A fine film, I have always believed, is the one that privileges its form and frames its story such. Spike Jonze (director) understands this…he is in love with his craft and accords it the respect it deserves.

Strip the mis-en-scen of Her from its sound and dialogues and the visual imagery on screen will stand on firm, independent feet to tell a narrative. Hoyte van Hotema (director of photography) captures the contemporary urbanized landscape and yet superimposes a silence alien to this city experience. The lit, city silhouette shot by the glass window of an apartment or by the terrace, in a silent moment of quietude creates a contradiction between the aural and visual. This foregrounds the contemporary irony of the felt alienation of the city dweller in the midst of millions.

Conventionally, city narratives allow the cityscape to overwhelm and dominate the reel life just as it does the characters in real life. But Hotema’s camera closes in on the protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix) time and again. The close, claustrophobic shots aim at alienating, almost minimizing the presence of the steel structures of the city. The audience is lured into the emotional and psychological reality of the protagonist who is looking for intimacy, solace, love, warmth and acceptance. Even when the bright panel of warm, saturated colours fill the interior setting of the office space, it is accompanied by stretched silence that makes the chaotic work space more surreal than real. Once again, it is not about the external space of the environment as much as about the inner space of the minds of the characters.

The pivotal cornerstone on which the plot of Her stands is the age-old tete-a-tete between modern artificiality and natural Romanticism. Juxtaposed against the contemporary, minimalist modern interior space is the rare outdoor space of Nature but the latter is not seen as a liberation or escape from the former. In fact, Nature and Modernity converge in images like that of the elevator where black silhouettes of leaves and branches exist as a grotesque reminder of the artificial world the characters find themselves inadvertently trapped in. The conflict of the plot is laid bare thus: the confrontation of inherent, human emotions with the technologically mutated, inhuman superstructures that the 21^st century has presented the developed and developing worlds with.

To define, decode and deconstruct this unusual love story between the protagonist and the voice of an operating system is the most engaging and exhausting mental process and emotional journey for the viewer. For, like he layers his craft, Jonez also multi-facets his perspective on modern love stories and human relationships. Once again, juxtaposition becomes his favoured narrative choice. Theodore’s (Phoenix) growing intimacy with Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johansson) is juxtaposed with the disintegrated marriage and divorce with his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara) and these two are further juxtaposed with the incompatible marriage between Amy (Amy Adams) and Charles (Matt Letscher) and the inter-cultural romance between Paul (Chris Patt) and Tatiana (Laura Kai Chen). The intention however after placing these parallels, is to leave the audience with questions, both complicated and comprehensive, accessible and evasive:

• Theodore’s first marriage was lived through all its physical reality of togetherness yet fails to withstand a long-standing emotional accommodation. Theodore’s relationship with Samantha constantly allows this space for emotional dialogue and openness. In the eventuality that both these relationships come to an end, can we pin longevity as a parameter for the test of a romantic relationship?
• Amy’s marriage with Paul is destined to fall apart due to the gendered domination of one over the other and the obligation of the written contract. Theodore, on the other hand, has all the freedom to change or shut down the OS and Samantha demands respect for her unique identity from minute one. Is marriage an evolution of romance or the reversal of space and respect? Also, what is the definition of a true marriage? Of the minds or of the bodies? Are the two mutually exclusive? Can the two ever co-exist?
•  Paul and Tatiana envision a life full of love and happiness. Samantha claims that Shakespearean eternity for her digitally formless self, which is ironically juxtaposed against the mortality of the flesh-and-bone humans. The spiritual questioning that the narrative erupts to the surface is this: do we love with our minds? Do we feel through our bodies? Do we physically compromise or emotionally overreach?

Answers may galore. For, the narrative is built in pure cinematic glory. Her is a story that prods, a song that haunts and a serenade that compels. The slow pace of editing and the smooth cuts are more exciting than exacerbating since each moment on reel seeks a reflection from and on the real.

Self-confessedly inspired by the narrative format of Paris, je t'aime and heavily influenced by literary movements, writers Aritra Sengupta and Ayanti Ghosh have scripted a competent play in the form of With Love, Calcutta. I deliberately and consciously mention the two spearheading Bengalis as writers and not directors for here is a rare stage production whose sole strength lies in the lines- a fact foreshadowed by the pamphlet handed over at the entrance with the “Synopsis” and the “Director’s Note” unmistakably pronounced for every member of the audience. 
An intellectually stringed ensemble of short vignettes act as lyrical odes to the City of Joy tracing its journey from Calcutta to Kolkata, from the old to the changing, from the colonial to the communal. The personified voice of the city opened the play with a highly stylized poetic monologue and its rendition was further heightened with the symbolic play with light and darkness. The lantern with its constant light and its flickering shadows almost visually set the theme of the stage- the convergence of the good and the bad in this beleaguered city of joy. The too contrite quality of the words in this monologue, if it overwhelmed the audience and got lost on them; the effective employment of lights made up for setting the mood.They usually say that film is the sixth art that encompasses all the other existing art forms in order to express and communicate. The multi-platform and multimedia approach adopted by the directors lifted the stage experience to that degree of the sixth art. 
The usage of real life footage mapping the historical and political changes of Calcutta served as an apt juxtaposition with the short fictional narratives and character snatches; the latter acting as the felt repercussions of the former. Yet another juxtaposition albeit not an effective one, was that of seasoned and amateur actors. While the script remained strong throughout, the difference in the stage experience of the actors seeps through- not so much in the acting in as much as the nuances. 
The actor playing the role of the daughter in the mother-daughter narrative and the soliloquy delivered in the Durga Pooja segment is a point in case. The lines looked too rehearsed, the facial expressions repetitive and the replies in conversations too sharply demarcated to look natural. The lack of compliment here can be transferred in the form of credit to the make-up artists who constantly kept transforming young actors into older characters and the same actors into myriad characters. In sharp contrast to the amateurish bumps, the monologue delivered by the drunken, alcoholic beggar infused with sharp, caustic witticism and heightened with the dramatic interplay of lights succeeded in creating an impressive theatrical experience. The interjected direct address by the actor to the lights operator also ensured the powerful breaking of the fourth wall and gave vigor to the deliberate and self-conscious statement being made by the medium of the stage by the powerfully minded MOD group. 
The Existential angst being transposed through the unequivocal and representative voice of the old, debilitating character of the father was a masterstroke to say the least. The intellectual and material, the nostalgic and the futuristic, the sentimental and the pragmatic…this capsuled version of multiple clashes and frictions within the two generations of the contemporary Bengali society manifested the deep-rooted understanding of the city the MOD artistes possess. To have the last monologue and the most effective penultimate vignette in and through the character of a mentally imbalanced beggar served well to act as a metaphor for the madness and the deterioration that the city is experiencing. The antithetical and paradoxical epithets of the poem constructed by the documentary filmmakers seem to pale in comparison and leaves the audience wishing that this script had been packaged with one scene less.
For all the Mumbaikars who feel that only their city can impregnate artists with tales of the flesh and the mind, With Love Calcutta opened up the raw guts and sublime moments of an urban space much criticized, much colonized, much chastised.