Sightlines · reception
How Her was received
2013 · Spike Jonze · Her on Sightlines
The arc
A critical darling on release — it won Jonze the Best Original Screenplay Oscar — but it's aged from 'charming near-future whimsy' into something people now half-jokingly call a documentary, rewatched with fresh unease every time voice AI makes headlines.
What’s debated
The perennial fight: is it a genuinely prescient, tender masterpiece or a twee, sentimental fantasy that lets its lonely protagonist off too easy?
Its footprint
Its whole aesthetic — high-waisted wool trousers, the mustache, that warm red-and-coral palette — is endlessly referenced, and the film became the default cultural shorthand for falling for your AI; when OpenAI launched its voice assistant in 2024, Sam Altman simply tweeted 'her'.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd staple and one of the defining films of the 2010s — the 'sad guy in a red shirt' canon entry that keeps climbing as reality catches up to it.
Did you know? Samantha Morton voiced the AI Samantha throughout the entire shoot, acting opposite Joaquin Phoenix from a soundproof booth — Jonze recast the role with Scarlett Johansson in post-production, and Johansson went on to win Best Actress at the Rome Film Festival for a performance with zero screen time.