“Who are you?”
“What can you be?”
“Where are you going?”
“What’s out there?”
“What are the possibilities?”
from “Her”.
For every inquirer there is always a standing risk of falling into the trap of philosophical interpretation of a movie like Her, though its deceiving looks might get him to the points so far from the imaginations of a typical viewer and the so-called meanings seems arbitrary. As Wittgenstein puts it, in facing conditions as such ” We have got on to slippery ice where there is not friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk.” But not to fall for such philosophical conundrum (not walking on to slippery ice) doesn’t mean that our fellow inquirer could not (or should not) share some thoughts -even raw and sketchy- about them, even though those thoughts and ideas tremble the normal belief of that typical viewer; “we want to walk; then we need friction.” So we start walking.
1- Her is no simple Love Story, It`s a futuristic Sci-Fi drama set in near-future where all the people are isolated and disassociated enough to talk to themselves through their ear-peace “Play a melancholy song”. A true embodiment of a solipsistic apocalypse, that all the prophets of modern era were foreseeing it in their works. Indeed, Jonze’s vision of this un-homely future is so familiar, so enveloping, that it occasionally feels as if we’re already there; It looks like our current home. The future Jonze has conjured is a warm one as well, rather than some sterile cybernetic dystopia. His Los Angeles has been verticalized by the addition of exteriors shot in Shanghai, but despite this forest of skyscrapers and Chinese neon signs, it is a city of bright colors and soft lighting. Its melancholic beauty has the same mood that his pervious works (Beastie Boys` “Sabotage”, Notorious B.I.G.` “Sky`s the Limit”, the unforgettable “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind” and even his ex-wife`s breakthrough picture “Lost in Translation”) had. The aesthetic here is pleasantly retro: furniture is burnished wood, and men’s pants (in perhaps Jonze’s most idiosyncratic touch) are woolen and high-waisted. The handheld in which Samantha resides is smooth and elegant, like the vintage cigarette case it is intended to recall.
