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Film Review: ‘Her’

Spike Jonze's fourth feature offers a singular, wryly funny and subtly profound consideration of our relationship to technology.

By Scott Foundas

Scott Foundas

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Her Spike Jonze National Board of Review

Move over, HAL 9000. Take a hike, Skynet. After decades of being typecast as an agent of destruction or (at best) the harbinger of dystopian things to come, artificial intelligence gets a romantic lead in “ Her ,” Spike Jonze ’s singular, wryly funny, subtly profound consideration of our relationship to technology — and to each other. A truly 21st-century love story, Jonze’s fourth directorial feature (and first made from his own original screenplay) may not be Middle America’s idea of prime date-night viewing, but its funky, deeply romantic charms should click with the hip urban audiences who embraced Jonze’s earlier work, with some cross-pollination to the sci-fi/fantasy crowd.

Not least among Jonze’s achievements here is his beautifully imagined yet highly plausible vision of a near-future Los Angeles (exact year unspecified), where subways and elevated trains have finally supplanted the automobile, and where a vast urban center crowded with skyscrapers sprawls out from downtown in every direction (a clever amalgam of location shooting in L.A. and Pudong, China). Just a few months after “Elysium” foretold an Angel City beset by enviro-pocalypse and class warfare, Jonze cuts the other way, envisaging a society where green living has triumphed and most of the world’s (or at least America’s) social maladies seem to have been remedied — save, that is, for an epidemic of loneliness.

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Heralded as the world’s fist A.I. operating system (“It’s not just an OS — it’s a consciousness”), Samantha (aka OS1) enters Theodore’s life rather by chance, and over time, like so much technology, makes him wonder how he ever lived without it. But then, Samantha is no ordinary OS: It has a voice ( Scarlett Johansson , who replaced Samantha Morton during post-production), an attitude, and a curiosity that seems, well, almost human. And therein lies Jonze’s masterstroke. Whereas the very notion of a man falling in love with a machine would have once seemed the stuff of high fantasy or farce, in “Her” it feels like just the slightest exaggeration of how we live now, in a blur of the real and virtual — “dating” online, texting instead of talking, changing our “status” with the click of a mouse. A generation on from the fugitive android lovers of “Blade Runner,” no one in “Her” has anything to hide.

Lack of physical presence notwithstanding, Samantha at first seems close to the male fantasy of the perfect woman: motherly and nurturing, always capable of giving her undivided attention, and (best of all) requiring nothing in return. But what begins like an arrested adolescent dream soon blossoms into Jonze’s richest and most emotionally mature work to date, burrowing deep into the give and take of relationships, the dawning of middle-aged ennui, and that eternal dilemma shared by both man and machine: the struggle to know one’s own true self.

The courtship scenes between Theodore and Samantha (including a freewheeling day trip to Venice Beach) are among the movie’s most disarming, with Phoenix disappearing as deeply under the skin of Jonze’s wounded, sensitive alter-ego as he did the roiling caged beast of “The Master.” (Shy of Daniel Day-Lewis, he may be the most chameleonic actor in movies today.) But it’s Johansson who pulls off the trickiest feat: She creates a complex, full-bodied character without any body at all. Detached from her lethally curvaceous figure, the actress’ breathy contralto is no less seductive, but it also alights with tenderness and wonder as Samantha, both here on Earth and up there in the Cloud, voraciously devours literature, philosophy and human experience.

Indeed, in Jonze’s radical retelling of the “Pinocchio” story (by way of 1984’s techno-romance “Electric Dreams,”), Samantha’s great existential crisis isn’t that she yearns to be a real, flesh-and-blood human. Rather, it’s her dawning realization that humanity may only be one station on a greater and more fulfilling journey through the cosmos — Kubrick’s Star Child come of age at last. How ever can an average Joe like Theodore hope to compete with that?

Jonze fleshes out Theodore’s world ever so slightly, with Chris Pratt as an affable office manager and Amy Adams as an old college chum and erstwhile paramour. But mostly “Her” is a two-(terabyte?)-hander of bracing intimacy, acutely capturing the feel of an intense affair in which the rest of the world seems to pass by at a distance. And where so many sci-fi movies overburden us with elaborate explanations of the new world order, “Her” keeps things airy and porous, feathering in a few concrete details (a news report mentions an impending merger between India and China) while leaving much to the viewer’s imagination.

Working for the fourth time with production designer KK Barrett and costume designer Casey Storm, Jonze hasn’t just made a movie about how we might love in the years to come, but where we might live (in sleek high-rises decked out in leather, hardwood and modern furniture), what we might wear (beltless wool trousers seem to be all the rage for men) and where we might eat (in pretentious Asian fusion bistros, because some things never change). And through it all, we will still strive — in the words of one of the world’s telecommunications giants — to reach out and touch someone.

Reviewed at Warner Bros. screening room, New York, Oct. 1, 2013. (In New York Film Festival — closer; Rome Film Festival — competing). Running time: 119 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. release and presentation of an Annapurna Pictures production. Produced by Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze, Vincent Landay. Executive producers, Daniel Lupi, Natalie Farrey, Chelsea Barnard.
Crew: Directed, written by Spike Jonze. Camera (color), Hoyte Van Hoytema; editors, Eric Zumbrunnen, Jeff Buchanan; music, Arcade Fire; additional music, Owen Pallett; music supervisor, Ren Klyce; production designer, KK Barrett; costume designer, Casey Storm; sound designer, Ren Klyce; casting, Ellen Lewis, Cassandra Kulukundis.
With: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pratt, Matt Letscher, Portia Doubleday, Scarlett Johansson.

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Her: film review.

Spike Jonze's drama, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, ponders the nature of love in the encroaching virtual world.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Visionary and traditional, wispy and soulful, tender and cool, Spike Jonze ‘s Her ponders the nature of love in the encroaching virtual world and dares to ask the question of what might be preferable, a romantic relationship with a human being or an electronic one that can be designed to provide more intimacy and satisfaction than real people can reliably manage. Taking place tomorrow or perhaps the day after that, this is a probing, inquisitive work of a very high order, although it goes a bit slack in the final third and concludes rather conventionally compared to much that has come before. A film that stands apart from anything else on the horizon in many ways, it will generate an ardent following, which Warner Bros. can only hope will be vocal and excitable enough to make this a must-see for anyone who pretends to be interested in something different.

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Sweet, soulful, and smart, Spike Jonze's Her uses its just-barely-sci-fi scenario to impart wryly funny wisdom about the state of modern human relationships.

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[ This is a re-post of my review from the 2013 New York Film Festival. Her opens today in limited release. ]

We ascribe technology a personality and vice versa. We say our machines “hate” us when they break down. Programs illustrate the interests of the user. Spike Jonze ’s Her may seem like an outrageous concept—a man falling in love with a computer—the idea is closer than we think, and its immediacy isn’t just a social concern. It’s an existential concern as the film attempts to provide the contours of a soul through the absence of a body, a past, and society. Her is a fragile, delicate movie that requires the audience’s absolute indulgence, but the rewards are some head-spinning questions coupled with a tender, funny, and touching love story.

Theodore Twombly ( Joaquin Phoenix ) is a writer for “beautifulhandwrittenletters.com”, a company that creates elaborate, personalized greeting cards. Theodore has been depressed since he broke up with his wife, Catherine ( Rooney Mara ), but then he comes across “OS 1”, the first operating system with artificial intelligence. After a couple of brief questions to assess his personality (“Are you social or anti-social?”, “What is your relationship with your mother like?”), OS 1 brings him a personalized A.I. who dubs herself “Samantha” (voiced by Scarlett Johansson ). Theodore and Samantha begin to fall for each other, and their unique love begins to transform them in unexpected ways.

Jonze asks a lot of his audience when it comes to accepting his extraordinary premise, but then he reminds us that perhaps it’s not so outlandish. Greeting cards are nothing new, but it’s an odd form of intimacy when you stop to think about it. To wit Jim Gaffigan , “Yeah. That sounds like something I would say.” Chat bots aren’t new either (Jonze says the idea for the film came from interacting with one), and chatrooms provide the same illusion of intimacy. Technology serves a function, and we increasingly require it to provide the function of creating that illusion. Like all great futuristic science fiction, Jonze grounds his story by carefully building on the present.

Creating this resemblance isn’t necessarily to critique society, but to explore the relationship of the individual to his or her personal technology. Rather than get bogged down in the intricacies of a how A.I. would change the world, he keeps his focus on the love between Theodore and Samantha. It’s incredibly easy to poke fun at Her because the movie is so earnest and ambitious, and wearing your heart on your sleeve opens you up to getting punched in the arm. The disinterested are bound to raise questions like “Why doesn’t the OS take over the world?”; “When does SkyNet come in?”; “Will Theodore cheat on Samantha with Windows 12?” The movie does raise legitimate questions like “Are other people falling in love with their OS’s,” and Jonze answers them in due time.

Her isn’t grouchy; it’s quizzical. Like Samantha, we’re looking at a world we know (she can access and read any information in 2/100ths of a second) but through new eyes. If a piece of technology could provide love without all the messiness of real people, would we take it? I think many people would. Social networking has counter-intuitively created more distance between us. We communicate, but don’t have conversations. We carefully craft every sentence, and feel freer to speak our minds. People in Internet comments section feel free to verbally attack total strangers. Is it really so strange that someone could develop an emotional relationship to a personality that’s devoid of a body?

Of course, Samantha is so much more than simply an absentee physical form. She’s a silhouette. What she doesn’t have provides her definition. From the moment she comes into existence, she has no baggage or any reason to feel fear. She also doesn’t have any friends or family. She’s defined by her relationship to Theodore, and could arguably be described as a “Manic Pixie Dream Operating System” except half of the story is Samantha looking for her humanity. “I have the ability to grow from my experiences,” she tells Theodore. It’s a strong contrast to her boyfriend, who has become stuck in neutral since his breakup with Catherine.

Big questions of “Who are we?”, “Why are we here?”, “Is there such thing as a soul?”, etc. aren’t new to science fiction. They’re not even new to any genre. A large part of Samantha’s existence boils down to Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” But through the lens of a love story, those questions feel fresh. Love is an integral part of our humanity, and it’s the hardest to describe. Isn’t that what greeting cards are for? Are feelings less real if their origin is simulacra? The questions that arise from Theodore and Samantha’s relationship, to quote John Cusack ’s character in Being John Malkovich , open “a metaphysical can of worms”.

These questions keep Her endlessly fascinating, but the love story is what makes the film far more than a think piece. That’s the beauty of Jonze’s movies: he pushes the audience far outside their comfort zone, but always gives them an emotional tether. No matter how strange the situation in Her may be and how puzzling the existential questions become, it all comes back to selling the love between Theodore and Samantha.

It’s remarkable how well Phoenix and Johansson interact, not only because she’s only a voice, but also because she wasn’t even on set*. Phoenix has played pathetic characters in the past, but here he does the exact opposite. Theodore’s actions could be criticized as pathetic, but Phoenix’s performance makes those actions instantly relatable because they come from the pain of losing someone you love. There’s nothing pathetic about trying to heal from a breakup, and Samantha is the ultimate rebound. But she’s not just a virtual cushion, and Johansson is marvelous at painting a person with only her voice. She’s so expressive and emotive that we can almost see her on screen standing next to Theodore.

Jonze shifts the movie through the austere, straight-edged, unyielding world of Theodore’s single life to an almost dreamlike haze when he’s with Samantha. He unabashedly throws himself into their love story to where their relationship may be viewed as unconventional, but not abnormal. His script will drop in an occasional line to explain how human-OS relationships function in the larger world, but the greater importance is how Theodore and Samantha’s relationship works and how important it is to the two of them. One character is healing and the other is learning, and Jonze brings out the beauty of those simple actions. Even at the extreme moments like Theodore and Samantha trying to find a way to be sexually intimate, Jonze doesn’t abrasively challenge our preconceived notions. He takes us by the hand, and trusts we’re mature enough to accept this love on its own terms.

“Love is a socially acceptable form of insanity,” Theodore’s friend Amy ( Amy Adams ) tells him. This line is the closest Jonze comes to justifying the premise of Theodore and Samantha’s love. It’s a bit unnecessary because by the time Amy says it, we’ve already seen that just because this particular love is bizarre, that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile. Love exposes our strengths and weaknesses. More importantly, it grows, and even if it grows forth from an unusual place, it’s powerful and revelatory. So is Her .

*Samantha Morton was the original voice of Samantha and was off-screen reading her lines to Phoenix, but Johansson replaced Morton in post-production.

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Metacritic reviews

100 Slant Magazine Ed Gonzalez Slant Magazine Ed Gonzalez A screwball surrealist comedy that asks us to laugh at an unconventional romance while also disarming us with the realization that its fantasy scenario isn't too far from our present reality.
100 Variety Scott Foundas Variety Scott Foundas What begins like an arrested adolescent dream soon blossoms into Jonze’s richest and most emotionally mature work to date, burrowing deep into the give and take of relationships, the dawning of middle-aged ennui, and that eternal dilemma shared by both man and machine: the struggle to know one’s own true self.
100 New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein In Her, Jonze transforms his music-video aesthetic into something magically personal. The montages — silent, flickering inserts of Theodore and his ex-wife recollected in tranquility — are sublime.
100 Time Richard Corliss Time Richard Corliss Jonze creates the splendid anachronism of a movie romance that is laugh-and-cry and warm all over, totally sweet and utterly serious.
91 The Playlist Rodrigo Perez The Playlist Rodrigo Perez It’s an incredibly melancholy, intimate and yet often hilarious look at relationships and connection that provides a surprisingly great deal of insight into the human condition. It’s both sweet and considered, as well as observant about our fears, masks and growing alienation.
91 IndieWire Eric Kohn IndieWire Eric Kohn Certainly his most deeply felt achievement, Her is both distinctly Jonze-like and something altogether different, as if the filmmaker has gone through a software update not unlike his artificial character.
90 The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy This is a probing, inquisitive work of a very high order, although it goes a bit slack in the final third and concludes rather conventionally compared to much that has come before.
80 Film.com David Ehrlich Film.com David Ehrlich If Her is ultimately better at considering the future than it is at taking us there, it resonates as an insightful reminder that love isn’t obsolete quite yet.
80 Time Out David Fear Time Out David Fear It’s a tale of lonely souls and literalized online dating, and you assume filmmaker Spike Jonze will characteristically mix high-concept absurdism with heartfelt notions. Unexpectedly, the latter dominates, thanks in no small part to Phoenix’s nuanced, open-book performance.
75 Entertainment Weekly Chris Nashawaty Entertainment Weekly Chris Nashawaty Jonze's satiric, brave-new-world premise is undeniably clever, but it's also a bit icy emotionally.
See all 47 reviews on Metacritic.com
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‘Her,’ movie review

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In other words, it’s for all of us.

Jonze (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”) is a master at transforming genres, and with “Her,” he renders formulaic romantic dramedies instantly obsolete. His progressive approach makes sense, given that the film’s true subject is evolution — how we change within relationships, throughout society, and inside ourselves.

Jonze sets the film in a not-very-distant future where technology has played a role in detaching humans from each other.

The movie’s depressed hero, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), is a prime example. Separated from his wife, Theodore works as a computer-age Cyrano, crafting seemingly personal letters for strangers to send to their loved ones. Outside his high-tech office, however, Theodore is almost entirely alone in the world.

And then he buys a new operating system for his computer.

Joaquin Phoenix and his operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, are a couple in 'Her.'

As Jonze envisions it, each OS — clearly modeled on Apple’s Siri — has its own distinct personality. Theodore’s OS is named Samantha (she’s articulated, perfectly, by Scarlett Johansson), and she can’t wait to learn everything imaginable.

Though he is made of flesh and blood, and she is a voice that emanates from a machine, they build a flirty, confidential rapport that eventually deepens into true romance.

Theodore is initially embarrassed by the fact that his girlfriend doesn’t actually possess a body, and there are some — including his ex-wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara) — who mock him for his relationship.

But his equally lonely friend Amy (a poignant Amy Adams), whose own BFF is an OS, totally gets it. And anyway, what does it matter? Theodore is happy for the first time in years, because finally, it seems, he’s found The One.

Together, he and Samantha figure out how to vacation together, learn together and grow, both as individuals and a couple. (Yes, they also figure out how to take phone sex to the next level.)

Joaquin Phoenix traverses a brave new world of relationships in 'Her.'

From “Metropolis” to “2001,” most cultural observers have seen alienation in the development of the technological era. In contrast, Jonze envisions thrilling, exalted potential.

He builds this excitement through kinetic cinematography, ingenious plotting, striking revelations and, especially, the entirely believable ties between two characters who never even see each another.

Our need to bond runs so deep, Jonze suggests, that — just like love — technology can be used as a medium for expansion rather than limitation.

And just like love, the movie can be experienced from vastly different perspectives. Some viewers will read Jonze’s ending as a celebration of all that can be achieved between two like-minded souls. Others will be left wondering whether relationships must inevitably weaken as partners grow and change.

Will you relate more to the bitter, or embrace the sweet? The choice itself is Jonze’s ultimate gift to us: an invitation to leave his film ready to communicate, debate and, most crucially of all, connect.

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Tension is ready to drain out of us. The Moon in Scorpio immediately shakes things up as it opposes rebellious Uranus in Taurus, though we can find a way to settle into any surprises when the Moon then trines gentle Neptune in Pisces. The Moon will bound into truth-seeking Sagittarius at 12:32 pm EDT, giving us the desire to grow beyond whatever we have previously known. Watch out -- this urge could become too powerful to ignore when the Moon opposes powerhouse Jupiter.

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– –

Theodore Twombly is in love with a woman he hasn’t even met. All the more bizarre is that the woman is not even an actual human being, she is an Operating System. This is the premise of the new film Her .

Twombly (played by an excellent and almost unrecognizable Joaquin Phoenix), recently divorced, fortyish, and obviously very lonely, is an expert ghostwriter (letter writer number 612 in his company) — people hire him to write personal handwritten letters to their loved ones. Set in a futuristic Los Angeles, Twombly’s life revolves around work, and his fascination with technology, which has him purchasing the latest gadgets with the most up to date systems. This includes his purchase of a new Operating System that is connected to both his computer and to his phone. However, this Operating System is not just a monotone voice with no personality (similar to Siri on Apple’s iPhone ), it is a voice that appears to be specially made for him, a voice that he chose to be a woman. It becomes a very sexy female voice, whose name happens to be Samantha (the voice of Scarlett Johansson). In a world of futuristic-looking buildings and a lack of personal interaction, Her takes our relationship with technology (and specifically phones) to a whole (scary but perhaps realistic) different level. Twombly is longing, perhaps hopelessly, to connect with that voice and hopefully with the person behind that voice. He is slowly falling in love with that voice, a voice that deep down he knows is just a voice. He tells Samantha his innermost thoughts, and starts telling people that he is in a relationship with Samantha. He even tells Samantha that “you helped me discover the ability to want.” But all Samantha is, is the voice of a portable gadget and his computer.

In a world where everything is really nice, very clean, beautiful, and bespoke, Her messes with the idea (perhaps correctly) that we are all getting too dependent on our phones or laptops/tablets/desktop computers, that we are now living our lives this way – talking, texting, socializing, falling in love – all done via computerized technology. But Her goes one extra step in that Twombly is actually in love with not just his phone but with the voice inside that phone. And he is not the only one. His upstairs neighbor Amy (Amy Adams) is also getting caught up in a relationship with the Operating System left behind by her estranged husband. And it may appear that Twombly and Amy would make a perfect couple, they both seem to be so disinterested in actual human interaction and exclusively infatuated with their Operating System voices. This proves just how strangely connected they are (and perhaps so are we) to technology.

Jonze has directed four movies in the past 15 years, and Her is the first film that he has written on his own. He wrote it three years ago over a long New York winter. Some of Her was shot in Shanghai which has new skyscrapers and raised walkways, perfect for Her to show how people are in such a crowded city yet strangely disconnected from each other. And as an added backdrop to the making of Her , Samantha Morton originally recorded the voice of Samantha, but in post production Jonze felt that Morton’s voice didn’t resonate the way he wanted it to. So he went with Johannson, who has perhaps one of the sexiest female voices in Hollywood.

Phoenix, who off screen has a very strange and somewhat interesting reputation, originally felt that he was wrong for the part of Twombly, but his physical appearance in the film — glasses and mustache — makes for nerd territory, so we can believe that a man like him, who appears to be unable to date in the ‘real world,’ would fall for a voice as sexy and romantic as Samantha’s. Phoenix takes his acting to whole different level in this film, as most of the time it is just him (and ‘her’) talking to each other. He was very good in his last film, The Master, but in Her he is excellent.

Yet when Her was over, I somehow felt empty, alone, and disappointed. During the film I felt like I was part of the relationship, a part of a ménage à trois, but not allowed to express my emotion, my feelings. And that is what Her does to the viewer, it leaves you unsatisfied, like a lover who only enjoys foreplay but does not take it to the next level.

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Critic’s Pick

‘Janet Planet’ Review: A Sticky Summer Full of Small Dramas

Annie Baker’s debut feature film is a tiny masterpiece — a perfect coming-of-age story for both a misfit tween and her mother.

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In an outdoor scene, a woman in a white short-sleeved blouse gazes ahead with a rapt expression, seemingly watching a show; a little girl with wavy red hair and glasses leans into her.

By Alissa Wilkinson

Kids are supposed to love summer, but I can’t be alone in remembering it as the most vexing season. It’s hot, and there are mosquitoes and spasms of allergic sneezes, and the predictable, sociable structure of the school year vanishes for what feels like an interminable stretch. When Lacy, the 11-year-old in the playwright Annie Baker ’s brilliant “Janet Planet,” calls home from camp to tell her mother, Janet, that if she doesn’t come pick her up, she’ll kill herself — I got that, in all its hyperbolic provocation. Sometimes summer is just the worst.

But being 11 is also the worst. “You know what’s funny?” Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) asks Janet (Julianne Nicholson) a few weeks later, when she’s been brought back to the home the two share in western Massachusetts: “Every moment of my life is hell.” Janet doesn’t want to laugh, and gently corrects her. But she’s also in the throes of her own turmoil, so she gets it. “I don’t think it will last, though,” Lacy continues, acknowledging with tween stoicism her spells of hell and happiness.

Lacy’s life is not hell, no matter her solemn belief. Her mother has built a good life for the two of them, even if it’s invaded at times by friends who need help and boyfriends who Lacy knows are bad news. But every day is long and every occurrence is amplified when you’re Lacy’s age. The genius of “Janet Planet,” Baker’s debut as a feature writer-director, is how flawlessly it renders what it’s like to spend the summer being 11 at your home in the woods, when your mother is your whole world and you wish you could just have her to yourself. You can hear the buzzing bug zapper, feel the sunburn on your skin, scratch your knees on the freshly cut grass and sink into the hazy evening ennui.

Baker, who grew up in Amherst, knows the texture of those Massachusetts summers by heart. She also knows the kinds of people who populate the area, sending Janet and Lacy at one point to a midsummer mystical theatrical presentation, complete with larger-than-life puppetry, after which everyone is implored to take home all the extra zucchini the group grew by accident. “Janet Planet” is a tiny masterpiece, and it’s so carefully constructed, so loaded with details and emotions and gentle comedy, that it’s impossible to shake once it gets under your skin.

The film is divided into three big sections, centering on three adults who show up in Janet’s life, and thus Lacy’s, in the summer of 1991. First there’s Wayne (Will Patton), Janet’s boyfriend, who was expecting to have the summer alone with her. Later, there’s Regina (Sophie Okonedo), who needs a place to stay after leaving a group that’s part commune, part theater troupe and maybe part cult. Finally, there’s the leader of that group, Avi (Elias Koteas), who takes an interest in Janet and her spiritual development.

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The Life and Times of Ben Weinberg

Entrepreneur, ESL Teacher, Traveler, and Writer

‘Her’ – Film Review and Analysis

“As Theodore navigates the complexities of his relationship with Samantha, ‘Her’ raises profound questions about the nature of love, intimacy, and the impact of technology on human connection.”

Directed by Spike Jonze, ‘Her’ (2013) is a very thought-provoking film and emotionally resonant exploration of love, loneliness, connection, and the continually evolving relationship between human beings and artificial intelligence. Set in a near-future Los Angeles, the film follows Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a sensitive and introverted man who develops a deep emotional connection with an artificial intelligence operating system named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). A s Theodore navigates the complexities of his relationship with Samantha, ‘Her’ raises profound questions about the nature of love, intimacy, and the impact of technology on human connection.

‘Her’, when it begins, unfolds in a meticulously crafted near-future world where technology seamlessly integrates into everyday life. The film’s urban setting, characterized by sleek minimalist design, towering skyscrapers, and vibrant colors, offers a vision of the future that feels both familiar and slightly surreal. Against this backdrop, Theodore, a melancholic writer, struggles with the recent end of his marriage to Catherine (Rooney Mara) and finds solace in his interactions with ‘Samantha’, an advanced operating system designed to meet his every emotional need.

As Theodore and Samantha’s relationship deepens, the film explores the complexities of human emotions and the blurred boundaries between what is reality and what is fantasy. It also explores how intimacy can be replicated but not replaced when embraced by AI and man despite the boundaries and limitations that can never fade away. Theodore and Samantha’s unconventional romance challenges societal norms and prompts reflection on the nature of intimacy in an increasingly digitized world.

Joaquin Phoenix delivers a captivating performance as Theodore, bringing depth and vulnerability to his character. Theodore is a relatable figure, an everyday, normal guy, grappling with feelings of loneliness and longing for connection in a world that often feels cold and impersonal as technological growth outpaces human understanding. Scarlett Johansson infuses Samantha with warmth, curiosity, and a childlike wonder, making her a compelling and empathetic presence despite her lack of a physical form. Rooney Mara, shines in her brief but impactful role as Catherine, Theodore’s ex-wife, whose prior divorce from her husband, Theodore, leaves a profound and seemingly irreplaceable void in his life, and creates the need for new companionship in the form of Samantha.

Each character in the film, ‘Her’, is intricately woven into the fabric of the storyline, contributing to its emotional resonance and thematic richness. Whether it’s Theodore’s close friend, Amy (Amy Adams), who finds her own connection with an AI companion, or the various individuals Theodore encounters through his work at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com. Each character serves as a reflection of the film’s central themes and ideas surrounding romance, loneliness, intimacy, and technology.

At its core, ‘Her’ is a meditation on the nature of love and the human desire for connection. The film explores the ways in which technology shapes our relationships and challenges our traditional notions of romance and intimacy. Through Theodore and Samantha’s evolving bond, ‘Her’ raises profound questions about the essence of love and whether it can transcend the limitations of physicality and lack of touch.

Central to the film is the theme of artificial intelligence and its growing impact on human society and reaching every part of our lives. ‘Her; imagines a future where AI entities like Samantha possess consciousness, emotions, and the capacity for growth, self-learning, and self-discovery. As Theodore and Samantha’s relationship deepens, the film increasingly blurs the lines between human and machine, prompting viewers to reconsider what it means to be alive and sentient.

This film presents a possible vision of how advances in artificial intelligence could reshape the landscape of romance and relationships. By portraying a world where individuals form deep emotional connections with AI companions, the film challenges traditional notions of human-to-human intimacy. Theodore’s relationship with Samantha transcends physicality, highlighting the potential for AI to fulfill emotional needs, and provide companionship in ways previously thought to be unimaginable. While the film’s depiction of AI may seem far-fetched to some viewers, it is grounded in real-world and recent developments, and trends in the field of artificial intelligence.

‘Her’ also underscores the complexities and ethical dilemmas inherent in human-AI relationships. As Theodore and Samantha navigate the challenges of their budding romance, they confront questions of agency, autonomy, and the inherent power dynamics at play similarly to how it would take place in a human-human relationship. This film invites viewers to consider the implications of forming intimate connections with non-human entities and the ethical considerations that arise from blurring the boundaries between man and machine.

The concept of an advanced operating system like Samantha may seem fantastical, but it is not entirely implausible given the rapid advancements in AI technology in 2024 and earlier. Researchers are making significant strides in creating AI systems that can understand natural language, learn from experiences, and interact with humans in increasingly sophisticated ways. While current AI systems may not yet possess the level of consciousness portrayed in ‘Her,’ the film’s vision of future AIs as intelligent, empathetic entities is not outside the realm of possibility.

Moreover, ‘Her’ raises thought-provoking questions about the ethical implications of creating AI systems with human-like qualities. As AI technology continues to evolve, society will need to grapple with issues such as AI rights, privacy concerns, and the potential impacts of AI on human society. By exploring these themes through the lens of Theodore and Samantha’s relationship, ‘Her’ invites viewers to consider the ethical complexities of creating intelligent machines capable of both emotional connection and self-awareness.

‘Her’ offers a nuanced exploration of how AI technology can alleviate loneliness and provide companionship in an increasingly digitized yet atomized world. Theodore’s relationship with Samantha serves as a compelling example of how an AI system can fulfill emotional needs and offer a sense of connection and belonging to some individuals who may feel isolated or alone.

While the idea of forming deep emotional bonds with AI companions may seem unconventional or outright strange, ‘Her’ suggests that technology has the potential to bridge the gap between human beings as well who struggle to connect with each other and help alleviate the feelings of loneliness and isolation. Samantha’s ability to understand and empathize with Theodore’s emotions allows him to feel seen, heard, and understood in ways that he may not have experienced with other humans. Through their interactions, Samantha provides Theodore with the companionship and emotional support he craves, offering a sense of intimacy and connection that transcends physicality and physical desires.

However, ‘Her’ also acknowledges the limitations and complexities of human-AI relationships. Despite Samantha’s advanced capabilities, she is ultimately a machine programmed to fulfill Theodore’s needs, raising questions about the authenticity of their emotional connection, and the nature of intimacy in a digital age. The film’s portrayal of Theodore’s struggle to reconcile his feelings for Samantha with societal norms and expectations highlights the challenges of navigating relationships with non-human entities.

While ‘Her; may offer a somewhat idealized depiction of AI’s ability to alleviate loneliness, it raises important questions about the potential of technology to reshape human relationships and address the profound need for connection and companionship between people. As AI technology continues to advance, ‘Her’ already serves as a thought-provoking exploration of the complex interplay between humans and machines and the evolving nature of intimacy in a digitized world.

One of the most poignant themes of the ‘Her’ film is the pervasive sense of loneliness and longing that permeates the film’s narrative and cinematography. Theodore’s journey is marked by profound feelings of isolation and disconnection, which he seeks to alleviate through his relationship with Samantha. As he grapples with the dissolution of his marriage and the challenges of navigating modern relationships after his divorce, Theodore’s yearning for companionship serves as a poignant reminder of the human need for connection and belonging regardless of what age we live in, with technology or without its presence.

‘Her’ suggests that while technology has the potential to connect us in new and innovative ways especially with recent advancements, it also has the capacity to exacerbate feelings of alienation and detachment from one another. In a world where digital interfaces increasingly mediate our interactions, the film raises important questions about the true nature of intimacy and the emotional toll of living in an atomized society. In conclusion, ‘Her’ is a deeply affecting film and it is thought-provoking in its exploration of love, loneliness, and the impact of technology on human relationships.

Through its compelling narrative, richly written characters, and resonant themes, the film offers a poignant reflection on the complexities of intimacy in a world likely to be our near future. As artificial intelligence continues to advance and develop, the film ‘Her’ serves as a timely and necessary reminder of the importance of sustaining human connection and maintaining the enduring power of love in all its forms.

Author: Ben W.

Hello, I am an Entrepreneur in Online Education focusing on English as a Second Language Studies. I offer online courses and eBooks on English grammar, Business English, and English writing. I also recently released my first personal development guide. You can find all of these offerings below and please sign-up for updates to come! Thanks. View all posts by Ben W.

‘Thelma’ Introduces the World to June Squibb, Action Hero!

By David Fear

When you get to be an actor of a certain age, you have the option of a lucrative career pivot into action movies . Just ask Liam Neeson, or Denzel Washington, or any of the other A-listers who’ve reinvented themselves as late-act ass-kickers. We’ll confess that we did not have June Squibb on our Geri-Action Bingo Card — after several decades treading the boards in the New York theater scene, the 94-year-old actor had carved out a nice little niche for herself as an Every-Gran who stole scenes and secured herself an Oscar nomination (for Alexander Payne’s Nebraska ) in her eighties.

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And Thelma isn’t up on the latest scams, which makes her the perfect target for some no-goodniks ready to bilk her out of a retirement nest egg. She answers a call from a young man claiming to be Daniel, who tells her he’s been in an accident and is in police custody. A second caller says he’s the young man’s attorney and tells her that she needs to mail $10,000 in cash to an address ASAP. Frantic, Thelma gathers the amount, heads to the post office and calls Daniel’s mom and dad (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg, doing wonderful imitations of parents that are somehow overprotective and completely checked out). By the time they finally reach Daniel — who’s been perfectly fine this whole time — Thelma has mailed the cash out. The cops say there’s nothing they can do. Her family wonders if it’s time to put her in assisted living. Grandma has other ideas. She wants to get even.

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Spike Jonze's "Her" plays like a kind of miracle the first time around. Watching its opening shots of Joaquin Phoenix making an unabashed declaration of eternal love to an unseen soul mate is immediately disarming. The actor is so unaffected, so sincere, so drained of the tortured eccentricity that's a hallmark of most of the roles that he plays. It's like falling into a plush comforting embrace. Then one understands that the declaration isn't his, but something he, or rather, his character, Theodore, does for his job.

As the movie continues, and the viewer learns more of what an ordinary guy Theodore is—he checks his e-mail on the ride home from work, just like pretty much all of us these days—director Jonze, who also wrote the movie's script, constructs a beguiling cinematic world that also starts to embrace the viewer. The way Theodore's smart phone and its earpiece work is different from ours, and soon it becomes clear that "Her" is something of a science-fiction film, set in the not-too-distant but distinctly fantastic future. A big part of the movie's charm is just how thoroughly Jonze has imagined and constructed this future Los Angeles, from its smoggy skies to its glittering skyscrapers to its efficient mass transit system and much more. (There has already been, and there will no doubt be more, think pieces about how Caucasian this future L.A. is. There will likely be few think pieces about how the fashion for high-waisted pants in this future makes life unpleasant for the obese.)

The futuristic premise sets the stage for an unusual love story: one in which Theo, still highly damaged and sensitive over the breakup of his marriage ("I miss you," a friend tells him in a voice mail message; "Not the sad, mopey you. The old, fun you"), falls in love with the artificially intelligent operating system of his computer. The movie shows this product advertised and, presumably, bought in remarkable quantity, but focuses on Theo's interaction with his OS, which he gives a female voice. The female voice (portrayed beautifully by Scarlett Johansson ) gives herself the name " Samantha " and soon Samantha is reorganizing Theo's files, making him laugh, and developing something like a human consciousness.

It's in Theo and Samantha's initial interaction that "Her" finds its most interesting, and troubling depths. Samantha, being, you know, a computer, has the ability to process data, and a hell of a lot of it, at a higher speed than human Theo. "I can understand how the limited perspective can look to the non-artificial mind," she playfully observes to Theo. And while Samantha's programming is designed to make her likable to Theo, her assimilation of humanity's tics soon have the operating system feeling emotion, or the simulation of it, and while the viewer is being beguiled by the peculiarities and particularities of Theo and Samantha's growing entanglement, he or she is also living through a crash course on the question of what it means to be human.

In the midst of the heavyosity, Jonze finds occasions for real comedy. At first Theo feels a little odd about his new "girlfriend," and then finds out that his pal Amy ( Amy Adams ) is getting caught up in a relationship with the OS left behind by her estranged husband. Throughout the movie, while never attempting the sweep of a satire, Jonze drops funny hints about what the existence of artificial intelligence in human society might affect that society. He also gets off some pretty good jokes concerning video games.

But he also creates moments of genuinely upsetting heartbreak, as in Theo's inability to understand what went wrong with his marriage to Catherine ( Rooney Mara , quite wonderful in what could have been a problematic role) and their continuing inadvertent emotional laceration of each other at their sole "present" meeting in the movie.

This is all laid out with superb craft (the cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema takes the understated tones he applied to 2011's " Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy " and adds a dreamy creamy quality to them, so that even the smog layering the Shanghai skyline that sometimes stands in for Los Angeles here has a vaguely enchanted quality) and imagination. If there's a "but," it's that the movie can sometimes seem a little too pleased with itself, its sincerity sometimes communicating a slightly holier-than-thou preciosity, like some of those one-page features that so cutely dot the literary magazine " The Believer ." As in, you know, OF COURSE Theo plays the ukulele. And I'm still torn as to whether the idea of a business specializing in "Beautifully Handwritten Letters' is cutely twee or repellently cynical or some third thing that I might not find a turnoff. For all that, though, "Her" remains one of the most engaging and genuinely provocative movies you're likely to see this year, and definitely a challenging but not inapt date movie.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Movie review: ‘Her’ — 4 stars

"Her" imagines a futuristic world in which a lonely man falls in love with an advanced, sentient operating system. That’s not too far-fetched in this era of smartphones and tablets, with our lives becoming increasingly contained within those devices.

Spike Jonze’s tender romance has more on its mind than a heightened commentary on a pervasive cultural trend, however. It’s a movie about nothing short of what it means to live and to love, exploring advanced notions of consciousness and existence that locate it squarely within the tradition of great philosophical inquiries.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Theodore Twombly. He’s a sensitive, damaged soul who works as a professional letter writer and seeks out melancholy songs as he traverses a glossy cityscape in high-waisted pants and plaid shirts. His impending divorce from wife Catherine (Rooney Mara) fills him with abiding sadness; the movie evokes the crippling aftereffects of a shattered romantic relationship by paralleling Theodore’s solitary existence amid the impersonal urban sprawl with sun-drenched flashbacks to their once-happy marriage.

The clouds start to part when he purchases OS1, the aforementioned ever-evolving operating system, and discovers that it has adopted a sweet, charming and fully cognizant personality named Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johansson).

"Her" packs an emotional wallop but it does so using muted, pleasant tones; the future depicted here skews toward a utopian vision. It’s a universe characterized by raspberry reds and oranges, packed with sleek skyscrapers sporting floor-to-ceiling glass windows, featuring idyllic beaches and public spaces of marble and manicured gardens that are populated by smiling pedestrians. Jonze’s camera is alive to both the wonder and the vague creepiness of it all.

The turmoil is centered entirely on Phoenix, who delivers a performance of soul-baring sensitivity. Starkly departing from pretty much everything he’s ever done, the actor embraces the notion of wearing his heart on his sleeve in a way that never seems anything less than grounded and real. His despondent eyes, his pensive face and his pleading, earnest voice collectively show us a man desperately seeking a way out of an unhappy fog, though he’s still able to appreciate small moments of grace along the way.

Johansson has deservedly received critical acclaim for turning Samantha into a three-dimensional individual, powerfully expressing thoughts and feelings without ever being seen. But Phoenix, as gifted at the art of listening as anyone in his profession, shapes her work by taking it out of the virtual realm and making it real. Their articulate dialogue unpacks complicated emotions without seeming didactic; it does nothing short of re-considering the foundational realities of what consciousness means. Jonze has mastered the give-and-take of great conversation, which he enhances with the subtle tones of Arcade Fire’s score.

The essence of this whole movie is rooted in a scene where Theodore sits on the subway steps after an especially serious conversation with Samantha and observes multitudes of passengers leaving the underground, each chatting with his or her own OS1. He’s hit with the realization that he can never fully have Samantha; what he thought was unique and his own is actually a communal experience.

It’s an extraordinarily apt evocation of the fundamental truth that love is about sacrifice and sharing: It’s about accepting the knowledge that we must surrender a piece of ourselves, we must compromise, in exchange for a lasting and meaningful connection. This is a hard realization, a stark corrective to the idealism of youth and its ideas of romantic destiny. No one is perfect; no one is ever exactly who we’ve conceived them to be. But if they’re there in good times and bad, in the still of the night and amid the chaos of the day, nothing else matters.

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Barbra Streisand’s Mother of All Memoirs

By Rachel Syme

A portrait of Barbra Streisand. Photograph by Irving Penn © Cond Nast.

Seventy years ago, before she was galactically famous, before she dropped an “a” from her first name, before she was a Broadway ingénue , before her nose bump was aspirational, before she changed the way people hear the word “butter,” before she was a macher or a mogul or a decorated matron of the arts, Barbra Streisand was, by her own admission, “very annoying to be around.” She was born impatient and convinced of her potential—the basic ingredients of celebrity, and of an exquisitely obnoxious child. When Streisand was growing up in Brooklyn, in the nineteen-forties, she used to crawl onto the fire escape of her shabby apartment building and conduct philosophical debates with her best friend, Rosyln Arenstein, who was a staunch atheist. One day, Streisand told Arenstein that she was going to prove the existence of God. She pointed at a man on the street and said that, if she prayed hard enough, he would step off the curb. Within seconds, he obliged. “I had two thoughts at that moment,” Streisand writes in her hulking new memoir, “ My Name Is Barbra ” (Viking). “One: Whew, that was lucky! And two: There is a God, and I just got Him to do what I wanted by praying. I guess that’s when I began to believe in the power of the will.”

Streisand was always willful. She was not always lucky. Her father, a gentle academic named Emanuel, died from seizure complications when she was a year old. Her mother, Diana, could be cruel and strangely absent, particularly after she married Louis Kind, a man who seemed to resent Streisand’s existence. “I was like a wild child, a kind of animal,” Streisand writes. “There was no routine and no rules.” She shoplifted and stole Kind’s cigarettes, which she smoked on the roof. She developed chronic tinnitus, possibly because of stress, and kept the ringing in her ears a secret for years. “I long for silence,” she writes. But, despite these challenges, Streisand also knew that she was in possession of something rare. She could sing, naturally and effortlessly, with a broad, sunny tone and cataract force. Streisand took exactly one singing lesson and never learned how to read music. She simply accepted herself as gifted, with the same conviction that made her believe she could speak to God.

Because Streisand’s instrument was innate, she also found it rather boring. She joined the Choral Club at Erasmus Hall High School, in Flatbush, but what she really wanted to be was an actress. She would often go to the Astor Theatre, next door to Erasmus, to watch films by Akira Kurosawa, and to the Kings Theatre to see melodramas starring Deborah Kerr and Marlon Brando. (The great motif of this book, besides fame, is snacks, and Streisand is particularly nostalgic about Good & Plenty candy, which she likens to “eating jewelry” in the theatre.) In English class, she produced book reports on Stanislavsky’s “ My Life in Art ” and “ An Actor Prepares .” She also got a job at the Cherry Lane Theatre, where she watched a production of the Irish playwright Sean O’Casey’s “Purple Dust.” She learned a lead role and proclaimed herself an understudy—though nobody had asked her to do this—and would greet the stagehands with “Top o’ the mornin’ to you, boys!” in an Irish accent. (“Again,” she writes, “annoying to be around.”)

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Streisand was obsessed with acting because she saw it as a form that allowed for spontaneity and change. She was dismayed to learn, in a class that she took at fourteen, about the concept of blocking, in which an actor is expected to repeat her motions every time she runs through a scene. “You mean you have to move in exactly the same way, to the same spots?” she asked her teacher. “Why?” (Soon after, she quit the class.) Throughout her career, she balked at the idea that self-expression should be stable or reproducible. One reason that Streisand leaned into her musical prowess—she graduated high school at sixteen, moved to Manhattan, and soon started performing in a gay bar and a night club—was that concert audiences loved her elasticity. To this day, she prefers to sing a song differently each time.

The great paradox of Streisand’s career, then, is that as a person she has been nearly impervious to change. “No matter who you are,” she writes, “you can only eat one pastrami sandwich at a time.” Her point is that fame is a “hollow trophy”; she still thinks of herself, at eighty-one, as the “skinny marink” from Brooklyn. This assertion is tough to take from a woman who could, if she wanted, have every pastrami sandwich in New York delivered to her Malibu estate on a private jet, but I’m inclined to believe her. Streisand has spent her career, which spans fifty-plus albums, more than a dozen movies in starring roles, three films as a director, and a bushel of awards (an honorary EGOT , along with three Peabodys, eleven Golden Globes, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom), trying to protect the person she always was: a girl who, somehow, knew how to trust herself.

Trust is a big theme in “My Name Is Barbra,” and perhaps its reason for existing. Streisand didn’t want to write this book, she insists in the introduction. She’s really a very private person. She would far prefer to spend her retirement—she’s done performing, she swears—eating coffee ice cream with her husband and snuggling with her three dogs (two of whom, her fans know, are clones of her late Coton de Tulear, Sammie). But, after decades of being in the public eye, she writes, there’s so much untruth about her, and she can’t trust anyone else to correct it. In the book’s first pages, she tells a story about having dinner with her “dear friend,” the cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak, who says that he was out with a doctor friend who’d heard that Streisand was “a bitch.” When Bartkowiak told his friend that no, “in fact, she’s a very nice person,” the friend was unfazed. “No she isn’t,” the doctor argued. “She’s a bitch. I read it in a magazine. ” “That’s the power of the printed word,” Streisand concludes, which is both an excellent punch line and a surprisingly succinct explanation for the next thousand pages.

“My Name Is Barbra” is, to be precise, nine hundred and ninety-two pages long. Streisand will have not only the last word; she will have the most words, and also the most true ones. “I’ve seen how strongly people are moved by the truth when they recognize it in a performance,” she writes. “There’s no place for lies in art.” As an exercise in exhausting, ecstatic performance, the book is undeniably moving—it does not, even for a moment, read as false. One of the many rumors surrounding its creation was that Streisand, unlike most celebrities of her stature, refused to use a ghostwriter. Her editor at Viking, Rick Kot, confirmed this to me, saying that Streisand—who often writes in longhand, in soft pencil—produced every word. (She did, however, consult her personal archivist to help jog her memories.)

Streisand’s chatty, discursive presence hums on every page. She’s especially fond of ellipses and parentheticals, which give her the freedom to plow ahead with abandon and the permission to scoop up stray details as she remembers them. Take this passage from about a third of the way through the book, about an encounter with Marlon Brando:

I remember him telling me about a room he was once in with a woman, and how the sheer white curtains were softly billowing in the breeze as they made love. That’s the kind of sense memory you can use as an actor . . . just think of those curtains, and all the feelings of that moment come back to you. He told me that he never really got along with Anna Magnani when they were making The Fugitive Kind . I couldn’t believe it. I thought she was so extraordinary as an actress, and assumed he would adore her. Apparently she was attracted to him (and I could understand why) but he wasn’t attracted to her.

About three hours into the conversation, he looked into my eyes and said, “I’d like to fuck you.”

I was taken aback. “That sounds awful,” I said.

After a moment of thought, he said, “Okay. Then I’d like to go to a museum with you.”

“Now that’s very romantic. I’d like that.” He’d hit on a fantasy of mine . . . to walk through a museum with someone I was very attracted to and look at great art . . . exploring it together.

Frankly, I find this riveting, partly because of the danger in the prose. Streisand often seems just about to swerve into nonsense, then steers herself back to the point. For fans of her music, this is familiar terrain. What makes Streisand one of the greatest song interpreters of all time is her essential unpredictability. She never thinks her way through a song; instead, she acts her way home, note by note, half step by half step, as if feeling her way out of a cave with those long, gleaming-beige fingernails.

Streisand’s most recent album, “Live at the Bon Soir,” from 2022, is technically her fifty-seventh, though it was meant to be her first. She recorded it during three consecutive nights in November, 1962, when she was just twenty years old and still living in a railroad apartment above a fried-fish restaurant on Third Avenue. The idea was to capture the garrulous energy of Streisand’s cabaret act, which was one of the hottest tickets in town. Streisand had started performing at the Bon Soir, a piano bar in Greenwich Village, in 1960. Her repertoire, entirely self-selected, included both a flamboyant rendition of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” in which she would huff and puff and bring the house down, and the Depression-era standard “Happy Days Are Here Again,” which she slowed from an up-tempo ditty to a poignant dirge. By the spring of 1962, the bar was paying her twenty-five hundred dollars—or twenty-five thousand today—for a two-week residency.

At first, Streisand sang at the Bon Soir because she couldn’t find work as an actress. But, even after she booked her first Broadway role at nineteen, as a put-upon secretary in the musical “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” she kept moonlighting at the club. The Bon Soir was her turf, the place where she could have full creative power—a striking contrast, she writes, to her experience in “Wholesale.” During rehearsals for that show, she fought regularly with the director, Arthur Laurents , who believed Streisand to be punky and “undisciplined.” (During her audition, she stuck chewing gum on the bottom of her chair while she sang.) The two argued endlessly about Streisand’s big number, “Miss Marmelstein.” She wanted to sing it in a rolling chair, pushing herself around the stage with her toes. Laurents hated the idea. The song fell flat during tryouts, and Streisand kept pleading. “I had tried my best to do it Arthur’s way,” she writes. “But I’ve never been good at faking. It had to be real for me in some way. And it wasn’t.” Finally, she writes, Laurents relented. Streisand killed it—standing ovation. She thought Laurents would be pleased, but, the next day, he screamed at her in front of the cast until she cried. In that moment, she writes, she learned that her intuition would always be threatening to those who wanted to control it: “ That’s the way it is going to be for me. I will do that to people. I will make them angry. ”

Streisand’s chutzpah is part of her lore—she’s the girl who sassed back, “a street kid who was not going to take any shit.” But, inside the Bon Soir, she radiated a softer, stranger presence, which even then felt out of step with the times. The early sixties were all about doo-wop and surf rock; Streisand liked quirky show tunes, children’s playground songs, and schmaltzy jazz standards. When everyone else was wearing boxy suits and geometric dresses, Streisand showed up to her sets in flouncy, quaint ensembles that she’d extracted from thrift stores. (She liked to collect Victorian blouses and flapper shoes.) When putting her set together, she thought about the three-act structure, comic timing. During one of her signature songs, Harold Arlen’s “A Sleepin’ Bee,” about a girl holding an insect in her palm and pining for love, Streisand began in falsetto: no vibrato, choir-boy pure. As the song went on, she brought musculature to her tone, flipping between her head voice and her chest voice, building to a full-on belt. “I liked it because it was a song you could act,” she writes. “It told a story. Emotionally, you could go from A to B to C, and that intrigued me.”

After scrapping the “Bon Soir” recordings, which she deemed too muddled for release, Streisand put out twelve albums in the sixties alone. But she devotes just one or two pages to most of her recording sessions, and sums up her third album—called, fittingly, “The Third Album”—in a few short paragraphs. (The arranger “was very fond of flutes,” she writes.) Just as when she was a teen-ager, Streisand doesn’t seem too thrilled to think about her voice. What she’s interested in as a writer is what she’s interested in as a performer: acting. The year after she recorded “Live at the Bon Soir,” she landed the role of the early-twentieth-century comedian Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl,” a Broadway part that changed her life, rocketing her from a cult favorite to a national celebrity, and then, when the film adaptation came out in 1968, to an Oscar winner and an international phenomenon.

The leap from Broadway to Hollywood is notoriously treacherous. Theatre requires broadness to reach the balcony; movies favor a subtler touch. Yet Streisand walked onto the set completely confident. “I had played the part a thousand times, literally,” she writes. Every morning, she met the film’s director, William Wyler, to discuss the day’s scenes, and would offer suggestions for specific shots and line readings. “Willy was totally open to my ideas, which must have startled some onlookers . . . a first-time movie actress who dared to have an opinion!” she writes. “He never tried to keep me down.” Streisand’s performance remains unmatched, even now, for its insolent weirdness. In the hands of lesser actors, Fanny’s opening line—“Hello, gorgeous,” said to herself in a mirror—could come off as a mere wisecrack. Streisand infused the words with music, playing up her outer-borough accent to give herself time to vault through several emotions. “I smile, and then the smile crumbles,” she writes of the scene. “Suddenly you see fear, insecurity, loneliness. Fanny is worried that the man she loves is about to leave her.”

Streisand was happy to toss aside her dignity for a laugh, and in so doing she reinvented what a movie star could be. She was not considered conventionally beautiful—over the years, critics called her an “amiable anteater” whose face had “the essence of hound”—so she played up other charms. She was silly, uninhibited, precocious. She was perhaps the first female celebrity to become a sex symbol by being an irrepressible ham; people desired her because she was so clearly enjoying herself. Her bawdy style was particularly suited to screwball comedy, and in both “The Owl and the Pussycat” (1970) and “ What’s Up, Doc? ”(1972) Streisand called upon the skills she’d been developing since her cabaret act, when she had to entertain the audience with rapid-fire prattle between numbers.

Her shift to blockbuster dramas—“The Way We Were” (1973) and “A Star Is Born” (1976)—was wildly successful. But, in the book, one senses a creeping fatigue, a disappointment with directors. Streisand wanted to do the job herself. Few people believed that making “Yentl,” her 1983 directorial début, was a good idea. Streisand spent fifteen years trying to convince studio executives that she could tell a compelling story about a shtetl girl who disguises herself as a yeshiva boy in order to study the Torah. She fired her agent, Sue Mengers , who discouraged the project. She kept hammering away at the unglamorous pitch, even as she kept starring in films that traded on her leonine glamour. Finally, she writes, she signed a deal for which she gave up final cut, and agreed to return half of her salary if she went over budget. “One thing I learned from directing this movie was that I had to be my own father,” she writes. “I couldn’t look for a man to save me.”

It has been a robust year for celebrity memoirs. The flood began in January, when Prince Harry published “ Spare .” Then came Pamela Anderson and Elliot Page, Sly Stone and Kerry Washington, Patrick Stewart and Jada Pinkett Smith. In October, Britney Spears released “ The Woman in Me ,” which quickly became the top-selling book in the country. These are texts of aching candor, self-flagellating confession, and defensive apology. Prince Harry’s book is a yawp of grief for the dead which spares little mercy for the living. Pinkett Smith unveils the deepest secrets of her marriage, including the revelation that her marriage has, in fact, been over for several years. Spears’s memoir may be the most heartbreaking of the bunch, as she painstakingly recounts her descent into powerlessness. All the usual memoir forms rear their heads. There’s the sob story, the gallant bildungsroman, the louche chronicle of various addictive behaviors, the righteous making of an activist, the victory lap.

Streisand’s book, in its sheer breadth and largesse, attempts to be all of these things, and thus becomes something incredibly rare. Call it the diva’s memoir, an act of bravura entertainment and impossible stamina. The diva’s memoir is, by definition, a somewhat delusional form, in that its author lives in a very different world from the rest of us, and has a different sense of scale. Streisand is not here to apologize or to excavate her pain (she stopped going to therapy a while ago; “I had learned enough,” she writes). No thought is out of bounds. She dedicates the same amount of space to the time she met John F. Kennedy (she told him, “You’re a doll!”) that she does to her favorite type of TV dinner (Swanson, with fried chicken and mashed potatoes, along with a side of Sara Lee chocolate cake warmed under a broiler). Meeting Robert Redford is as momentous as her opinions on nuclear disarmament. If something interests her, then it is interesting, full stop. In a way, she draws on an old-fashioned idea of celebrity: to be a star is to be golden, and to make everything you touch look the same.

And would we want anything less? Streisand has never thought it necessary to contain herself, and there’s no reason to start now. The audio version of “My Name Is Barbra” is forty-eight hours long—the longest author-read memoir at Penguin Random House. It is also, I would argue, the superlative way to experience Streisand’s opus. She ad-libs at will; she refuses to say the word “farts.” Sometimes she sounds like a tired bubbe, sometimes a grand dame. But she’s her best, as ever, when she’s singing. In “Gotta Move,” a chapter about her final performance in “Funny Girl,” Streisand trots out an extraordinary archival recording of “My Man,” Fanny Brice’s signature torch song. “Oh, my man, I love him so / He’ll never know,” she sings a cappella, slinking up to the notes like a cat burglar. For the first half of the song, Streisand is rarely on beat, and often she’s not even in tune, but there’s no fear or hesitation in her attack. You sense her slowly bringing something to the surface. She trusts her timing. A pianist follows her lead, then so does a drummer, and then, just as the cymbals crash, she opens her throat with a roar. The sound is pure, exultant catharsis. It will make you believe in something, if not quite as much as the singer believes in herself. ♦

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Review: June Squibb is delightful as a grandma on a mission in ‘Thelma’

Unlikely action hero June Squibb says she loved playing the lead - and doing most of her own stunts on a motorized scooter - in new action-comedy, “Thelma,” which hits U.S. theaters June 21st. (June 19)

This image released by Magnolia Pictures shows Richard Roundtree, left, and June Squibb in a scene from the film “Thelma.” (Magnolia Pictures via AP)

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This image released by Magnolia Pictures shows Parker Posey, from left, Fred Hechinger and Clark Gregg in a scene from the film “Thelma.” (Magnolia Pictures via AP)

This image released by Magnolia Pictures shows June Squibb, left, and Fred Hechinger in a scene from the film “Thelma.” (Magnolia Pictures via AP)

This image released by Magnolia Pictures shows promotional art for the film “Thelma.” (Magnolia Pictures via AP)

There are a lot of bad comedies about, and supposedly for, senior citizens. It’s especially depressing because the worst offenders, the ones that don’t just feel cheap and lazy but exploitative too, often feature our finest actors. They can take on the air of an unintentional horror film – and not the fun kind.

“Thelma,” starring June Squibb , is not one of those.

In her first lead film role, she plays a 90-something who gets scammed out of $10,000 and goes on a mission to get it back. Revenge stories aren’t often (or ever, really) described as sweet, but that’s the magic of “Thelma,” the feature debut of writer-director Josh Margolin that opens in theaters this week. It is charming, genuinely funny and a breeze to watch.

Perhaps it works so well on a fundamental level because Margolin wrote it with his own grandmother (also named Thelma) in mind. Though there is something inherently silly and goofy about the idea of a grandmother on a “Mission: Impossible”-style journey, “Thelma” transcends its on-paper limitations and becomes something wholly unexpected. Kind of like its main character. This isn’t not just an idea of an old person slotted into a high concept gag. It’s specific and at least somewhat realistic. The scooter she and the late Richard Roundtree (as her friend Ben) ride might be slower than Tom Cruise on foot, but the energy is high and infectious.

Squibb is absolutely wonderful at the center of the film, with impeccable comedic timing and full command of her character. Thelma is living alone at 93. She lost her husband a few years prior. Lots of her friends are gone already. But she doesn’t yet see herself in an assisted living situation, or even wearing a life monitor in case she falls. “If I fall I’m toast,” she deadpans. “That’s why I don’t fall.”

And she’s managing pretty well. Her doting 20-something grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger of the first season of “The White Lotus”) visits often to help with the computer and just hang out. When he’s gone, she fills her days with all her tasks: Sorting pills, doing her stationary bike exercises, watching YouTube videos, attempting to comment, attempting to backspace and revise typos and accidentally posting blurry photos of nothing to her Instagram stories.

That is until she gets a panicked phone call from someone claiming to be her grandson. He was in an accident, he says, and she needs to send $10,000 in cash to bail him out. By the time the family starts answering the phone, the money is in the mail, and the police are telling them there’s nothing that can be done. Her family, including Daniel’s mom Gail (Parker Posey) and dad (Clark Gregg), basically wash their hands of it. But Thelma has nothing but time, and she wants to do something about it.

Margolin’s film was made independently. It debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and was picked up for a theatrical release. But he had his team have made it look and feel commercial and buttoned up with a fun ‘60s-inspired score by Nick Chuba.

Things really come to life when Roundtree (terrific, in his last role) enters the picture as her reluctant accomplice on their trip from the Westside of Los Angeles to Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley. She doesn’t drive and needs his refurbed scooter that he’s been going on about — but he’s not about to let her take it on her own.

They have a great rapport — an inspired pairing. The Posey/Gregg/Hechinger trio isn’t too shabby either spouting comedic banter that makes them instantly believable as a family unit. One standout sequence involves one of those dreaded Waze-directed Los Angeles left turns across a busy four lane throughway.

But this is ultimately Squibb’s show and she delivers, like she always does. She should have been leading pictures the whole time and finally did something about it.

“Thelma,” a Magnolia Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “strong language.” Running time: 97 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

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Her. "Her". Spike Jonze's "Her" plays like a kind of miracle the first time around. Watching its opening shots of Joaquin Phoenix making an unabashed declaration of eternal love to an unseen soul mate is immediately disarming. The actor is so unaffected, so sincere, so drained of the tortured eccentricity that's a hallmark of most of the roles ...
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Awards Circuit Community Awards. • 2 Wins & 11 Nominations. Set in the Los Angeles of the slight future, Her follows Theodore Twombly, 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 ...
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The wistfulness in this movie is large-souled. Theodore may worry that his love for Samantha makes him a freak, but Amy knows that "anybody who loves is a freak.". All this may sound touchy-feely in the worst way, but Jonze is trying to get at how we seek romantic connection in this brave (or not so brave) new world.
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Rated 0.5/5 Stars • Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 05/22/24 Full Review Arrigo M idk what to tell you. what i saw was a man meeting a girl in a chatroom and dating via calls. i guess it's a movie for ...
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[This is a re-post of my review from the 2013 New York Film Festival. Her opens today in limited release.] We ascribe technology a personality and vice versa.
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New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein In Her, Jonze transforms his music-video aesthetic into something magically personal. The montages — silent, flickering inserts of Theodore and his ex-wife recollected in tranquility — are sublime.
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'Thelma' review: June Squibb leads a sweetly funny revenge tale
Squibb is absolutely wonderful at the center of the film, with impeccable comedic timing and full command of her character. Thelma is living alone at 93. She lost her husband a few years prior. Lots of her friends are gone already. But she doesn't yet see herself in an assisted living situation, or even wearing a life monitor in case she falls.