Theodore is a depressed man. The separation from his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara – Side Effects, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) is something he does not want. Theodore does his job effectively, but he is lonely outside of work. He spends his nights alone, often playing video games or having phone sex with a woman he just met. He reminisces about the good life with Catherine. Numerous flashbacks show a young Theodore and a young Catherine; they are clearly in love, intent on setting their roots in society. I thought Jonze played this angle perfectly. The flashbacks occur frequently, but each little individual segment is just a few seconds long. Theodore, in the past, starkly contrasts the man we meet in this movie. When the customized OS1 operating system is introduced, Theodore decides it is something he needs because his life is so unorganized.

After just a few initial setup questions, his personalized operating system introduces herself as Samantha (Scarlett Johansson – Lost In Translation, Don Jon). Samantha explains herself as the creation of millions of different programmers to be customized for the end user. She explains that, while she has nobody, she can evolve based on personal experiences. She is, first and foremost, a computer and can compute things in milliseconds. For example, she can go through his inbox of thousands of emails and determine the ones he should keep and the ones he should discard. Then, just as Theodore was hoping, she organizes his life for him. But the two great a friendship that turns into something much more meaningful. Samantha alone brings him out of his funk and returns him to a life where he finds hope and meaning. For the most part, this is the Theodore we see in the captivating movie trailers. As the two fall in love, they find they have many of the same issues as any two entities in a relationship. They can laugh together. They can cry together. They can fight. They can experience bouts of jealousy. They can enjoy life together. They can even have sex together. It’s an interesting pretense, even if you cannot buy into it.

I felt, and still feel like, that you need to be in a very dark place or have some emotional/mental condition to think that a machine can bring you more intimacy and happiness than another human being. But if you can suspend reality for a couple of hours and put yourself in Theodore’s shoes as a man who thinks the true joys of his life are gone forever, you can see how something like this can rejuvenate a soul. Again, I compare it to Lars And the Real Girl, which, if you haven’t watched, was Ryan Gosling treating a blow-up doll as not just his girlfriend but his true love. Does that movie sound ridiculous? Check it out, and I bet it will change your mind.

Johansson is excellent as Samantha. Though we never see her (since she doesn’t exist), she’s got the perfect voice for Samantha. Now an interesting question does arise here. All of us know Scarlett Johansson’s appearance. She is a beautiful young woman with a beautiful face and a fantastic body. What if it had been a better experience as a member of the audience if Samantha was an actress that we had never heard of before and none of us had any idea of how she looked? It’s an interesting question I asked myself more than a couple of times during this movie. I don’t know the correct answer to this question. Perhaps it is different for everyone. It is interesting to note that the movie was filmed with a lesser-known character, and Jonze decided to redo all of Samantha’s scenes using Johansson. I thought she was great, but it’s interesting to wonder what the experience might have been like if I hadn’t had a face to go with the voice. In that regard, we would have been able to make our impression about Samantha by nothing more than her personality and her voice, which is precisely how Theodore was able to make his impressions about her. I don’t know what the right or wrong answer is here, but it does bring up an interesting debate.

Phoenix deserves a Best Actor Academy Award for his performance. Scarlett Johansson is great, but we never see her. Phoenix carries this movie better than anybody else. He’s an eccentric fellow, and, as I mentioned earlier, he needed a film that allowed him to be funny and hopeful. He was cast perfectly. Now, I understand that there can only be five Best Actor Academy Award nominations. I will keep Bruce Dern on my list for Nebraska, even though I have yet to see that movie. I hear he is really, really good in that movie. So my five as of January 2, 2014 (in no particular order) are Dern, Phoenix, Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyer’s Club), Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave), and Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips). That leaves Robert Redford (All Is Lost) on the outside looking in. His performance was very good, but not better than the four performances I’ve seen and the performance I’m expecting from Dern. Unfortunately, this isn’t a lifetime achievement award. While I understand that Redford has been nominated just once in his illustrious career, it does not mean he should be nominated again if his performance is not in the top five.

Likewise, I think Jonze should receive a Best Director nomination. I have seen the other two movies that Jonze directed for which he is most known. I hated the movie Adaptation and did not particularly like Being John Malkovich either. Even though I usually only evaluate movie directors as much as I do actors and actresses when it comes to award seasons, Jonze had something to prove. Her had the potential to be a disaster. And as great as the actors’ performances could have been/were, it wouldn’t have saved a serious movie like this if nobody had taken it seriously. There were quite a few funny scenes in this movie that were meant to be funny. Unfortunately, there were a few scenes in this movie that some people laughed at as being a little too outrageous, while others didn’t laugh. And I wondered if that sort of divided the audience some. I, personally, was won over early and could take it all in (for the most part). That doesn’t mean I didn’t question things as the movie went along…because I certainly did…a lot. The film was weird, but I never felt like I wasn’t seeing something special on the screen.

Her is an artsy movie, for sure. But it’s not for everyone. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it or not. Even as I was watching it, there were times when I wanted to know if I liked it. But it came together for me in the end. I liked the twist. Maybe I should have seen the twist all along, but I usually miss these things, so it surprised me and made the movie even more beautifully tragic. If you like artsy type films, you’ll probably like Her. If you don’t, I suggest you steer clear.