"Why are you so lazy?" Meek's Cutoff director Kelly Reichardt jokingly asked filmmaker Spike Jonze after a dazzling montage of his music-video and feature-film work opened a Q&A session at the
TIFF Bell Lightbox Sunday afternoon at the Toronto Film Festival. Reichardt, who sheepishly confessed to being capable of doing only one thing at a time, was clearly in awe of Jonze's energetic, inventive approach to his craft, which encompasses landmark videos for the likes of Bjork, Beastie Boys and Weezer and such mind-bending movies as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are.
The event was designed to pique interest in Jonze's new film, Her, and the sequences presented by the director more than accomplished that goal. Written by Jonze very much in the mode of his former collaborator Charlie Kaufman, Her is a satire of our increasing disconnectivity with real human interaction thanks to all the modern electronic devices that command our attention. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, a "creative writer" at a company that composes poignant audio-letters for those too busy or lacking in confidence to pour out their hearts on their own.
When Theodore brings home a new computer with a virtual personal assistant (think Apple's Siri with unlimited terrabytes of personality), he's amazed by how natural, responsive and utterly disarming she is. Voiced by Scarlett Johansson, she calls herself Samantha (after a microsecond scan of a book of names) and is the perfect companion. Soon, she and Theodore are having an affair...of sorts.
As in Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, Jonze takes an outlandish situation and treats it in a wry, low-key manner that gives the surreal a patina of realism; the believable character interactions and the avoidance of rib-poking make the comic conceits more droll. I can't wait to see the finished film when it debuts as the closing-night attraction at the New York Film Festival.
Jonze and Reichardt, who are clearly good friends and mutual admirers, indulged in some good-natured joshing, especially when Jonze praised the "feminine" qualities of his new (male) cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema and Reichardt grilled him on whether that was a compliment or condescension. When an audience member wondered whether Jonze was seeing signs of his influence among newer filmmakers, Reichardt observed, "I think he just called you old."
In all, Jonze came across as humble and the kind of filmmaker who encourages play on his sets. "I work with people I'm close to," he said, "and I like to try out my ideas on my friends." His method on his Beastie Boys videos, for instance, was simply a matter of "cracking ourselves up" and turning those antics into MTV staples. His friend and fellow music-video pioneer Michel Gondry was a big influence; although Gondry was constantly experimenting with visual effects, his videos always had their own unique personality.
Jonze has been in the editing room for 14 months with Her, and the final version is yet to be locked. The editing process is when he "finds" the movie. For him, the message of Her and what it says about man and machine is still being crystallized. "It's about the way we connect, the way we long to connect." And though it's certainly about "how quickly technology has changed our lives," to his mind "it's always been a relationship movie."
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