A less creative director would have taken the idea of a man falling in love with a Siri-esque operating system, cranked up the social commentary and ended up with a film that hammered home its simplistic point, screaming "oh look how crazy out society is becoming" while actually saying very little. Thankfully, Her came entirely from the mind of Spike Jonze, so the reflection on modern technological trends proves to only be part of his latest, which is at its heart a rather traditional love story. Contemporary romances on film always tend to veer off into unbelievable sentimentality (just look at the supposedly grounded The Fault In Our Stars), so it's somewhat humorous that it's a film touching on our distance from other human beings that gets genuine interaction so right. On a visceral level it's one of the most distinct movies of the demi-decade - it's mesmerisingly shot and boasts some immaculate set design that creates a version of our own world through the filter of an Apple store - bringing the unbounded vision of the Oscar winning screenplay to life. It's curious to imagine what the film would have been like had Samantha Morton, who was originally planned to voice OS Samantha until Jonze swapped her out for Scarlett Johansson, had been in the finished product. Having recorded her lines live on set in response to Joaquin Phoenix, her inclusion could easily have delivered a more human connection between the pair, which would have been interesting to see, even if it wasn't an improvement.
