Internet dating – literally…
FILM
HER
Cert 15 | By Alex Dymoke
Five Stars
HER is set in a hazily utopian Los Angeles of the not too distant future. At night the city is lit up like the milky way. During the day it looks like a Google advert, with streets full of serene, handsome people gliding along in perfectly ironed pastel clothing. People are everywhere but no one is talking to each other.
Joaquin Phoenix’s Theodore Twombly is more isolated than most. As a professional love letter writer, he spends his days articulating the feelings of others. He’s brilliant at it too – his letters bring tears to his colleagues’ eyes – but in his personal life he struggles with the emotional groundswell beneath love’s language and rituals.
A year ago his wife left him because of his “emotional unavailability”, and the gadgets in which he seeks solace only serve to further this withdrawal. “Play a melancholy song,” he commands his hands free mobile device on his commute back from work.
Phoenix gives a compelling performance as hopelessly in love with his home computer system. And the system itself is invested with disconcerting emotional complexity by Scarlett Johansson.
Her doesn’t quite argue that machines cause loneliness, but it does suggest they hasten a retreat from the world that is tantamount to giving up. It is the difficulty, the potential for chaos and hurt that gives relationships their value. Even when programmed to broadcast a steady stream of unconditional love, computers can’t compete with the real thing.
FILM
THE MONUMENTS MEN
Two Stars
An ensemble cast tells a story, loosely based on a real WWII mission, of seven art experts who become soldiers in a bid to stop the Nazis stealing Europe’s most treasured artworks. The tone is oddly nostalgic – Alexandre Desplat’s score is heavy with Great Escape whistles and soaring strings. Its intentions are good but, if director George Clooney wanted to celebrate overlooked heroes, he should have made a documentary, rather than a largely fictional and derivative homage to his favourite war films.
FILM
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
Four Stars
It has been said that Dallas Buyers Club – the story of Ron Woodroof and his smuggling of unauthorised but effective HIV treatment into the US – is just a rodeo ring for a bucking performance from Matthew McConaughey, but this undersells it. The film also provides a perceptive portrayal of institutionalised homophobia, and movingly evokes the despair of desperate people who keep coming up against a bureaucratic brick wall.