“The woman seems like she must be beautiful, although you can’t see her face. In the photograph, she stands with her back turned, gazing into the woods on a sunny day in late fall or early winter, her dark-blonde hair brushing her shoulders, almost tangibly present but at the same time unreachable. She’s real, but only in her world, not yours.
The print, by the artist Todd Hido, hangs on a wall near a giant rectangular dining-and-conference table in the loft where Spike Jonze lives and works when he’s in New York. Several years ago, Jonze saw it in a gallery and felt stirred by what he calls ‘the beautiful mysteriousness of it. And also, you know, the memory of it.’ …
'It feels like a memory,' he says, raising his fingers toward the photograph. 'The mood of a day without the specifics. A memory of this girl, in this beautiful, funny forest.' …
Her is not about the woman in the photo so much as it is about the man longing, perhaps hopelessly, to connect with that woman. …
Like his other work, it is searching, disarmingly sincere, and melancholy in surprising places. Her springs from a notion that could be played as rimshot contemporary satire: A sensitive, lonely guy (Joaquin Phoenix) coming off a rough divorce falls head over heels for a woman who’s literally custom-made for him… But just as he did in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, Jonze uses the gimmick to unlock a door to unsmirky human feeling. The result is not just a cautionary meditation on romance and technology but a subtle exploration of the weirdness, delusiveness, and one-sidedness of love.”
How Spike Jonze Made the Weirdest, Most Timely Romance of the Year
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