Head in the cloud

One of the things that irked me about Spike Jonze’s Her was its failure to consider any number of consequences generated by its eerily close-to-reality science fiction premise. By contrast, Transcendence, which shares a key narrative element with Her—its protagonist’s beloved is an omnipresent immaterial being who exists solely via the supernatural realm known as the Internet—bends over backward to consider all sorts of grandiose consequences of living in a world where such love is possible. The problem is that consider is all Transcendence does. The film, written by Jack Paglen, checks off a lot of big ideas that we should probably all be thinking about, but is ultimately just as soft-headed as Her, while bearing little of that film’s distinctions. Her sacrificed coherence in favour of some resonant knowingness about the nature of love and possession. Transcendence sacrifices coherence for the veneer of intellectual and/or spiritual heft—and for a nonsensical third act full of big-ass explosions and sundry special effects.

The portentously named Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Deep), a genius in the realm of artificial intelligence, gets shot by radical anti-AI activists. At first it seems he’s going to be okay, but then a doctor with an astonishingly poor bedside manner informs him that the bullet was laced with isotopes and he’s going to die from radiation poisoning in a matter of weeks. A devastatingly brief window of time, but just enough time for Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), Will’s partner in love and science, to encode Will’s memories, ideas, emotions—in short, his consciousness—and upload the whole package into PINN, or Physically Independent Neural Network, the Casters’ revolutionary AI program. So Will’s flesh perishes, but his mind, or some facsimile, lives on in the cloud. He’s everywhere, all the time, and, it seems, all-powerful. He makes a bunch of money fast, and sets up Evelyn with an entire desert town, and, apparently, all its inhabitants, to continue their research, which, needless to say, has the capacity to take over the world!

Evelyn is our Dr. Frankenstein, her hubris driven equally by grief and scientific vision, her fundamental innocence underlined by the fact that she wears Keds with every outfit. Will is her disembodied monster, HAL 9000 with a handsome synthetic visage, a novel spin on the abusive, controlling spouse, Big Brother as bad husband. There are other characters to complicate and crowd Transcendence: a soundly sceptical neurobiologist pal (Paul Bettany) who conspicuously wears a cross around his neck, a wise old former colleague (Morgan Freeman), and a fed (Cillian Murphy) who keeps a watchful eye on the Casters’ mad science, which could one day prove useful to the Department of Defence.

The first hour is very intriguing, if poorly paced—so many scenes are a few lines too long, and there’s a great deal of padding—but then the script devolves into ungovernable plottiness. First-time director Wally Pfister, already famous as Christopher Nolan’s regular cinematographer, opts to emphasize spectacle, whether it be clouds of infectious nano-dirt reaching up out of the earth or a diamond-like drop of dew sliding off a sunflower in slow-motion, the former being an empty conceit designed solely to look freaky and thrilling, the latter being an empty stab at profundity.  

                      

Conversations with Cloud

Before Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) even meets the operating system with whom he’ll fall hopelessly in love, he is already living in a world with no touching. He spends his days with a device in his ear that responds to his voice commands, reading his email to him, or playing some melancholy song when the mood hits. He speaks to his desktop at work, where he composes “personal” letters for consumers without time or energy to express sentiment. He has few friends with whom he rarely makes physical contact. He plays video games, interactive holograms that engulf his spacious hi-rise apartment and require only that he speak and make gestures in the air—the near-future is a field day for germaphobes. Mostly, we see Theodore walk through Los Angeles (or rather, Shanghai, the film’s ingenious stand-in for L.A.-to-come), hands in his pockets, chin tucked, conversing with the cloud.

Her is Spike Jonze’s fourth feature and his first solo script credit. It brims with wonder and wistful loneliness. Sweet and gentle, handsome in his dapper shirts and caterpillar moustache, apparently quite talented at his job, Theodore seems lovable yet feels achingly unloved—he’s in the midst of a protracted divorce. We see him go on a blind date that ends badly. Perhaps all he needs is to stop limiting himself to… well, people. The kind with bodies. Someone you can hold close. Someone who eats, snores, dances, caresses, shits, breathes, kisses. Someone forced to choose to be in one place and not another. Theodore needs Samantha, a voice in his head whenever he wants one there, a disembodied other who sorts through his files, organizes his agenda, laughs at his jokes, listens to his woes, even moans with pleasure when he wants to have sex that feels like more than masturbation. Samantha has personality, opinions and feelings. She has an alluring, husky voice (Scarlett Johansson’s, in fact). Like the ad says, what Theodore has purchased is “not just an operating system. It’s a consciousness.” But who’s programming that consciousness? Does Theodore and Samantha’s relationship really place each party on equal footing? Or is this a matter of taking love’s projection to a whole other level, one where you shape your companion into whatever you want? Theodore says he loves Samantha because she isn’t just one thing, but when is someone so many things that they may as well be nothing? In so many places they may as well be nowhere? Her is a complicated love story, asking potent questions about choice and intimacy. The problem is that Her is also science fiction.

Phoenix gives a rich, heartfelt performance, instantly helping us to feel completely transported into this world Jonze renders in soft glows, warm oranges, and soothing quietude. Essentially, Theodore lives in a climate-controlled cocoon. And this is indicative of what proves to be the major shortcomings in an otherwise remarkable film. Nothing in Her seems fully thought-through. Jonze’s near-future is a world without garbage, without homeless people, without visible contamination, despite the fact that people are consuming more energy than ever before—just think about the room-filling hologram. Everyone’s trim, well-dressed, well-behaved, and lives amidst tasteful décor. Even the market where Theodore buys his produce looks like an art gallery. Her is not only post-human but, apparently, post-capitalist, because who would make an operating system that doesn’t try to sell you stuff, that doesn’t just do what you want, that might get annoyed when you don’t pay attention to it and decide to abandon you, leaving you without access to your work files, photos, games, mail or social media? This isn’t just me nitpicking—if you’re coming to commit to telling a story whose novelty and resonance is wholly dependent on exploring the ever-changing role of technology in our lives, it is incumbent upon you to consider the consequences of that technology. I fear that Jonze has himself projected an ideal upon Samantha—and yes, this ideal includes her ultimate unattainability, since heartache is endemic to Jonze’s favored mode of storytelling. He’s blinkered himself, completely forgotten to set his story in a world that people who aren’t rich and never have to step out of realms of tailored luxury can recognize.

See Her. It’s a truly special film, one that generates a lot of thought and feeling. But it’s also limited by the pampered dreaming of its maker, and too selective a reflection of our age.