Are you sitting comfortably?

Her

Writer/director Spike Jonze, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson and Amy Adams.

So, there go the Oscars again.  Poor Leo really thought it was his year didn’t he? Well, plenty of other people did too but, as Ellen put it so succinctly, there really were only two possibilities for best film:

“Possibility No. 1: 12 Years a Slave wins best picture. Possibility No. 2: You’re all racists.”

Truest words spoken in jest.  No real surprise that the academy did indeed go with a real history lesson over a supposed cautionary tale of Wall Street excess. Especially as we’ve all learnt far more about that in the last couple of years than we’d have liked. Well, except the stock brokers.

With so much discussion about the tough running in the Best Picture and Leading Role categories the writing didn’t get much attention in 2014. Oh, laments the writer, we do all the genius work and get so little credit! No, it’s not that, it’s more that in the Best Original Screenplay category the winner was a shoe in. Her by Spike Jonze was the only title that ever really came up for discussion. And it doesn’t disappoint.

Her is the story of Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) a recent divorcee who, unwilling to take the leap into a ‘real’ relationship, starts one with his new operating system instead. The Artificial Intelligence behind the ‘OS’ though is learning at a rate that both she and Theodore struggle to understand and what seems to be a surrogate for a human relationship mutates into a very real one between a human and an entirely new species that humans have created.

Casting Phoenix was a stroke of brilliance. A less accomplished actor could not have made the job of keeping the audience engaged for two hours (pretty much single handed) look so effortless. He is vulnerable, witty, horny and troubled in quick succession and you never once fail to take his love story seriously.

What could have turned into a schmaltzy pile of indie dross in the wrong hands comes to warm and colourful life in the hands of writer/director Spike Jonze. A light touch, never didactic, he allows both the romantic and disturbing elements of the story to spring out at you from behind the often seemingly everyday dialogue. The premise seemed simple enough; a study of our increasing reliance on technology to provide for our every need. The future shown here is nothing like Azimov’s it is very recognisable and very convincingly the immediate future. As the story unwinds and the technology develops needs of its own the audience is thrown so many questions: what constitutes a ‘real’ relationship? Have we already opened a technological Pandora’s box? Who and what is god?

This movie set my mental processors into overdrive and they will be whirring a good while longer. Well, deserving of its prize and something we all need to start learning more about.

In cinemas throughout the Netherlands now.