledged at the time, and John Wayne famously turned down the role of Marshal Kane because he thought that the film was un-patriotic, later publicly relishing his role in chasing Foreman from the industry. In films like High Noon and Wayne’s response film, Rio Bravo, the frontier provided a historical context for a debate over modern American ideology.

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High Noon shows further progressive leanings in its treatment of the character of Helen Ramirez (Jurado). Helen is the only Hispanic character in the film, and, though it isn’t made explicit, she is clearly a prostitute. Despite this, she is granted a position of great importance in the film’s narrative, and also within the hierarchy of the town. Helen has been romantically involved in the past with both Frank Miller and Marshal Kane, and when High Noon starts, she is with Deputy Pell, however her promiscuity isn’t judged by the film or the characters in it. She’s a source of wisdom and strength within the community, and she’s respected as a businesswoman by the town’s elders. When contrasted with Kane’s wife, Amy, Helen is shown to be more loyal and pragmatic, reminding Amy that if Kane were still her man that she would stand by his side. By choosing her battles, Helen remains above the fray, and, from this vantage point, she seems to have the best perspective on the town’s conflict. I’m not exactly sure what to take away from High Noon’s treatment of its only ethnic minority character, but I think that it’s an honest and unusual characterization for the time, and I appreciate that the filmmakers made it a point to include a character this complex in a film that is otherwise fairly straightforward.high noon 8

It was nice to have an excuse to go back and rewatch High Noon, because it had been at least a decade since the last time I really watched it all the way through, and I doubt that the urge to pull it off the shelf would have otherwise presented itself anytime soon. For Western fans, I think that the movie is still pretty enjoyable, but I imagine that many other audiences might have a bit of trouble getting into it. Although it’s briskly paced, clocking in under 90 minutes, there is little action to speak of. I think that most modern audiences might find the film’s central conflict to be boring, rather than fraught with tension, and that the subtext of the Hollywood blacklist might be less interesting to viewers not already invested in film history. Still, though, it’s difficult to underestimate the importance of a film like High Noon at the time it was released. It introduced progressive ideologies into what was, to that point, a fairly reactionary and conservative film genre. High Noon also transformed film style and introduced a radical new storytelling device by letting its story unfold in real time. However, I think that these stylistic innovations would probably be lost on most modern audiences because we’re so far removed from the film’s initial release. I enjoy High Noon, and I was glad to have the opportunity to watch it again, but it will probably be another ten years before I decide to revisit it. It’s a great movie, and deserving of the praise that it’s received throughout the years, but there are other Westerns of this period that I just enjoy a bit more.

High Fidelity

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High Fidelity (2000)

Dir. Stephen Frears

Written by: D.V. DiVencintis, Steve Pink, John Cusack, Scott Rosenberg (From the novel by Nick Hornby)

Starring: John Cusack, Iben Hjejle, Lisa Bonet

 

“Which came first, the music or the misery?” This maudlin bit of dialogue opens High Fidelity, and it came to be something of a mantra for me in my teen years. I imagine that there were quite a few young, nerdy, socially maladjusted misanthropes who took Rob Gordon’s words and neuroses to heart after seeing High Fidelity. It seemed like the perfect movie for me at 15 or 16 years old, justifying my obsessive interest in music, movies, and pop culture ephemera. Though Rob is certainly meant to be seen as a shallow, narcissistic protagonist, one who can even identify those qualities in himself, I consistently misread the film’s message as a young person. By my late teens, I think that I started to understand the film’s third act, in which Rob starts to accept some responsibility for his own shortcomings and becomes a better person and partner, but I still saw more of myself in the Rob of the early film, who is so wrapped up in the minutiae of collectorship and curation that he fails to fully form a personality for himself. Watching High Fidelity in my thirties is almost cringe-worthy, as it reminds me of my early attempts at romance, of the person who I was nearly twenty years ago, but it’s also a powerfully nostalgic trip that does provide some wistful smiles and laughs.

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The movie opens with Rob Gordon (Cusack), fresh on the heels of a break up with Laura (Hjejle), trying to take stock of his life and his failed relationships. On the cusp of middle age, Rob is more grown child than man, defining his personality and interpersonal relationships through his encyclopedic knowledge of music and pop culture. Rob has parlayed this knowledge into a job running his own record store, Championship Vinyl, where he spends his days trying to impress customers and one-up his fellow music-nerd employees, Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black). Rob’s self-examination takes the form of an exhumation of his loves and losses, Top Five style, as is his wont throughout the film. We see Rob grow from an immature, elitist, young hipster, into an immature, cynical, older hipster and along the way meet some of the women who he blames for turning him into the self-loathing, but still self-obsessed, ball of neuroses and music trivia that he is. Eventually, Rob’s soul searching brings him back to Laura, and the two reconcile as she tries to rekindle not only the spark in their relationship but in Rob’s personal life, as well. High Fidelity finishes up with a conventionally happy ending, but its always struck me as fraught with uncertainty, much like the ending of The Graduate.

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I’m probably being unfair to Rob as a protagonist, but that’s only because I can sometimes see so much of my younger self in his character. As I mentioned, High Fidelity was an early touchstone for myself, and I embraced its esoteric hipster-dom. It was the movie that made me feel ok to be as wrapped up in music and movies as I was as a 15-year-old kid, but I think that it also gave me a pass to become too maudlin and too self-involved for a while in that period of my life. There’s only so long that you can substitute depression, teenage alcoholism, and a record or movie collection for an actual personality. Rob is a prick when we meet him, a prick in his own remembrances, and he remains at least a bit of a prick until the movie’s end, when he does manage to, at least partially, redeem himself by embracing a more healthy, positive outlook on life. I think that I stopped watching High Fidelity almost entirely after my high school years simply because it was too difficult to stomach Rob’s elitism and moping. His attitude reminded me of a phase of development I was desperately trying, and often failing, to grow out of. Ironically, if anything, I probably became more of an ivory tower elitist in college than I had been in high school, although I couldn’t see that particular forest for the trees of academia that were surrounding me.

But still, uneasy self-revelations aside, I found a lot to enjoy about High Fidelity watching it for the first time in at least a dozen years. While Rob might not be an easy guy to root for or sympathize with, High Fidelity is an easy movie to settle into and enjoy. It’s light and funny, it has a fittingly great soundtrack, and the grand gestures of love depicted in the movie seem perfect to its target audiences of young people and hopelessly romantics. I’ve never been a big fan of traditional romantic comedies, but High Fidelity injects enough pessimism and cynicism into its saccharine core that it avoids turning my stomach. The movie walks the line between loathing and loving, and it depicts the balance between the two sentiments as existing within all of Rob’s relationships, including the one that he has with himself. That seems like a much more honest depiction of love to me than most romantic comedies of the early 2000s were peddling. By the film’s end, Rob and Laura are in love again, and, while it’s not difficult to envision a future where they really do share a fairytale happy ending, it’s more likely that their relationship will continue to be defined by the careful balance of their very different, but complimentary, personality types. Throughout the film, Rob’s relationship with Laura was shown as having elements of humor, affection, contention, and understanding, depths that clearly aren’t represented in any of the previous relationships that he posthumously examines for clues as to his failings. That depth is what builds a strong and lasting relationship. I like that High Fidelity depicts this sort of relationship as a continuous work in progress. It feels genuine and affirmational, especially when that work leads to an ecstatic moment such as the one depicted in the film’s musical finale where Rob proposes to Laura. It’s a really good scene and it feels like a great payoff for the cast of characters who have all grown in some way.

high fidelity 8I’d also kind of forgotten what a pleasure the supporting cast of High Fidelity is to watch. Jack Black’s performance in the movie always sticks out in my head, and certain line deliveries of his tend to pop up in conversation for me still, but I had forgotten how much of his humor is drawn from the perfect interplay between his character, Barry, and Todd Louiso’s Dick. The two actors are perfectly paired, with Louiso embodying the introverted, nerdy stereotype of the record obsessive, while Black’s Barry is the brash, know-it-all music nerd. I’ve known several people who fit into both sides of this stereotype, and the actors chosen are perfect for their roles. Louiso lurks quietly in the background of scenes, mumbling lines both pithy and sincere, and, seemingly in compensation, Black’s mania is ratcheted up to 11, with the actor dancing and bouncing through the record store, while bursting into gleeful song. Both characters are genuine and fun, and it’s a pleasure to watch them grow a little bit throughout the movie, with Dick finally getting a date with his crush and Barry finally getting to sing in a band, by the film’s end.

On a similar note, Lisa Bonet deserves acclaim for her role as Marie de Salle, a musician whom Rob develops a crush on while he and Laura have split up. Bonet also feels genuine, tapping into her sensuality and performative streak when Marie is on stage, but revealing a natural, fun side to the character when she’s off it. Marie feels real in a way that none of Rob’s previous girlfriends have, and I attribute much of that to the inherent warmth in Bonet’s performance. She exudes coolness, but also caring, seeming to develop a real connection with Rob in just a short period of time. She also nails her performance scenes, and the cover of Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I Love Your Way,” still sticks in my head sometimes. Overall, I think that High Fidelity shortchanges most of its female characters because they’re being imagined through the prism of Rob’s post-breakup mindset, but Marie de Salle is allowed to exist fully on her own terms as a character, and Bonet brings that character to life vibrantly.

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I found this rewatch of High Fidelity to be something of a mixed bag, which is a fairly common theme among the movies in this project. Sometimes art that we love when we’re young doesn’t age so well, but High Fidelity is largely as I remember it, for better and for worse. I suppose that it’s fitting for me to have such a nostalgic affection for a movie that is so obviously steeped in nostalgia already. The laughs and the funny characters are just as I remember them from so long ago, but part of those characters being just as I remember them means that I’ve also largely outgrown them. A movie that I used to strongly identify with has become one that I merely enjoy, and even then I doubt that High Fidelity is a movie that I’ll be pulling off the shelf again any time soon. When it’s good it’s really good, and it still brings a big smile to my face, but the movie also feels incredibly dated, not just in its content but in its style, as well. High Fidelity has more in common with studio romantic comedies from earlier than it does with newer, more interesting movies like Her. This isn’t a terrible thing, because High Fidelity largely delivers on the promises of its genre, and, as I mentioned, I think it presents a realistic and relatable portrayal of romance, but it does mean that the movie was far less influential than I probably felt like it was, or should be, when I was 15 years old. That’s probably a good thing, though.

Her

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Her (2013)

Dir. Spike Jonze

Written by: Spike Jonze

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara

 

Her is one of the most recent movies in my collection, and it’s one of the very last movies that I ever purchased on home video. By the time Her came out on DVD in May of 2014, I was already primarily consuming all of my media through streaming services. My DVD collection had seldom grown in the past couple of years, but I was compelled to add this particular movie to my collection. Despite knowing that with the breadth of streaming services and premium channels available to me, I could likely dial up a popular, recent movie like Her at any time, I needed to own it. Such was the impact that this movie had on me when I saw it in the theater in early 2014, after having just experienced a recent minor heart break. I clung to the movie after that first viewing, declaring it one of my favorites of 2013, a year in which I made it a point to see a great many of the critically-acclaimed films. In the weeks after seeing Her, I played over small moments from the film in my head, comparing them to my own experience of loss. Admittedly, nearly five years later, watching the movie again I realize how short-sightedly maudlin my initial appreciation of it might have been, but I still find Her to be a richly evocative movie that plumbs emotional depths and treats the audience to a sumptuous imagining of a tech-driven near future. Spike Jonze crafts a heartbreakingly beautiful love story in his first solo script, and he further explores the nuances of modern love that he explored in his early collaborations with Charlie Kaufman. It’s a lovely movie that I’m glad to have fallen in love with, even if it was for the wrong reasons.

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The titular Her is Samantha (Johansson), an operating system on a tablet with whom introverted, romantic, lonely poet Theodore Twombly (Phoenix) falls in love. Theodore lives in Los Angeles, sometime in the not-too-distant future, in a world in which people have become even more enamored with their PDAs and other screened devices. Theodore is adrift in this impersonal world, still reeling from the dissolution of his marriage over a year ago, working a dispiriting job in which he pens happy couples’ love letters for them. He has alienated his few friends, including his close friend, Amy (Adams), preferring to spend his evenings alone with his personal assistant and his video games. That all changes, however, when Theodore’s, and everyone else’s, computers are updated to feature a new artificial intelligence-based operating system that will function as a personalized virtual assistant and colleague. Theodore’s OS names herself Samantha, and, within a matter of weeks, the two have sprouted up first, a friendship, and then, an uneasy romance. Though it lacks the physicality of a traditional romantic relationship, the bond that Theodore and Samantha form is emotional and real, and the affections that the two share for one another are, too. Samantha is the coolly unattainable, but imminently approachable woman who Theodore desires, and Theodore provides a human outlet for Samantha to begin to experience the world. Inevitably, though, Samantha, with her computer brain’s limitless ability to expand and process experience and information, begins to outgrow Theodore. He is left devastated, trying to pick up the pieces of a relationship that, on the surface, seemed so immaterial.

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The premise of Her would be laughable if we weren’t in a pervasively digital era, in which people are free to meet and bond online, sharing mutual interests and experiences. In the age of online dating, long distance relationships, and catfishing, meeting someone on the Internet and allowing a friendship or romantic relationship to bloom has become extremely commonplace. Jonze simply takes this idea and stretches it to its most extreme iteration, essentially crafting a love story in which a man falls in love with a personification of the Internet itself. It’s conceptually daring and high-minded, to be sure, but at its root, Her is a fairly conventional love story. Theodore and Samantha form an unlikely pair, but the stages of their courtship would be familiar to anyone who has ever fallen in love, and the ups and downs of their relationship are blissfully and painfully real. Jonze is careful to depict their love as being rooted in deep and true emotions, rather than some tech fetish, as he allows the audience to contrast Theodore and Samantha’s relationship with Theodore’s unsuccessful attempts at connecting with real humans through virtual means. Their relationship is certainly untraditional, but it seems almost quaint in its simplicity and earnestness, and in the unabashed love that the two exhibit for one another.

This central relationship wouldn’t ring as true, though, without the stellar performances of Phoenix and Johansson. I don’t know that I had really recognized Johansson for the great actress that she’s become until I saw Her. I had often enjoyed her performances in movies that I’d seen her in, but her performance as the disembodied voice of Samantha elevated her status as an actor in my mind. Through a purely vocal performance, Johansson is able to fully flesh out Samantha’s character and personality. Her vocal inflections and expert timing lend a layer of humanity to the OS that feels slightly unnatural, at first, but then becomes unmistakably warm and inviting. She gives Samantha sass, feeling, and depth. Her performance is memorable, and it made me realize just how unmistakable her voice is. She plays Samantha as coy and playful, but also vulnerable, searching for meaning and identity. Jonze’s excellent script helps to provide Samantha with some of her layers, but its Johansson’s performance that truly brings the character to life and turns her into a relatable, sympathetic presence.

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Theodore is a somewhat thornier character, not entirely sympathetic, but played to excellent pathos by Phoenix. I’ve long felt that Phoenix was a great artist, and I think that in time he’ll be recognized as one of the best actors of his generation. He is able to shift seamlessly from character to character, channeling different facets of the human experience for each role. The change up in demeanor that he shows from a signature performance in The Master, released just a year before Her, is indicative of the range that he possesses as an actor. Gone are the outbursts and the primal, animalistic rage that he displays in the latter film, replaced here with a gentleness and a reticence previously unforeseen. There’s a bit of the everyman in Theodore, but his social development is stunted just slightly from the trauma of his failed marriage, and Phoenix displays this interiority subtly and masterfully. Though he spends much of the film closed off, watching Phoenix unfurl his easy smile as Theodore’s world begins to open up through his relationship with Samantha is one of the film’s small pleasures. Once his walls begin to come down, Phoenix plays Theodore with a weightless, if nerdy, charm. Theodore is a somewhat unlikable character, prone to self-defeat and neurosis, but it’s hard not to be won over by Phoenix’s nuanced performance.

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Jonze creates a sumptuous visual world for his characters to inhabit. The Los Angeles that he imagines is familiar, maybe a decade or two advanced beyond our world, but filled with just enough technological advances and novelties to give it a sense of whimsy and wonder, placing the film squarely in the realm of speculative fiction. Technology in Her is pervasive but never insistent. Jonze uses screens and virtual reality to give us a glimpse of life in his near-future, but they are merely the window dressing on the human love story that he wants to tell. Technology exists all around, and as such, its presence doesn’t hamper Jonze’s desire to explore a breezy, sun-splashed world. The exteriors of Her are bathed in warm light, and Jonze uses a summery color palette full of warm hues that reflect the film’s inherent romanticism. A love story between a man and an operating system could certainly be an interiorly-focused film, and one without many humanistic touches, but Jonze’s direction and mise-en-scene breathe warm life into Her. Much like in his work with frequent collaborator Charlie Kaufman, Jonze’s visual work provides a grounding and inviting element to a script that could otherwise become esoteric and inaccessible.

Her is a movie that still feels incredibly real and raw when I watch it. I’ve watched and rewatched it a half dozen times in the last few years, and though I’ve grown past the disappointment that I was feeling from a rejection on my initial viewing, it’s a movie that manages to make me feel emotions that few others can. A beautiful relationship, whether it be romantic or platonic, should be about growth and learning, and supporting a partner as they grow and learn, too. The only thing constant in life is change, and as humans we are always changing and growing through experiential learning. In Samantha’s awakening, Her depicts exactly the sort of growth that we should all hope for our partners, but it also accurately depicts the pain that can be caused when one half of a partnership outgrows the other, or grows in new and different directions. Love can be scary, and it can be beautiful, and it can feel immensely overpowering, opening up new experiences and ways of being, and I think that Her captures all of that perfectly. It’s a movie that calls into question what it means to feel, what it means to be human, and it finds the core of humanity in the desire and ability to connect. That connection can be physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, or, at times, all of the above, as we see in Her through Theodore and Samantha’s relationship. It’s an earnest and honest movie, one that isn’t afraid to wallow in the depths of sadness and explore the dizzying heights of euphoric love, and it’s a movie that I likely won’t ever tire of returning to when I’m looking to feel affirmed of my own humanity.