Her

Her (2013) by Spike Jonze

From my sophomore year in high school (back in 2002) until around 2008 or so, I had what I can only describe as an online "relationship" with a girl I'd met at a camping trip.

We'd met and seen each other only once, for a few brief hours, and reconnected online using AIM (remember when that was a thing?) Every evening she and I would go online and converse for hours, talking about our days, our struggles, and our feelings. We grew to really care about each other. We came to love each other, in that stupid high school "it probably doesn't even matter" sort of way. When I graduated high school, she mailed me a graduation card with a picture of herself. When she graduated, I sent her one. Gradually, as the years passed, we spoke less and less. Until one day, she graduated college. I sent her a graduation card and a handwritten letter. We'd been in each others lives for about six years, and in that time only had those brief hours together when we were teenagers. I wrote her a goodbye, saying we'd always be friends, and she'd never be forgotten.

Her is the movie that reminded me exactly how that relationship, looking at it now, really did mean something.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly,  a forty-something living in a Los Angeles that is not too far off into the future. He is going through a divorce with Catherine (Rooney Mara), works at an online "handwritten card" company ascribing feelings and emotions to other people's relationships, and is desperately lonely. He lives his little life, playing video games and being introverted, a timid man living a comfortably uncomfortable life. Intrigued by an artificially intelligent operating system (known simply as "OS"), Theodore makes the purchase, tailoring the program to fit and meet his personality. The two are "introduced" as the OS is adapting itself, choosing a female voice and personality, and dubbing itself "Samantha" (voiced by Scarlett Johannson). As Theordore tries (and fails) to commit and connect with the women around him, he finds that most of his needs are met by Samantha, and the two fall in love. Their relationship grows, yes, and they have their hangups, but Samantha is always with him, always interested in him, and pushes him to grow. She improves his writing (both grammatically, and stylistically, as his muse), and through him, Samantha learns what it means to have emotions, and what it means to even have consciousness. But, ultimately, they both prove too limiting to each other. They've grown together because of and in spite of each other.

This is an extremely sublime film.

Theodore and Samantha's infatuation relates perfectly in today's climate, where so many of our daily interactions are digital and rooted in a wireless existence. The paradox of being alive now is that for how interconnected and instant our lives are, so many remain disconnected emotionally, unable to relate to anyone in person. Even Theodore's job itself is a replacement for daily interactions: people pay a company to create heartfelt messages, dictated by a third person, and printed to appear handwritten. Emotions are an afterthought to be considered only after the fact, and that itself is a concept I myself feel. On the train ride home today, nowhere was there a headphone not in someone's ear, or a phone in someone's hand.

Again, that interconnectivity becomes all-empowering and extremely hindering simultaneously. Samantha knows everything about Theodore, based on his contacts, emails, daily interactions and, when he is able to carry her around on his phone, she can even see and travel with him. She hires a surrogate body to act as her and carry out her physical will; but she can never be someone physical, someone Theodore can lean on or hug. In return, Theodore is limited by his own mind and mortality; in later scenes he tries to read about psychology and philosophy, and theoretical mathematics, and tells her "after reading this a day, I'm almost done with this one page. This is way beyond me." As much as they love each other, there is too much of a gap, and in this case, love just isn't enough.

And the sublime qualities and philosophical implications of the movie come into play with these quandaries. Can a program become self-aware enough to genuinely feel? Even Samantha wonders about this, wondering if she is capable of love and emotion, or if she is just processing information in a way that is pre-programmed, and reacting in kind? Is it possible for her to grow into something far beyond even she imagined? And, finally, is it possible for Theodore to be so transformed by an artificial entity that he is never the same? Is it possible for him to exist beyond his own physical limitations (much like the OS-created Dr. Alan Watts, a program based on a philosopher dead from the 1970s and voiced by Brian Cox)? So much is brought up, and I love this movie for it.

Director Spike Jonze and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema create a palette that is both lush and warm in color and sterile in its composition (at least early on, prior to the depth of the Theodore/Samantha relationship). Theirs is a Los Angeles blanketed in neon and primary colors, a post-Tokyo environment with sterile, IKEA-apartment rooms. It is a future only about 5 years removed from the present. The camera follows Theodore, holding for long takes that would seem to mimic Samantha's seeming omnipresence over him as well, while intimacy is always hinted at but never explicitly shown (such as Theodore and Samantha's...intimate scene. You'll know what I mean. It's actually quite beautiful).

The score by Arcade Fire is a perfect counterpoint to the tone and beauty of the film, while Karen O's songs, sung by Johannson in that uniquely deep voice are actually quite haunting and extremely touching. The cast and supporting characters (particularly Amy Adams, who plays Theodore's friend Amy) are all terrific. Amy's character develops a relationship with her own OS, a situation that, as is revealed, becomes more common with the populace as the OS grows and evolves. But ultimately, Amy and Theodore, for all their introversion and solitude, find that they need the interaction that could only be found in other human beings. While they might not fill each and every one of their needs, they fill enough of each other's to matter. And my God...Scarlett Johannson is absolutely amazing in her role, imbuing Samantha with so much personality that she sits right beside HAL 9000 and GERTY in regards to amazing, resonant computer characters. She (Samantha) is perfect.

I could go on and on about how this film provoked so many questions about philosophy of mind, and memories of discussing David Chalmers in college, and debating whether physical experience is nothing more than an illusion, or whether we are all just processing and reacting to electrical impulses (much like Samantha.) This is a film ripe for discussion on so many levels, and equally as heartbreaking on so many levels.

My girlfriend cried twice. At the end of the film, all I felt was that if this film were a physical thing, I would hug it. This is one of the best films I've seen in the last 3-5 years, and definitely one of the most rich.

This is a film that reminds me why sometimes the only thing I need in life is a good movie. I love this film, and in watching it remember what it was like to really fall in love for the first time. I will definitely be seeing it again.

And you know what? I still have that card tucked away somewhere.

The Social Network

The Social Network (2010) David Fincher

This is, by no stretch, director David Fincher's best film, nor is it the best film of the year (ahem, True Grit is probably the best film of the past two or three years). However, being a David Fincher film, it is incredibly precise, technically astounding, with an amazing score by Trent Reznor, an impossibly slick script by Aaron Sorkin, beautifully muted cinematography by longtime Fincher collaborator Jeff Cronenweth, and magnetic acting by everyone involved (except for Justin Timberlake). Also, this movie is not about the founding of Facebook. That is, it is about the founding of Facebook, but that's not what it's about. I'll get to that in a minute.

I'll get the technical stuff out of the way first. After the misstep that was The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (a gorgeous, at times marvelous film bogged down by a maudlin, trite, ploddingly meandering plot and a plot device that ultimately was never really explored) David Fincher reigned it in considerably. Gone is any of his trademarks (high contract lighting; CGI-augmented camerawork (and performances); desaturated colors; single-frame shots), and instead the palette is a cold, mechanical metallic gray. His characters, being college students, are considerably more fun than his previous characters (with the exception of Bob or Tyler Durden...but even then there was a darkness to them).

Aaron Sorkin's script, as noted before, would be quotable if one could follow the whiplash-fast delivery provided by the actors (not at all a negative comment, don't get me wrong). Sorkin's script bounces around from the building of the site, and intercuts it with the settlement cases, wherein Zuckerberg gets all the juiciest lines. Trent Reznor's gorgeous score merely hints (early on) at the dark intensity hidden behind not only film-Zuckerberg, but also the plot (and, to an extent, every one of us); there's something animal and primal about it (seemingly-random piano chords repeating themselves to a brooding theme that is counterpoint to persistent low percussion, like approaching footsteps). One could imagine a collision about to occur. His arrangement of “The Madness Of King George” during a Yale crew meet was brilliant, playing against low-depth-of-field, slightly undercranked footage of the competing crew teams. Beautiful. Technically, this film is absolutely gorgeous, restrained, and engaging. Now, on to the nitty-gritty...

The film opens with with Mark Zukerberg (Jesse Eisenberg)getting dumped by his then-girlfriend Erica Albright (Mara Rooney) in 2003, getting drunk, and blogging about his breakup while simultaenously building a website to spite not only Erica, but also every girl within the area of Harvard University. This stunt arouses the attention of not only the Harvard faculty, but also the Winklevoss twins (both played by Armie Hammer) in Yale, who were hoping to build an exclusive website to connect the Yale and Harvard students online. As we all know (apparently) Zuckerberg agrees to help the Winklevoss twins, but instead, with the financial help of his friend and roommate Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), steals the idea, creating Facebook (with the advice and support of Napster founder Sean Parker, played pretty terribly by Justin Timberlake, who looks, sounds, and acts as if he belongs in high school...that is, I've seen and worked with high school actors who knew better than to “act” while acting) and ultimately winding up the world's youngest billionaire...who has lost all of his friends in the process.

The film is not accurate, glossing over many fine details (such as the fact that Zuckerberg had a steady girlfriend throughout the founding of Facebook in real life), and fabricating others (it is suggested that Zuckerberg created Facebook to attract the attention of Erica, and, in a way, win her back). Up to the release of the film, the real Mark Zuckerberg gave interviews downplaying the implications made in the film, and deriding it as being inaccurate. His real motive, he's said, for creating Facebook is that he “wanted to create something...that's what these guys don't get: sometimes you just want to create something.” That's true, but also doesn't make for very good cinema.

And this is what the film is truly about: the romanticizing of our lives in a digital realm. Comparing real-life footage of Zuckerberg with the film's interpretation of him, one can't help but notice how tongue-tied, clumsy, and devoid of charm Zuckerberg is; Eisenberg's interpretation, however, dominates every scene he's in, and can barely stand the fact that he's smarter than everyone in his presence, nor can he conceal that fact. There is a charm to his pompous conceit, one which makes you loathe him and watch every move he makes: it's a delicate balance, one that a lesser actor would be unable to portray. Yes, film-Zuckerberg is a self-centered, narcissistic asshole, but there's a pity and brilliance to him, a youthful rebellion that transcends actions and makes him almost legendary (as his lawyer says at the end: “You're not an asshole. You're just trying really, really hard to be one”). And this is what we all do in social networking.

Those who deride the film (or laud it) for its handling of the founding of Facebook are missing the point. The film is not accurate, nor does it need to be so. It is a fictionalized account of a real-life event: just like JFK is, or Schindler's List. Or The Great Escape. Or...Die Hard. Yeah. What The Social Network does, however, is make visual all the digital histories we fabricate by building a profile on any number of social sites. One of the underlying philosophies behind Web 2.0 is the idea that we can get followers, fans, “likes”, hits, “friends”...whatever it is you want to call it...to follow our mundane lives. So how do we go about doing that? We create a version of ourselves that others would want to know and understand, or at least be interested in reading about. We don't talk about the uninteresting shit, nor about what we hope no one finds out about. We don't create digital selves to hurt our real selves. We romanticize our existence to make it something worthwhile, something meaningful and interesting.

No one wants to see the real Mark Zuckerberg in court for defrauding his friend, or the tedious court preceding, or sitting at a computer building code. While it is factual, it doesn't make for a very interesting film-going experience. One of the key moments in the film is when Zuckerberg realizes that adding a relationship tab is probably the most important thing he could add to the site, as people are interested in relationship statuses (or just relationships in general). The real Mark Zuckerberg said the relationship tab wasn't too big a deal, and the inspiration for it wasn't at all like it was in the film . Who cares? It's more exciting, more romantic, and more dramatic the way the film presents it (in the film, a classmate asks if Mark knows if a girl is dating someone, and he says “How should I know?” before getting the idea and running back to his dorm to add it to the site design).

The whole film is about relationships, and how they could be lost through passion, jealousy, or malice. In a larger sense, it's also about the relationship between the stories we tell ourselves through memory (“our” version of events, and others' version of events, to create Truth), and the relationships formed through fiction (how many “friends” do you have online? How many have you actually met? Talked to? Hung out with? Dated? How many have you lost? When you lost them, did it affect you? Or were they, truly, digital friends?) The Social Network is just another elaborate fiction created in a digital age to make life worth following. Doubt that explanation? Then realize that for the first time in almost a decade, Mark Zuckerberg is actually interesting to talk about, and is getting more interviews now than he has in the past. He derides the film, yet it has provided him with renewed publicity.

His fake self has made his real self that much more interesting.

A Nightmare On Elm Street (Remake)

A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

Freddy Kreuger has been given a facelift of sorts in this remake by director Samuel Bayer, who is known for his music video direction (and also as the director of Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). Here he brings a somewhat grungy look to the film but, unfortunately, it wasn't enough to save this film, which played out predictably and felt on par with a film school or high school student's attempt to make a convincing horror film. Missing was any real sense of dread, fear, unnerving, or suspense, all of that being replaced by an appreciation for Jackie Earle Haley's interpretation of Kreuger, and a sense of annoyance that I was instead noting the plot-based flaws of the film rather than truly getting involved with it. While I am a moderate fan of the original series (I remember watching the sequels mostly, not so much the original film), I did not mind some of the differences with some of the sequences (although I did miss Johnny Depp exploding out of a television screen), and I think this iteration of Kreuger is much more skeevy and unnerving, while at the same not having a clearly defined motivation (more on that later). Much of the atmosphere is created with tired cliches (including the musical cues, rainy exteriors, etc.), supported by a horrible script (although Freddy does get the best lines).

The film starts solidly enough with a teaser involving Crissy (Katie Cassidy) and her boyfriend, Dean (Kellan Lutz), as they meet up during the middle of some rainy night at a diner. Dean admits he hasn't slept in 3 days, and the reason is that he keeps having a dream involving a man in a hat (guess who it is?). Crissy for some reason finds what he's saying to be ludicrous, and she disappears for a few moments. Dean winds up falling asleep and immediately dreaming about Freddy, and the two fight briefly before Freddy overpowers him and slices his neck open with a table knife (the kind that doesn't really cut too well. Why Freddy would use a table knife while his entire right hand is a knife is not explained.) From her perspective, Crissy only sees Dean struggling with himself before jamming the knife into his neck.

The teaser worked well. Every single character in the movie is introduced (literally all the main characters witness the event. One of the faults of this film is the fact that the only characters that seem to exist are the victims. They don't have any friends outside of each other, and we aren't introduced to anyone other than them; this last part would be helpful in shaping out the inevitable sequel by having characters that were introduced in previous installments, but, alas...), the mood is set, and the throat-slitting is graphic and shocking enough (but not too much). The next scene, though, is where the film started to fall hopelessly apart.

Dean is buried in a graveyard. Naturally. At the wake are the main characters to whom we'd just been introduced, and their parents (who are all single. I have a theory for this...). And then Crissy sees a little girl with red slashes across her chest. No one else seems to notice the little girl except her. Crissy gets up to investigate, and out of the ground Freddy's clawed hand shoots out and grabs her ankle; Crissy then wakes up screaming to the confused faces of the other attendees. Crissy fell asleep at her boyfriend's funeral. She had watched her boyfriend get horrendously murdered in a fashion that could only be described as suicide. And she fell asleep at his funeral. Who the fuck does that? I can only imagine that the people staring at her in the scene were wondering the same thing, what this heartless bitch is doing at this funeral. This scene immediately took me out of the movie and for the remainder of the runtime I was more interested in the cinematic techniques employed throughout and the plot holes than about anything that was actually occurring onscreen.

And these cinematic techniques are of the type employed by first-year film students and directors being ironic, rather than the director of the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, as well as music videos for Garbage, Green Day, and the Cranberries (among others). This was an unbelievably bland, lifeless horror film that telegraphed every scare it attempted to make, and perhaps the leap from 4-5 minute-long video director to narrative feature film was one that Mr. Bayer was unable to make. Nothing in the film seemed genuine, everything was contrived, and the updated nods to the original (Freddy's hand coming out of the bathtub; Crissy's mid-air death; Freddy coming out of the wall) were pointlessly added for no purpose other than to show how much more effective they were in the original film, which utilized limited resources and budget.

I would normally not want to compare a remake with the original film upon which it was based, but instead try to judge the film on its own merits; but here, the comparisons need to be made. The original 1984 film sported a gritty, washed-out look with highly contrasting use of light and shadows. Moreso, the dream sequences themselves were decidedly surreal, possessing an almost Jungian sense of dread. Coupling that with a concept that is still among the most unique in the horror genre (a killer that manifests himself in the dreams of his victims), and you've got yourself one of the most memorable of horror films (and a classic, wholly original horror villain). What this remake failed to take into account was the fact that the limitations of the original filmmakers meant pushing themselves to create something truly terrifying, and one way to do that was to focus on the undercurrent of the story. The 1984 original, at its core, was about parents who went too far in protecting their children, and in doing so guaranteed the very danger they were hoping to avoid, a danger which manifested itself during the one time of the day where a person should feel absolutely safe. This film is saying nothing that subtle.

Jackie Earle Haley does give a lot of effort in his portrayal of Freddy, adding subtle touches to distinguish himself from Robert Englund: Haley's is a much more sadistic Freddy, lacking the overt wit and (surprising to say) charm that Englund exuded. While it is hinted at that Haley's Freddy is enjoying what he's doing (referring to his slaughtering of his victims as “playing”) it is never really shown. This Freddy does not outwardly enjoy the fact that he can manifest himself in the dreamscapes of his victims. Haley's habit of rubbing two of his bladed fingers together, as if he can't wait to get down to the slicing and dicing, is a great touch, but then the damage he inflicts is comparatively minimal (given the budget this film has, you'd think something would top the Freddy tendon-marionette-kill from Elm Street 4...or 3...I don't remember which sequel it was). Another lingering question: what the fuck does Freddy want? Does he want to just kill the kids? At first, that's what I thought, and figured that he could just get it over with in a few nights. But then, later on in the film, he tells Nancy that the reason he's “alive” is because their memories keep him alive...but they didn't even remember him until he started showing up in their dreams, and he started showing up in their dreams to torment them, but to also lead them to the cellar of the preschool where he worked and molested them so that they could...remember? Right? So...if his goal is to make them remember him, thus keeping him “alive” somehow, then why would he want to kill them? And if he wants to just up and kill them, then why waste time with all that “he wants us to go back so we can remember” bullshit? C'mon, Frddy! You live in dreams and have a bladed hand! Be interesting, for God's sake! What's your motivation! Someone! Someone in this movie, make sense! How could your friend have been said to have "died in their sleep" when they are eviscerated? And what the fuck is up with just cutting Freddy's neck and assuming that'll do the trick, Nancy? You just pulled the dude out of your sub-fucking-conscious and dragged him into the real world...you take that board cutter and you hack Freddy for, like, 8 hours until he's a bunch of tiny pieces, and then you take those pieces and burn them, and then you take the ashes, put them in 20 cardboard boxes, and sink those in 20 different lakes! That's what you do! Not, "Oh, paper cut. That'll do it. Yeah, he's dead. Let's go fuck." FUCK YOU, MOVIE!

In fact, Haley's is the only performance worth noting...or the only thing worth noting to make this Goddamned movie bearable. Mara Rooney as heroine Nancy Holbrook was (as with Kyle Gallner's Quentin Smith) unbelievably bland and boring, lacking any of the transformative arc present in the original: here, both Nancy and Quentin are first presented as fucked-up and depressed, made-up and dressed up as if they walked off a Death Cab For Cutie video. The psychological aspect of Freddy ---he drives normal, clean-cut kids into sleep-deprived maniacs--- is completely lacking, as the characters start off at that point to begin with. There's no nuance, no substance, nothing truly deeper going on rather than “There's a killer who kills people in their dreams. That's cool...right? Guys?”

For a film that boasts a budget that easily could've financed the original film several times over, this film is a cheap, empty cash grab that defuses the inherent psychological horror of Freddy Kreuger. This film is a forgettable and derivative as the washed-out color scheme of the not-very-original-looking dream-scapes. And the worst part? The final scene promises a sequel. Rent it only, and even then, just to compare to the original. And trust me...you'll sleep as soundly as I did in the theater.

I hate this movie.