Her has become one of the classically artistic pieces of cinema that remain removed from its genre and contemporaries because of its association with the futuristic vision of sci-fi and its current world setting. And yet, Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson tie the film together, giving it a niche that is veritably its own, belonging to a crowd that is perpetually saddened by the impossibility of finding love, losing it, only to find it once again and despairing after its pseudo-fictional, incorporeal form.
Scarlett Johansson – who tore into the frazzled emotions of the audience with nothing but her voice – also aided in being the counterpart to her co-star’s explosive and nerve-racking performance in the film, but not everything came easily to the troubled brilliance of Joaquin Phoenix.
Joaquin Phoenix Leaves Scarlett Johansson Stranded On Set
In the years since Her, an entire demography exists that has not been able to recollect a memory, a sound bite, or a visual from the film without crumbling to the depths of insurmountable grief that first overtook them after watching the film. Being able to make people live perpetually on the edge of such a paralyzing tragedy was the brilliance of the film and to have partook in making the story come alive immediately makes Joaquin Pheonix and Scarlett Johansson the artists of the collective masterpiece that is their ironic, endearing, doomed, eclipsing, and glorified love story.
However beautiful and iconic the narrative may seem, the making of the Spike Jonze film faced its fair share of troubles while filming. During an interview with Dax Shepherd, Scarlett Johansson recalled an incident on set that definitively stood out:
“You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having a fake orgasm. I remember we came in that day. I’ve become that actor that’s like ‘let’s get dirty.’ I have to, because otherwise I’ll be petrified. Joaquin comes in, we try to get through one take and he was, like, losing it. He was like ‘I can’t do it.’
He had already [filmed the scene], he had done it in person, and now he was with me in this weird theatre and I’m in this box, and he was like staring at me, and the lights are low, and Spike is there… it was so bizarre. I was fine. Joaquin was not. He was so upset about it. He left the studio, and now I’m in this box by myself and I’m like, ‘I can’t do it alone. I need him to come back.’ He needed a break; he took a break and he came back in.”
Film sets have, in the past, been through moments of unease where actors have had to be in compromising positions without the aid of necessary precautions to make the process easier. Even in 2013, it seems as though intimacy coordinators were not ubiquitous around Hollywood sets.
Her Marks a Definitive Shift in Modern-Day Storytelling
The mastery over the craft can absolutely be witnessed in Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson’s reinvention of love and romance in the modern age. With Black Mirror setting a precedence in the genre, Her goes a step beyond to build hope against all adversity, adopting the natural progression of the heart rather than Black Mirror‘s outright fatalism.
The movie, which came out a decade ago, marks one of the most brilliant creations of recent Hollywood that is as rooted in the days of old simplicity and familiar happiness as it finds itself torn up in the mirage of endless possibilities that the scientifically progressed future has to offer to mankind’s limited palette.
Her is available for streaming on Prime Video.
Source: Armchair Expert
