Her By Spike Jonze: Film Analysis

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Written and directed by Spike Jonze, ‘Her’ (2013) follows the tale of an awkward and quirky Theodore, who falls in love with the world’s first artificial intelligence operating system on the market. The film portrays a society not too far in to the future and explores themes of loneliness, relationships, surrogacy as well as technology, the future and how this effects our culture and society. ‘Her’ not only allows us to peak in to the futuristic world of artificial intelligence, allowing us to question the impact this would have upon our lives, it also reflects our current society, and how technology today has altered our social interactions and day to day lives. ‘Her’ encourages us to ask ourselves, is technology connecting us together, or …show more content…

Firstly, when Theodore and Samantha have sex for the first time, emotional response is driven entirely by its dialogue as visually; we just see a blank screen. We are reminded of the phone sex scene earlier on, but this is far more emotionally passionate. Samantha does not have a body, but the blank screen allows us to believe that she is in the room with Theodore, evoking us to feel exactly what the characters are feeling at that moment. The next powerful scene is when Samantha tells Theodore that she is leaving. We are presented with an extreme close up of Theodore’s face, limiting our focus to his emotions only. This allows the audience to fully engage with how he is feeling. As the camera cuts to another extreme close up of dust particles in the air, Samantha asks Theodore ‘can you feel me with you?’ This evokes the viewer to make the link between Samantha and the dust particles. Like dust, she is there but only …show more content…

Production designer KK Barrett mentions, "It's convenient, comfortable, healthy, and available. That's the world we wanted to make." This emphasises the portrayal of technology’s role in society: simple and easy. In many ways, character’s clothes and appearances, including Theodore’s, high-waisted trousers, corduroy shirts and thick moustache resemble the stylistic qualities of the 1970s. This links to the idea of ‘Her’ being a post-modern film (in terms of pastiche and intertextuality) recycling styles from the past to create something new. In addition to this, Theodore’s job at ‘handwrittenletters.com’ evokes the same idea of the old coming back in to