Life, or something like it, onscreen, part 1

Life can't always be cinematic, but cinema can always show us a thing or two about what life is and can be about. Just like with the two films that this film junkie saw this week:Spike Jonze's "Her" (showing at local cinemas) and Armando Lao's "Dukit" (at UP Film Institute).

"Her"

Spike Jonze's latest is the most visually existential film that I have seen on the big screen recently. Set in an unnamed yet not-so-distant future, dominated by tall buildings and glass walls and where people appear to be identically geared up and to be moving at the same automaton-like rate and where everything is virtually just one click (or voice) away and where the atmosphere looks like to be awashed in hazy white, "Her" sets to explore the premise of finding, working out, maintaining and eventually losing love and companionship - or for that matter, human relationship - in such a highly-impersonal metropolis. With its mood and atmosphere, the film gives us hints of a Michelangelo Antonioni existential piece - the visual composition and evocation, the estrangement, the sad poetry. Except that the Italian master had never really done a science-fiction film.

Which brings us to the film's basic plot - that of a recently-divorced letter-writer (exceptionally portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix) who develops a love-relationship with, uhm, a computer OS (engagingly voiced by Scarlett Johansson). This "love story" of Theodore and Samantha may sound creepy and freaky, but come to think of it this may not really be that far-flung. Doesn't it happen that we become emotionally attached to a concept or thing? Or what does this say to the online chat that we engage with or the Facebook friend requests that we send to or accept from people that we don't really know and haven't met? The director's wild imagination (previously displayed in "Adaptation") may have given us such a high-minded concept, but it does manage to feel like something not remotely far from us. Which is, needless to say, how some of the best science-fiction films work ("Metropolis", "2001:A Space Odyssey", "Blade Runner" or more recently, "Gravity", "Children of Men", "Moon", "Primer"). "Her", in particular, achieves the feat of being both visually and thematically audacious and contemplative. After Alexander Payne's "Nebraska", this is my next bet to win the Best Picture in next week's Oscars (there are three more films that I've yet to see). Now, that is something far-flung!

(Next:"Dukit")

A high-concept ''romance'' in ''Her''