In 2019, nothing frustrated me more than the craze over Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in Joker. Because, first of all, the film was insanely derivative of some older Scorsese flicks I adore, and second of all, Phoenix’s best performance was in the 2013 sci-fi drama Her! 

Science fiction films are tricky with me– I’m keen to love them so long as they don’t take the science of it all too seriously. Sci-fi films that think of themselves as the pinnacle of predicting or innovating the future become lifeless when they could have flourished in the fun of it all. Or more poignant, the humanity within the speculation, within our changing world. Spike Jonze is masterful at introducing human preconceptions to speculative technologies, drawing brilliant films out of curiosities, and examining the traits ingrained deeply within ourselves. 

Her follows name (Phoenix) as he falls in love with his operating system, a Siri/Alexa-like entity voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Unlike other films that invoke fear of our unknowable futures, Her examines a persisting loneliness, one that can’t be cured by new technology. Innovative, fascinating technologies don’t squander or dispel our humanity. Rather, they make it more visceral. For all its robotic elements, Her is a deeply, profoundly human story. 

Her is a stunning, futuristic view of Los Angeles, a city whose past is studied far more than its future. The lights glimmer everywhere and the city is as stunning as ever, contrasting with standard futuristic imaginings of cities which often see them as incomprehensibly ahead with technology, or in catastrophic ruin. The future's still bright, artificial intelligence may not be our doom, and in Her, we are the same as we ever were, only in a newer, futuristic world. 

Playing as a part of the Coolidge’s “Aieee! Robots” series, Her is being screened alongside a myriad of other science fiction films of past and present, from The Stepford Wives to M3GAN and Westworld, all of which examine fictional, speculative technologies and the power they hold. The way we examine our future dictates very heavily our personal fears of the present, what we wish to change, what we want our society to value, and in which ways we want to progress. The imagination of Her is not bound to the way technology will make our lives easier or more convenient, it wants to understand how it is going to make us feel, and how it cannot cure or save us from our humanity. 

Her screens at the Coolidge Corner Theater on Wednesday, January 10th.

Until next Wednesday,

Karenna

Photograph: IMDb