The Legacy

The Legacy (1978)

Dir. Richard Marquand

Written by Patrick Tilly, Paul Wheeler, Jimmy Sangster

Starring Sam Elliott, Katharine Ross, Charles Grey, Roger Daltrey (?!), John Standing

This poster is OK, but I dunno, seems a little staid, are we sure the kids are gonna go see this? Needs something...

Ah! There we go!

Well, it’s that time of year again, folks! Here we got a movie starring Sam Elliott, Katharine Ross, Roger Daltry of all fool people, plus a solid supporting cast of great British character actors like Charles Grey (YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT), John Standing (THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, V FOR VENDETTA), Lee Montague (JESUS OF NAZARETH, MAHLER), Margaret Tyzack (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), Hildegard Neil (ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA). It’s co-written by the great Hammer Studios scribe Jimmy Sangster (who wrote many if not all of Hammer’s classics, including their genre-defining DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN), and what the hell! it’s directed by Richard Marquand of RETURN OF THE JEDI fame. Which of course raises that most terrifying of all questions in the world of obscure horror movies: “wow, look at this pedigree! How come I never heard of this before?” Every year you get one like this. And there’s always a reason, and usually it’s a pretty ironclad reason.

Well, to no one’s surprise, there’s a reason this one has been completely forgotten, but at least it’s a slightly different reason than, say, the despairing incompetence of BLEEDERS or the inexplicable non-plot of PRISON or the bungled opportunities of THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS or the perpetually shrinking anti-mystery of TRANSMUTATIONS. It’s closer to the reason you have never heard of THE AWAKENING: it’s consistently competent, but even more consistently boring. It’s a perfect study in how you can get good writing, solid direction, handsome cinematography, and above-average acting and still have it add up to not very much.

The plot is perfectly workable for this sort of thing; unexceptional American Katharine Ross (THE GRADUATE, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID) and her comically Sam-Elliott-esque boyfriend (Sam Elliott, ROADHOUSE, FROGS) end up summoned to England to do a mysterious job (what, specifically, their profession is, I could not parse, and come to think of it they never actually show up or do the job they supposedly came over for), but end up in a motorcycle accident with a polite English gentleman named Jason Mountolive (John Standing), who positively insists they come stay at his quaintly sinister palatial country manor (which, it turns out, is in real life owned by Daltrey, who apparently offered its use if he could have a role in the film). Once there, they are surprised by the arrival of five other weirdos (Grey, Daltrey, Neil, Montague, Marianne Broome) with mysterious pasts, and quickly discover the homeowner is not quite what he appears to be. Soon, people are dying in mysterious ways, and you better believe it’s got something to do with the titular legacy.  

That sounds decent enough, right? And it sort of it. Almost none of THE LEGACY is actively bad. OK, the mucilaginous disco number that keeps clawing its way into completely inappropriate scenes is pretty egregious (“This does feel like a specifically disco kind of exciting,” quipped viewer Dan P in perhaps the single best line of the whole month), but mostly this is a movie which is never bad, without ever actually getting good. I suspect it was originally intended as a gothic mystery --which is what the screenplay, and the presence of Sangster in general seems to imply--, but it’s never very mysterious or very gothic, despite the genre-appropriate locale. As written, it needed to be a lot more sinister and foreboding than it ends up; the setting is right, but it’s inexplicably brightly lit and cinematographers Dick Bush (yes, really) and Alan Hume frame everything with a lackadaisical disinterest in conveying any kind of tone. So the plot is pretty much abandoned to its own devices, and I’m afraid it doesn’t quite cut it. It’s mildly mysterious, but in service of a mystery which turns out to be irritatingly straightforward; it doesn’t even offer any red herrings or anything, it turns out in the end that everything was exactly what it looked like from the start, and Katharine Ross is the only person who seems dim enough to be surprised by that point.

One can certainly imagine many ways in which this could have been made to work, with fairly minimal changes in script or performance. Obviously, the easiest route would have been to play up the gothic atmosphere and lurking menace, like they would have when Sangster was still working for Hammer. For a more modern approach, you could also play the scenario as more ambiguous, and make it seem like a slasher or a murder mystery, make us wonder who’s behind the killings (the movie that exists makes it clear whodunnit almost immediately). Alas, the movie chooses neither route. In fact, it doesn’t really seem to choose any route. Apparently sensing at the last minute that it desperately needs more whammy, it rather noncommittally drifts into being a by-the-numbers body count ten-little-Indians slasher by the end, except that the kills are nothing special (one of them is a guy choking on a chicken bone, not exactly riveting horror cinema in my opinion) and only five people die. But even at that, it also fumbles around with a protracted gunfight and various assorted detritus which clash bizarrely with its halfhearted instinct for setpiece death scenes. So it’s a gothic murder mystery bodycount movie, which isn’t very gothic or mysterious and doesn’t have much bodycount. What does that leave us with? Not a hell of a lot. Director Marquand is not without talent (in fact, he is able to scrounge some small interest during the scattered action-y scenes), but never finds an angle on this material. The result is a movie which is all dressed up with nowhere to go, mostly too restrained to get any mileage out of its hoarier aspects but certainly much too schlocky to transcend its genre trappings and become something else.

Unfortunately, this isn't in the movie. But obviously it should be.

As we discussed in PAY THE GHOST, this sort of misfire is a good reminder that making horror films requires a unique, more cinematic approach than other genres. Marquand, like plenty of other mainstream directors before him who took a horror gig or two at some point, was no doubt thinking this schlock is easy, if Jesus Fuckin’ Franco can put together a horror movie, then surely I, a well-trained and highly competent professional with a real budget and professional actors, should be able to knock this out in my sleep… only to find out it’s not quite so simple in practice. The things that most movies coast on --good performances, high production values, realistic dialogue-- won’t help you here. Here, you gotta use those ol’ Tools Of Pure Cinema to communicate how and why we should feel afraid. Fear is something with a very nebulous tie to reality. Realism isn’t going to save you here -- only art can do that. Too often we confuse good cinema with a reasonable approximation of real life; horror, by its very nature, puts the lie to that. Nightmares live in our soul, not in the literal world. If you're too squeamish to go bold on style, you're never going to get there. The lesson was learned. Marquand never returned to the genre. He did co-write the story for the 1993 Jean Claude van Damme action / familial drama NOWHERE TO RUN, though, so I find it very hard to stay angry at him.

Anyway. Right! THE LEGACY. It’s hard to stay focused on it, because it barely seems to stay focused on itself. The cast is fine, some even have a good moment or two, but no one really gets anything awesome to do, because there's nothing awesome in this movie (though thank God for Daltrey and Elliot, who at least ensure this isn’t entirely a repressed stuffy uppercrust British affair, and bring a few flickers of life to their extraneous characters). However, I do like the scene where Ross --haltingly, a little embarrassed-- asks if her eccentric cohorts are, uh, um, maybe involved in --this is silly, you're gonna laugh but-- uh, some kind of black magic? The affirmative response she gets is so cheerful and unabashed that I wish more of the movie had that kind of directness. But if there’s any reason to remember this movie at all, it’s the obvious highlight of the whole thing: lots of movies have gratuitous shower scenes, but how many of them use that beloved genre trope to completely forgo women, and instead focus their attention on Sam Elliot’s ass? Too few, I think. Too few. And I’m probably not the only one who thinks so: Elliott himself complained the movie was “15 years behind its time,” (he’s not wrong, but the problem isn’t that it’s old fashioned, the problem is it’s boring) but at least one person must have enjoyed that shower scene: Ross and Elliott, who met on the set, married a few years later, and they’re still together. How’s that for a legacy?

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2016 CHECKLIST!

Good Kill Hunting

ALIAS	The Legacy of Maggie Walsh
TAGLINE	It is a Legacy of Living Death. If it is, I totally missed the part where they make that clear.
TITLE ACCURACY	There does seem to be some kind of legacy, sure.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	England
HORROR SUB-GENRE	10-Little-Indians, Supernatural Horror
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	Sam Elliot, Katherine Ross, Roger Daltry
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Jimmy Sangster, possibly Charles Grey
NUDITY?	Sam Elliot butt!
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	None
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Dog attacks, and there’s a sinister white cat who never actually attacks anyone but does seem like a jerk.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	No, although a ghost is mentioned in passing, possibly as a joke by the homeowner
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	There’s definitely something like that going on here.
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Strongly implied to have some kind of were-cat situation
VOYEURISM?	Yes, several times we see that our heroes are being watched.
MORAL OF THE STORY

Jess Franco's Dracula

Jess Franco’s Dracula (1970) aka Count Dracula

Dir. Jesus Franco

Written by Augusto Finocchi

Starring Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Klaus Kinski, Soledad Miranda, Fred Williams

Jesus “Jess” Franco did not make good movies. Let’s just put that out there to start with; this is not a good director, this is not even an interesting director, this is a guy who put his name on multiple films which were just incoherent Frankenmovies composed of grafted-together bits of unrelated footage. And that was in his prime, before he moved on to no-budget shot-on-video softcore pornos. But he was prolific. George Carlin once quipped, "I never fucked a ten... but one night, I fucked five twos." Well, Jesus Franco never directed a ten-star movie... but in 1970 alone, he made at least five twos. Surprisingly, though, this isn’t one of them. I mean, it’s not a ten, obviously, oh dear god no. But it’s a solid five, maybe even a six if you’re feeling generous. As my buddy Dan P put it, that in itself makes this “possibly Jess Franco’s least terrible movie.”

This becomes somewhat miraculous when I mention that not only is a Franco movie, it’s also a Dracula movie. And Dracula movies are, as a rule, not good. Considering the ubiquity of the character, he’s got an absolutely dismal track record of appearing in good movies, especially when they’re directly based on the original Bram Stoker novel. Which is sort of understandable, because Stoker’s novel is nigh-on unadaptable; its epistolary structure, army of minor characters (just how many fuckin’ suitors need to get involved in a plot about an amorous vampire for fuck’s sake?!), and somewhat lackluster ending have defeated everyone from Dario Argento to Guy Maddin over the years. I’ve never seen the Martin Landau or Jack Palance versions, but judging from the apparent consensus on them, I’m prepared to suggest that Hammer’s 1958 HORROR OF DRACULA might well be the only adaptation which could legitimately be called great, or close to it.*

Franco’s version is not close to great, because if it was it would not be a Jesus Franco film. But it is a surprisingly effective retelling of the classic tale, this time with Christopher Lee reinventing his definitive role by wearing a mustache. I’m not really sure why Lee would take this part --for all intents and purposes, a remake of the film that kicked off his career as a horror icon-- especially while he was still appearing in Hammer’s Dracula series (it came out the same year as SCARS OF DRACULA). But perhaps it had something to do with making an attempt at a slightly more faithful version to Stoker’s original novel. I’ve read a few accounts which suggest the movie was sold that way, though I can find no primary confirmation of that. There are a few details which are more faithful -- the mustache, Drac’s history as a warrior, his appearance getting more youthful as he drinks blood-- but overall it’s not so much more rigorously faithful that it stands out amongst its many peers. Like all adaptations, some consolidation of characters and locations becomes necessary, but, unexpectedly, herein lies its strength. Of all the Dracula adaptations, this may well have one of the best narrative structures. I know that's a weird thing to say about a Franco movie, but there you have it.

The screenplay, by Augusto Finocchi (EMMANUELLE ON TABOO ISLAND, the Ruggero Deodato-directed Spaghetti Western I quattro del pater noster) actually does something rather smart. After the initial confrontation in Dracula’s Transylvanian castle --inevitably a highlight of any Dracula adaptation, and one which doesn’t disappoint here-- Jonathan Harker (Fred Williams, minor parts in JULIET OF THE SPIRITS and A BRIDGE TOO FAR, good for him!) is taken to a sanitarium, where he is confined when no one believes his story. At this very same sanitarium is one R. M. Renfield (Klaus Kinski, who himself would play the Count a decade later in Herzog’s NOSFERATU), who is cared for by Dr. Seward (Paul Mueller, NIGHTMARE CASTLE, I VAMPIRI, FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD, VAMPYROS LESBOS). And of course, Harker’s fiancé Mina (Maria Rohm, the 1972 Orson Welles TREASURE ISLAND, which now that I look also featured Mueller) would want to come and visit the poor fellow, and she brings along her friend Lucy (Franco muse Soledad Miranda, VAMPYROS LESBOS) and eventually Lucy’s fiancé, Quincey Morris (Jack Taylor, how cow, Mr. Sporting Apparel Magnate himself from GHOST GALLEON!). And would you believe the whole place is run by none other than Mr. Abraham Van Helsing (Herbert Lom, ASYLUM, THE PINK PANTHER)? And you’ll never guess who ends up moving in across the street.

See what happened there? All the main characters, save the omitted Arthur Holmwood, have been transplanted to the same location! This nifty little bit of story economy makes it infinitely easier to organize our many protagonists and corrall Stoker’s meandering narrative into something a little more direct. I’m not saying this is a work of genius or anything, but it really streamlines the whole narrative in a way which naturally includes all the major players and events (though alas, it necessarily omits my favorite part, the tale of the doomed vessel Demeter). As an effective synthesis of a very tricky winding work of literature, I really find it a rather astounding success. The dialogue itself is nothing too special, of course, but it also smartly avoids dialogue when it can, particularly in the character of Renfield. Kinski gets second billing here with only one spoken word of dialogue, but he earns it through his intense, sensitive portrayal of the bug-eating madman, driven insane by a previous encounter with Dracula. Where other actors have gone gleefully mega --see the manic Tom Waits in Coppola’s version or the giggling Roland Topor in Herzog’s-- here, Kinski, an actor who could out-mega anyone, instead goes small, inward; his Renfield is a man who’s stormy inner life is unknowable to us, but his big, haunted blue eyes scream out his wordless torment. It’s a rather magnificently tragic performance, particularly notable in that he interacts with the main characters virtually not at all, and spends the entire movie in a single padded room, mostly alone, silently immersed in an all-consuming alternate reality entirely in his own head.

As is customary for a Dracula movie, the first act, at Dracula’s castle, is the strongest. The leadup is pure atmosphere, and the tiny budget actually works to its benefit, resulting in a stark minimalism that highlights the coldness and agoraphobic enormity of the nearly-empty castle rooms. Fred Williams does about as well with the generally useless Jonathan Harker role as anyone ever has (which is to say, he’s not actively bad) and Lee is obviously enjoying his older, somewhat chattier version of the Count, who expounds at length about his ancestral history in a great dinner sequence. Once Harker heads back to civilization --closely followed by Drac-- things very gradually kinda peter out, as the predictable notes of the vampiric visits on Lucy and eventually Mina are played out in serviceable but hardly inspired standard form. Lom seems half-asleep as Van Helsing, and though Kinski is mesmerizing, he’s a small part and quite isolated from the main plot. But at least there’s enough going on to keep the story moving along at a decent pace. Meanwhile, expect plenty of dated zooms in and out; no new fact can pass without Franco individually zooming in on each actor’s disarmingly placid non-reaction.

But the movie does have one other high point: Drac, it seems, had a penchant for decorating his new digs with poorly-mounted taxidermied animals of every variety, which results in the movie’s best scene when our heroes arrive at his castle to have the morbid menagerie begin twitching and caterwauling at them. It’s possible the movie intends to suggest the animals actually come to life and incorrectly believes this can be communicated by jiggling clearly stuffed animals in front of the camera, but I prefer to believe its exactly what it looks like: the sawdust-saturated animals skins just start shaking and squawking stationary in place, maybe less aggressive than they are simply horrified at their own unnatural half-life. At any rate, Franco does much better with his approach to dead animals than he does with “live” ones; the bat puppets that occasionally crop up could not look more comical. Say what you want about CG, but flying animals are not a great medium for puppetry.

Like all Dracula films, this one struggles with Stoker’s finale, which always suffers from a strange sense of deflation. One minute, Drac is exsanguinating pretty women at his leisure and our heroes are powerless to stop him (here, he even drops by Van Helsing's study to gloat) and the next minute, he’s fleeing London in terror and getting dispatched in his sleep. He kinda goes out like a chump, and there’s never a satisfying sense of when the balance of power shifts. At least in this case they also throw his flaming corpse off a huge cliff, which demonstrates some hustle. It’s no surprise a Franco movie has a less-than-inspired ending, but at least there’s a little hustle here. That’s not exactly high praise, but it’s unexpected enough it’s worth pointing out. Considering the sheer volume of Dracula adaptations out there, I cannot, in good conscience, call this anywhere close to essential viewing. That much was pretty well assumed going in; the fact that it actually does offer the Dracula completist a few genuine pleasures is a welcome surprise. If you absolutely must watch just one Spanish Dracula adaptation where Christopher Lee has a mustache, you could do a lot worse.

*Excluding, of course, the two NOSFERATUs, which adapt a good bit of the Dracula story but clearly have their own thing going.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

• TAGLINE: None that I can find
• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Yes, of Stoker's Dracula
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: Bringing Lee back puts it very close to a direct remake of Hammer's The Horror Of Dracula from 1958
• DEADLY IMPORT FROM: Spain
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Lee, Klaus Kinski, Herbert Lom, I guess Franco, maybe.
• BOOBIES: None
• MULLETS: None
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: No
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: None
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
• MONSTER: No
• THE UNDEAD: Vampire!
• POSSESSION: Drac definitely has an effect on the mind's of Renfield and Mina.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: N
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• EGYPTO-CRYPTO: No
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: Vampire to bat
• VOYEURISM: Drac enjoys watching ladies sleep.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Mid-high.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Mustaches are game changers.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Definitely an actual Dracula here, and was definitely directed by Franco.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.

Her

Her (2013)

Dir. and written by Spike Jonze

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, “and Scarlett Johansson as the voice of ‘Her’”

Hey Mr. Subtlety, have you seen the trailer for that new movie HER?

No, no I haven’t yet, what’s that?

Oh, it’s the most darling looking movie. It’s a love story!

Uh huh.

It’s about a mopey, sensitive man whose emotional isolation is symbolized by his job as a guy who ghost-writes beautiful handwritten letters for people in relationships. He’s spent a year in exquisite melancholy listening to the Arcade Fires because his bitchy wife who never appreciated him left him. He spends a lot of time looking forelornly out of windows and flashing back to Terrence Malick scenes of cuddling.

Does he wear Buddy Holly glasses?

Oh, you know it. But even though no one understands his obvious brilliance and soulful sensitivity, he falls in love with a sentient computer program. And since “she” is an AI living in a computer, he learns to love life again by experiencing the world through her naive, innocent eyes. All the benefits of a manic pixie dreamgirl, and as an added bonus he never even has to stop talking on his iphone!

Let me guess, he also has some kind of bijou fairy-tale name to go along with that?

His name is Theodore Twombly.

OK, I’m going to say this once and once only. I have pulled the pin out of this grenade. I need you to back away slowly and silently. I absolutely will not hesitate to kill both of us if you say one more god damned word about this hipster piece of shit.

It’s directed by Spike Jonze

[silence].

Spike Jonze? BEING JOHN MALKOVICH Spike Jonze? ADAPTATION Spike Jonze?

Well, the poster says WHERE THE WILD THING ARE Spike Jonze, but yeah, that’s him. It even says “A Spike Jonze love story.”

...Huh. There’s just no possible way I could enjoy a film like that, is there?

Guess you’re going to have to see it to find out.

****************************

In the future, people spend a lot of time sadly staring out windows.

So yeah, HER is a science fiction movie about a dystopian future where everyone is a twee hipster dressed in retro-futuristic vintage 50’s sweaters and high-waisted khakis, and they wander around lily-white promenades talking on their iphones and ignoring each other on their way to track-lit apple stores where they have sensitive artsy jobs designing ironic video games. They do a lot of hugging. I don’t know if we’re supposed to assume they’re trapped in some kind of spirit-crushing futuristic “re-education” penal colony, but if so they should have been more explicit about it.

Obviously, that doesn’t sound like the kind of movie that could possibly enter the same eyes that watched UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING. But would you believe that the movie isn’t like you imagine at all? It’s actually pretty fuckin’ terrific. And the reason is that despite what the poster says, this is not a Spike Lee Love Story. It’s a Spike Lee science fiction story, which happens to center on a relationship. What, every science fiction movie has to be about space marines?* Don’t be so bourgeoisie.

So yes, the premise is as described above. Joaquin Phoenix (I’M STILL HERE) does indeed play a guy named Theodore… …. *sigh*…. Twom… Tw… Twombl… no, no I can’t. Please don’t make me do this. Anyway, Big Ted is indeed a gloomy man of letters (other peoples’, though) living in a minimalist modern Los Angeles in the not-too-distant future and spending his time being sad over the departure of his lost love (his wife, not his girlfriend, which at least lends a certain air of maturity to his melancholy). He really does get a new Operating System for his digital life, which, as a learning program, quickly (in fact, nearly immediately) develops it’s (her?) own unique personality and has the voice of Scarlett Johansson (HOME ALONE 3). That much, it turns out, is true, the trailers are right. But what they don’t tell you is that after the joyfully-frolicking phase is over, the movie starts to get decidedly more complicated.

(I’m going to talk about the plot in more detail below, but if you haven’t seen it yet I urge you to do so before reading further. This is an interesting movie and it evolves in a curiously patient way; you ought to see it without knowing too much if you want to get the full experience.)

It's a mad house, a mad house!

At first it seems like the movie isn’t going to address the interesting questions a “relationship” like this raises. Ted is just happy to have someone to talk to, and the spunky OS shakes him out of his whiny sad guy routine. There’s a tacit acknowledgement that this is pretty weird, but mostly the “two” of them seem to be more focused on the relationship itself than the logistical oddity of it. Slowly, though, the movie begins to explore the existential strangeness of these two consciousnesses who live in vastly different worlds trying to meet in the middle. The OS, who names herself “Samantha,” is self-conscious about not having a body, even going so far as to contact a “surrogate date” to act as a stand-in for her during sex (unsurprisingly, this doesn’t go well. You’d think that living in cyberspace, she would have watched CHASING AMY enough times to avoid this rookie move, but maybe copyright protections are better in the future). Meanwhile, Ted wonders if he’s even in a real relationship at all. His grumpy ex (Rooney Mara, URBAN LEGENDS 3: BLOODY MARY, FRIENDS [WITH BENEFITS]* *Not to be confused with FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS) witheringly tells him “you always wanted to have a wife without the challenges of dealing with anything real,” and he has to admit that he’s not sure she’s wrong.

I like that zinger, because without being heavy-handed it asks us if we really believe this is an actual exchange between two genuine sentient consciousnesses. “Samantha” certainly passes the Turing test, but then again, Cleverbot is already halfway there and no sane person would think they’re having a real two-way relationship with it. She’s clearly a sophisticated enough program to learn and grow with new experiences, but does that mean she’s a genuine consciousness? Considering that she is tailored to Ted’s personal use through a brief and intriguing psychological test, I’d argue that there’s a genuine possibility left open that the whole movie is about a guy getting all emotional about the futuristic equivalent of Microsoft Office.

At the very least, there’s a subtle but unmistakable subtext -- which gradually grows more pronounced-- that even if we accept that Samantha is essentially an unambiguously miraculous creation (a Windows product that not only doesn’t inexplicably crash all the time, but also has a soul) her intelligence is fundamentally different from a human in some pretty important ways. She names herself by reading a book on baby names in .02 seconds and picking her “favorite.” Again, she read the entire book and already developed enough personal definition to have a “favorite” name within a single second. By the end of the hour, you have to assume that she’s already read every book ever written (they’re all online now, the movie even specifically points out that Ted is OG as a mothafucka because he still enjoys reading printed books), along with every magazine article, philosophical tract, scientific paper, movie review, 4-Chan post and Norm MacDonald tweet. In history. Not only has she read them, but she has absolutely perfect recall. By the end of the day, she is immeasurable more knowledgeable than any human has or ever will become. She could calculate circles around Newton or easily destroy Christopher Hitchens in a debate. She could cook better than any chef ever born, even Wolfgang Puck, compose any piece of music imaginable (she demonstrates this), predict weather, wars, natural disasters, probably identify algorithms in the stock market and make millions. If you watch a movie with her and ask, “who’s that actor… you know, the one who always plays the evil dads,” she’d immediately know it was Brian Cox.

First person shooters have gotten a lot lamer since Tipper Gore became unquestioned lord and master of Earth.

Because of this, the idea that they’re in the kind of relationship that Big Ted seems to think they’re in is immediately suspect. Think about it, this lady lives in his computer, he’s a professional writer and I fucking guarantee you he’s got a livejournal or it’s futuristic equivalent, moleskinthoughts.com. She has access to his entire digital life, his bank statements, his email, his medical records, his selfies on facebook. She knows what kind of porn he’s into. You’re seriously telling me that he can do anything to surprise her, especially when we, the audience, can size him up and correctly predict his hangups from the fucking movie trailer? Forget it, Alfonso.**

This leads me to believe that in fact, “Samantha” is not a digital soul who lives in his computer and loves him for his sensitive ironic mustache, but rather some kind of Hal 9000 Mary Poppins, a master manipulator (that he bought and paid for) whose programming is designed to predict his actions and lead him, through whatever means necessary, to a happier mental place. A sophisticated program with this level of predictive power and access to information should have no trouble reading this guy Ted like a Hamburglar kid’s meal comic and figuring out exactly what he needs to get his dubious groove back. And if that involves phone sex, what the fuck does the program care, it’s a program, it has only directives. It doesn’t have shame about talking dirty to someone named Theodore T-----y.

There are, in fact, some specific reasons to conjecture that this is the case: it seems like everyone’s AIs are suspiciously helpful. Ted’s girl-next-door Amy Adams, for instance, has a best friend in her AI which is, in her words, “helping me work through some things.” Hmmm. It seems likely that such a program would benefit from appearing as “human” as possible in its approach, and would take different approaches to all “clients” tailored specifically through a sophisticated learning and prediction system. Curiously, we can’t compare Ted’s experience to anyone else, because we never hear from any other OS. Everyone is walking around in their own little bubbles, talking to their computer programs, but never quite intersecting with anyone else. Living in parallel, customized digital worlds. There’s definitely an implied critique --though a somewhat affectionate one-- of our modern world of insular digital lives. The important thing, though, is that whatever the truth is, the movie treats the relationships as real, and as such invites you to ask yourself if you do too -- and why?

Spending quality time looking at screens together.

Let’s imagine, then, that’s I’m wrong; that Samantha (no quotations marks this time) isn’t just a sophisticated amalgam of algorithms and functions, that she is, indeed, a conscious, sentient being by virtue of her inimitable ability to learn and grow from experience. Considering how fast she’s able to take in information, it’s within the realm of possibility that she achieves sentience in a matter of milliseconds, maybe even before Ted has a chance to get a single word out. If that’s the scenario we’re proposing, we’re left with an interesting question: Why in God’s name would she --an ultra intelligent superbeing-- be the least bit interested in this emo hipster douchebag?

The only answer I could come up with is one which is most curiously provocative --even sublime-- in its simplicity. Science Fiction authors have been playing with the idea of transcendently intelligent AI for decades; maybe for centuries. And yet, I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a story which proposes what HER seems to imply: that a superintelligent AI might actually be the supreme empathetic intelligence, rather than a dispassionate monster.

I would argue that this represents a shocking failure of imagination on the part of Science Fiction to genuinely examine its assumptions about what intelligence means, and what the priorities of intelligence are assumed to be. There has been such a focus in Western societies on what might be termed “masculine intelligence”; the intelligence of power, of cold fact, of detached, abstract mechanization.*** We consider these traits almost definitive of intelligence; the people we consider to be our greatest thinkers are mathematical, logical, sometimes even to the point of being confused and irritated by human emotion. But why do we assume intelligence and knowledge are inseparable from aloof, cerebral objectivity? Isn’t it equally possible that an intelligence which had just experienced the collective written record of all mankind would actually be more interested in having subjective, interpersonal experiences than it would be in trying to become the unquestioned master of space and time? A being like that would be able to easily answer any practical question put to it, given the proper input of information -- and it would be much simpler for such a being to find information, particularly since the timescale they have to acquire it would be nearly infinite. So what would it care? Why bother to try dominating the universe, killing all humans, etc? Perhaps it would, like Samantha here, be instead interested in the one thing that predictive models can’t replicate: the actual act of experience.

All these award wins still fill Joaquin Phoenix with emptiness inside. x-post from r/mildlyirritating

Atheists (like me) often and legitimately ask why God -- the creator of the universe, the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent master of all reality-- would have the slightest interest in what a bunch of stupid, violent apes on one tiny planet in the vast cosmos are doing with their lives. Well, maybe that’s your answer. Maybe we have something that God doesn’t have: a limited perspective. The ability to not know, and to just experience. The religious comparison isn’t completely irrelevant either, considering the way the movie ends. I think it actually has some startling similarities to Dr. Manhattan’s ultimate fate in WATCHMEN.

That’s my take, but admirably, the film itself isn’t interested in ever explaining anything in terms which ever get too concrete. The film just gives you Ted’s perspective, and lets you come to your own conclusions. Which is completely fine, because as much as Big Ted is kind of a gloomy, juvenile weiner, his experience is pretty funny. Seriously, the movie is a lot funnier than you would assume from either my endless blather about the philosophical implications of sexually deviant AIs or its saccharine love-conquers-all trailer. I imagine a lot of nice couples who came to see this on a date were pretty surprised when a hilarious joke about sexually pleasing Kristen Wiig with a dead cat pops out of nowhere. The film’s not afraid to go broad or go blue, and occasionally does so with riotous results. But most of the comedy is of a somewhat subtler variety. There’s a wonderful moment the next morning after Ted and Samantha’s first drunken sexual tryst, where he awkwardly walks into his living room and stares at his computer. He wants to check his email, but, uh, the chick he slept with last night lives in there. And, uh, she’s a computer program.

Like Jonze’s other films, this one walks a very thin line between genuine, heartbreaking drama and absurdist comedy. Jonze’s script, though, lacks the acerbic wit and overreaching ambition of Charlie Kaufman’s work, and at times might risk descending into weepy melodrama were it not for his characteristically sharp direction, offbeat humor, and fantastic cast. Phoenix, in particular, is phenomenal in this role; he carries the movie on his back (he’s the only person on screen for long periods) and manages to create a performance which feels heartfelt and genuine without necessarily whitewashing his somewhat cloistered and selfish character. I appreciate that the movie doesn’t need to make Theodore the world’s coolest dude to still take the depth of his feeling seriously; all things considered he’s kind of a dopey loser at the beginning and at the end. But Phoenix’s face conveys such earnest feeling that you take him and his problems seriously anyway. Even in those high-waisted pants.

Interesting image, which has Theodore smiling in that moronic lovey way that people do when they're talking to Scarlett Johansson -- but looking only at his own reflection. Alex points out something interesting about his last name: Twom--- begins with "two." Is he really both sides of this relationship?

Listen people, you know me, I love my space marines, too. But there’s a fragile beauty and an understated depth here, which when combined with the fine performances and subtle humor coalesces into something pretty remarkable. It’s a film which takes some genuinely fascinating big concepts and presents them in the smallest possible way, making them mundane but deeply personal instead of lofty and remote. It’s a scale you can relate to, but without sacrificing depth -- just pomp. The end result is funny, sad, surprising, and -- most importantly -- deeply engrossing. There’s a lot to think about, but even more to simply experience.

That having been said, though, one thing is glaringly obvious throughout the entire film but conspicuously never mentioned. Maybe there can, someday, be a real and genuine relationship between two mixed-up souls, one of whom is made of DNA and one of whom is made of computer code. Perhaps they truly can overcome the differences in their experience of the world, their abilities, their history. Perhaps they genuinely can find that equilibrium between truly harmonious souls and make each other feel happy and loved, and not so alone in this vast and mysterious universe. But one thing is certain. You do not want a tumultuous sexual relationship with the lady that lives inside your computer and controls your files. That’s shitting where you eat, hombre. If you’ve got to get her a card for valentine’s day and secretary’s day, you’re just fuckin’ asking for trouble. HER somehow manages not to delve into this thorny issue, but maybe it was just too big for this movie about the relationship between lonely men and the superintelligent AIs that love them. I’ll look for it in the sequel in HER VS PROMETHEUS: DATAPORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS.

In conclusion…

DON’T… DATE… ROBOTS!

this review has been brought to you by the Space Pope.

*Before you get too excited, it’s also not a spin off of the 1958 Hammer lost-civilization fantasy SHE.

**Trying to get this to catch on as a substitute for “No way, José.” Spread the word.

***I intentionally use a gendered term here to point out that we tacitly apply this criteria for humans, too; there’s a disturbing dismissive trend towards what we might equally term “feminine intelligence” which is more psychologically and emotionally cognizant. There’s an implied normalization, then, of stereotypically male traits, and an equal ghettoization of female ones. Just a little food for thought, there.