Photo by Merrick Morton
Writer/director Spike Jonze brings his distinct style and insight to this modern relationship story, HER, a film that takes an unconventional look at the nature of love. Here’s a look at the brand new trailer.
Set in Los Angeles in the slight future, HER follows Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), a complex, soulful man who makes his living writing touching, personal letters for other people. Heartbroken after the end of a long relationship, he becomes intrigued with a new, advanced operating system, which promises to be an intuitive and unique entity in its own right.
Upon initiating it, he is delighted to meet “Samantha,” a bright, female voice (Scarlett Johansson) who is insightful, sensitive and surprisingly funny. As her needs and desires grow, in tandem with his own, their friendship deepens into an eventual love for each other.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
From the singular perspective of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Spike Jonze comes HER, an original love story that explores the evolving nature-and the risks-of intimacy in the modern world.
Written and directed by Jonze, the romantic drama stars Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix (“The Master,” “Walk the Line,” “Gladiator”), Oscar nominee Amy Adams (“The Master,” “Doubt”), Oscar nominee Rooney Mara (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”), Olivia Wilde, and Scarlett Johansson.
(L-r) AMY ADAMS, JOAQUIN PHOENIX and director SPIKE JONZE on the set. Photo by Sam Zhu.
The idea for HER had been simmering with Jonze for years. “The initial spark,” he recalls, “was an article I saw online about 10 years ago, about instant-messaging with an artificial intelligence. I linked to it and I said ‘Hello,’ and it said ‘Hello.’ ‘How are you?’ ‘Good. How are you?’ We had a little exchange and there was an initial buzz of, ‘Wow, I’m talking to this thing, this thing is listening to me,’ and then the illusion quickly dissolved and I could tell it was parroting what it had heard before and it wasn’t intelligent, it was just a clever program. But that initial buzz was exciting. Eventually I thought about the idea of a man who’s having a relationship with an entity like that, but a fully formed consciousness, and what could happen, and used that as a way to imagine this love story.”
(L-r) JOAQUIN PHOENIX with director SPIKE JONZE on the set. Photo by Merrick Morton.
“There are lots of ideas here about technology and the world we live in, the isolation that it can create as well as the connections it creates, and the way we’re changing as a society,” says Jonze. “But as I was writing the story, I always ended up putting those themes in the background. The high concept always takes a back seat to the relationship between Theodore and Samantha. Every scene is based in their reality as a couple. We wanted to look at it as a relationship between two individuals and, through them, make a story that looked at love and relationships as complexly and from as many angles as possible.
(L-r) JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Theodore and ROONEY MARA as Catherine. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
“I wanted to touch on some of the needs and fears, the judgments and expectations we bring into a relationship; the things we don’t want to acknowledge, or things we pretend we don’t need, but need anyway; the ways in which we connect with each other, or try to connect and fail,” he continues. “We want to be known, but at the same time, are afraid of being known.
“Samantha was created to evolve,” he says. “And once she’s set in motion, like once we’re all set in motion, there’s no limit to where that’s going to take us and who we’re going to become. If you fall in love with someone, that’s the risk you take.”
HER will open in limited release on December 18, 2013 in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto, and go wide on January 10, 2014.
This film has been rated R for language, sexual content and brief graphic nudity.
