Her Wins Best Original Screenplay (2013)
Earlier in this list, I wrote about a beguiling sci-fi romance that merged an imaginative concept with a poignant romantic core called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That film was co-written by Charlie Kaufman, whom had two of his best works brought to the screen by a man named Spike Jonze. It worked out to Jonze’s benefit that his first feature-length original screenplay outing owed some of its brazen originality and heart to Kaufman’s earlier Oscar winner.
Nevertheless, Her was a film all of its own, a deeply moving and honest piece of work that also reportedly frightened Kaufman when that filmmaker saw it. Its social and cultural scene, where humans are constantly plugged in to technology and even find themselves enamored in a deep romance with an operating system, seemed both bewildering and completely real and tapped into the zeitgeist. As our love-hate relationship to the tech world becomes more complex, it was refreshing to see a drama look at the way we live now and treat each other in an increasingly impersonal environment. It was also pure fun to watch just how romantic a film about supercomputers could be.
Jonze has never made a poor movie, or even one that was merely good, and so to watch him walk up to the podium for a risky, revealing screenplay was great to see. He spent his career making odd films that focused on strange characters in peculiar situations – Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are – yet he also brought humanity and spirit to each of these stories. (Fans of Her should also check out his terrific sci-fi short, “I’m Here,” with Andrew Garfield.) Once a virtuoso music video director, it has been truly wondrous to watch Jonze find his way as a feature director and, now, screenwriter.