What a unique movie this is. A film about love, how we love and why we love. I've never really seen anything like it. It's offbeat, a little uncomfortable at times, but strangely magnetic.
A brilliant central performance is given by Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, a very sad man who is getting over the breakup of his marriage while trying to maintain an emotional even keel at work where his job is to create beautiful handwritten letters for other people to send to friends, family or lovers. Theodore's melancholy existence is interrupted when he purchases a new Operating System (OS) for his computer, one with the ability to learn and evolve. Voiced evocatively by Scarlett Johanssen, "Samantha" proves to be far more than artificial intelligence from the very first moment of set up, displaying the sense of humour and conversational style of a real woman.
I don't want to say too much about the plot as it's definitely better to experience it live. Suffice to say that from here, the film goes on to explore the behaviour of people falling in love and being in love. It's done in an extremely talky style, essentially being a lot of conversations between Theodore and Samantha, Theodore and his dictated work letters, Theodore and his friend Amy, Theodore and his ex Catherine. These conversations are dense but fascinating and well-written by that crazy genius Spike Jonze ("Where the Wild Things Are", "Being John Malkovich"). Given one half of the relationship is an unseen computer drive spoken to through an earpiece, the camera lingers on the face of Joaquin as he goes through the full range of emotions. It's a brave, excellent portrayal although distractingly at the beginning there are lots of similarities to Johnny Galecki's Leonard on Big Bang Theory as he gets his geek on.
It sits in the 'sci-fi' genre because a unique world is created in minute detail that completely immerses you into the setting in such a way that it doesn't seem bizarre that a man dating his OS is not seen as needing to go to a mental institution. The setting is definitely Earth and definitely not quite now but not a dystopian future either, it's just not the world we live in right now (in this way it reminds me strongly of similar sci-fi "Never Let me Go" and "Oxv: the Manual). This is portrayed most strongly through the technology being futuristic but the clothing being retro 50s in many ways.
There are laughs in this movie but it's mainly a drama tracing the odd emotional reawakening of a man who has unwittingly hidden himself from life. The relationship between a man and his OS doesn't seem that unrealistic most of the time due to the setting, but then there are moments where I was thinking "this is so weird". The scariest thing of all is how you leave the cinema thinking "this could really happen the way we are going". Look around you and see how many people are sitting on your bus or train, immersed in their phone and ipad. or with an earpiece in and having a one-sided conversation in public while avoiding eye contact with any other human being. Let's hope this doesn't really happen in future. But the overwhelming outcome of the movie is that it will leave you thinking about love and all its wonderful feelings and lack of reason, and wanting to express your feelings to your loved one in a deeper way. Well I did anyway.
Up for Oscars for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Production Design and two noms for Best Music. It's got some pretty stiff competition in most of those categories but regardless if it wins, it's gotta go down as going to be one of the most unique films of the year and probably the warmest. I give it four hearts out of five.
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