Our next Best Picture nominee is Her.
What I’m doing is posting my five favorite moments from each of the Best Picture nominees. It’s a nice way to take a break from all the Oscar stuff to remind myself (and all of us) that once you take away all the competition and the awards, what we’re left with is great cinema. That’s what it’s about.
Here are my favorite moments from Her:
5. The little video game kid.
He’s awesome. It’s a little alien child who curses all the time, how can you not love that? And then you curse back and he likes you. “Come on, fuckface!” This kid is amazing.
(No one said my favorite moments had to be classy.)
4. Their first fight.
I love this moment. It’s one of those moments where you’re totally involved in what’s going on that you don’t initially think about the fact that he’s fighting with a computer. And yet, even if you are thinking that, the fight feels so real. It’s a perfect moment. Here’s a film that made a fight between a man and the computer he’s dating feel like a fight that you could have with your significant other.
3. The “Perfect Mom” game.
Holy shit, do I want this game.
This game needs to exist.
2. The plausibility of it all.
This sounds like something that can — and will — happen. Hell, it’s basically there already in Japan. There’s a legitimate problem in Japan with men and women falling in love with manga characters and being unable to interact with other people. This is one of those things that’s futuristic, but believably futuristic. And it’s nice to see someone who dealt with the future in a way that’s not a thriller or an action movie. But, the thing that got me about this is how this is feasibly something we’re all going to have in the future. An operating system that can talk to us and interact with us, and certain people are going to fall in love with it. It’s a beautiful commentary on technology and how it’s affecting our ability to interact with one another. And it also has a thing or two to say about my #1 thing I loved about the movie…
1. The way it looks at love, and handles love.
Everything about this film feels real, and organic. There’s nothing false about it. It’s about relationships, and the way people interact, and go on dates, and speak to one another — it’s absolutely real and beautiful. And that’s what makes this film work, and that’s what’ll make this film work 20 years from now. It’s absolutely beautiful, and every moment in it feels real.
