Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Her
2013 · Spike Jonze · Her on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how often the camera holds close on Phoenix listening. (camera)
Van Hoytema frames the eyes and lower face and stays there. The world behind goes to soft blur. Much of the film is simply coverage of Theodore hearing a voice.
Payoff: The romantic close-up moves off the beloved's face and onto the act of listening to her. In the reading: icon of quality. A held, reactive face expressing one quality without acting on it is what the reading calls a qualisign.
Look at how much red, coral and ochre fills every frame. (light)
Theodore's shirts, his apartment walls, his office, the city itself are tuned to the same warm range. The human figure is nearly absorbed into the surround.
Payoff: Color carries feeling here rather than décor. The world runs at the temperature of Theodore's insides. In the reading: affective color. The reading calls this a color-image: a hue that soaks up the scene and its emotion instead of just describing it.
Track how often Theodore is walking or riding while he talks. (staging)
Jonze stages the conversations in transit: stairs, trains, crowds, corridors. Theodore's body keeps moving through Los Angeles while Samantha stays put on the other end.
Payoff: The blocking states the asymmetry early. One of them has a body in space and one does not.
Listen for how plain and unfiltered Johansson's voice sounds. (sound)
No processing, no electronic sheen, no robot tell. Samantha breathes, laughs and hesitates. The sparse piano and strings stay out of the way and leave the silences open.
Payoff: The film asks you to accept a person before you have decided whether she is one.
Notice the strangers on the street talking to no one. (setting)
Barrett's Los Angeles is walkable, clean and slightly upgraded, not futuristic. People converse with their own systems in public and nobody stares. The world is improved, not replaced.
Payoff: The near-future is normalized so completely that Theodore's romance never looks like a symptom of a broken world.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: The romance lives in a voice with no body. Watch the face that listens to it.