Formal Film Study: Spike Jonze

For this film study, I decided to take a closer look at some of the movies Spike Jonze either directed or wrote the screenplay for. These movies included Where the Wild Things Are, Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, and Her. I chose to watch Where the Wild Things Are because I knew that it was based off a children's book and it sounded like it would be a cute movie that I would enjoy; I turned out to be correct and it ended up being my favorite of the three movies. I decided to also watch Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa because when I watched the trailer, it seemed that it would be a classic comedy movie and I am a huge fan of comedies. Lastly, Her was on my list of movies to watch by Spike Jonze because it came out recently to theaters and I have been hearing mixed reviews about it; I was hoping to get my own thoughts on it. Since these movies were created only a couple years apart, the cinematography in them were quite similar and they all had classic endings, but the ideas and the storylines behind them were pretty different. Some would say that they require more thinking and are more developed, while others would say that they get more obscure.

Although these movies are not exactly related in any way, they kind of have a pattern as to the order that they came out. As I mentioned before, there are two ways to look at them: more obscure versus more required thinking. Let us start with the obscure aspect of it. For the movie Where the Wild Things Are, from 2009, Spike Jonze directed a movie that was meant for young children to see. It showed how a child's imagination ran wild and how it helped him to befriend a bunch of wild animals that became very close to him. Since it is based off a children's story, the plot of the movie made sense and also how it was very low key as to nearly no violence and profanity. The next two movies, Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa and Her, came out in the same year, 2013. In Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, Grandpa Irving goes to bars and bingo places and starts yelling out obscenities. This shows how the level of obscurity has increased because no one would expect the grandpa to be so profane. One specific scene that shows this is when he walks into a black bar and all of a sudden decides to start stripping and flailing his genitals around. In Her, the main character, Theodore, falls in love with an operating system. He becomes so attached to it that they when she dies for a couple minutes, he freaks out and starts running about trying to get her back. This movie is even more obscure compared to the other two because a man fell in love with an inanimate object. Not only this, but Theodore and the operating system, Samantha, pretend to be two humans beings being together in the world. At one point, they get a random girl to take Samantha's human form while Samantha speaks to Theodore through an earpiece. For the deeper thinking aspect to the order of these movies, Where the Wild Things Are and Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa do not require much of it. What you see happening in the movie is what it is. As for Her, there is more logic behind the creation and meaning of the movie. By having Theodore fall in love with his OS, it shows how technology has taken over society and have made some people a bit crazy. This movie causes people to have to think more while watching it and realize what is going on than compared to Jonze's previous movies.

Other than the progression of obscurity or meaning in Spike Jonze's movies, he also included classic endings to them. For Where the Wild Things Are, the little kid, Max, ran away from his family, but through his journey he realized how important his family was to him and came back and hugged his mom. This is the classic storybook ending to a children's movie or book, always ending on a good note. For Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, the movie ends with Grandpa Irving realizing how much he would miss his grandson, so he decided to drive back and bring him back with him again. This is another classic ending in which someone the character did not realize how much someone meant to them until they lost that person. For Her, the movie ended with the OS being disabled because the technology company realized how it was affecting society negatively. Although this is not a very classic ending since the movie is so different, it was one that was kind of predicted because it falls under the movies in which the character loses something they cannot have. What I have also noticed in a couple of Jonze's movies is that they relate to his real life in a way. A big example would be with the movie Her. Jonze used to be married to Sofia Coppola, another director, but they got divorced because they had different thoughts on their future. Afterwards, he dated many other women but nothing has gotten too serious it seems like. Spike Jonze's life relates to the movie Her, which he directed, because Theodore, from the movie, was also divorced because of difference outlooks on life and how devoted he was to a real relationship. Then he fell in love with the OS, Samantha, which also did not work out since she had to be shut down. This is kind of a unique way of subtly portraying his own life.

Now I am going to focus on each movie separately.

Where the Wild Things Are: This movie is about a boy named Max who ran away from his family because they did not support him and kept saying that there was something wrong with him. He sailed across the ocean to a random island where there are "wild things" living there and becomes the king of the land. While trying to help them stay together as a family, he realizes how much he misses his own and decides to sail back. He came back with an open mind and love for his family. This movie is a fantasy drama film that captures the message that family is an important aspect everyone needs in their life even if you dislike them. Since it is based off of a children's book, it has a sense of naivete coming from the child. He makes abrupt decisions and automatically assumes that his family does not love him. When he gets to the island, he uses his imagination to get out of all the traps and tricks them to making him king. The movie is made with computer generated images (CGI) mixed in with a bunch of live action, which is different from other movies Jonze has made. The CGI is used so that he can create the fantasy world without spending a ton of money on costumes and make-up to make the characters seem animal-like. The mixture of CGI with live action helps us to give a feel of what is imaginative and what is the real world. It helps to show how strong one's imagination can be and how it can change our perspective on the world. Jonze also used a lot of extreme long shots in the movie, more than his others at least, to show the setting and everything that is going on. A couple of the scenes where he used this that stood out to me where the shots of Max on his journey out at sea and also when the "wild things" and Max were building their fortress. The shots helped to make it seem like we were there with them looking at it in their perspective.
The statement, "Jonze has created a world in which even 'wild things' can be full of personality and fun to be around" (Rotten Tomatoes) by Jeff Beck from Examiner.com shows how much others, both critics and the audience, enjoyed the movie. It shows how skilled Jonze is at making us feel close to something unusual and how well he can capture our interest. I agree with Beck's statement in that Spike Jonze did a wonderful job of making a movie out of a classic children's book for many to enjoy.

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa: Grandpa Irving and Billy are on a road trip to drop Billy off in South Carolina to live with his dad because his mom was put in jail again for doing drugs. Throughout the trip, Grandpa Irving stops at many places, like bars and hotels, telling Billy to stay in the car and wait for him because he is about to go in and talk to some ladies. He also constantly calls Billy a "cockblock." During the entire trip, Grandpa Irving teaches Billy lots of profane things an eight-year-old should not know about and also makes a fool of himself while trying to get women. When they finally get to South Carolina and he drops Billy off, Grandpa Irving realizes how much he misses Billy and comes back to get him and tells him that he is not a cockblock anymore. This movie was filmed in a way that made it seem like it was a reality television show. It was essentially a hidden camera run movie in order to capture the true reactions of people toward the obscenities done by the grandpa and grandson. The film was made purely for laughs and to see how far a grandpa and grandson can go and get away with it. The ultimate message, if it had to have one, of this movie would be that its best to keep those that you love closer to you because you do not know what you have until it is gone. Grandpa Irving did not realize how much Billy meant to him until they were no longer together and he regretted leaving him with his terrible dad so he felt the need to go and take him back. Overall, I think the one thing I do have to give this movie props for is for costumes. They were able to make Johnny Knoxville, who played Grandpa Irving, look completely different and old. He no longer looked like himself, instead he looked like a real 86-year-old grandpa. Even the people put in the movie from the hidden cameras were not able to tell.
Linda Barnard from the Toronto Star said that, "Like the lime-green bingo dabber contents Irving drinks down to the horror of his seatmates, it's an acquired taste" (Rotten Tomatoes). I agree with Barnard because I was not a very big fan of this movie, however, there are people out there who like this kind of humor. I thought that it was very crude and obscure since the jokes were mainly coming from the grandpa, but others who enjoy dry humor and adult humor would like this movie.

Her: Theodore, the main character, works at a company that writes love notes to a person from their loved ones. Through doing this job, he realizes how lonely he is after his recent divorce. He started up this new operating system that is personalized to work well with their owner and ends up falling in love with it. They do everything together. They have even tried making it so that they can have a physical relationship together with someone else pretending to be the OS. Eventually Samantha, the OS, has to be disabled and Theodore is once again feeling alone. From this movie, I think that there are many messages that Jonze is trying to portray. One of them is to not depend on inanimate objects so much because you will most likely end up getting disappointed. Another message would be portraying the negative view on technology and how it is taking over modern day society. Throughout this movie, many different types of lighting and shots are used. For example, the lighting in this movie matched the emotions and feelings of the characters a lot of the time. When Theodore and Samantha were happy, the screen was very bright and sunny. When they were sad and talking about things that were bothering them or secrets, the lighting was a lot darker, especially the scenes of Theodore's room right before he is sleeping with the lights turned off so you only see a hint of his face. Also, the movie was sometimes put in the perspective and view of how Samantha would see it. In one of the scenes, the camera was all shaky because we were seeing it from Samantha's view from inside of Theodore's pocket when he was walking or running. These effects help us to feel more like we are with them inside the movie and it allows us to feel and see things from their point of view. Another detail that really stood out to me during this movie was the soundtrack. Most of the songs played were by Arcade Fire, whom I am a big fan of, and I thought that they fit the mood of the movie very well.
"It's an odd, sad love story, combining with a meditation on technology as an accelerator of social loneliness. Not a small part of it seems to be an allegory of lonely guys and their fear of women" (Rotten Tomatoes) said Liam Lacey from Globe and Mail. I agree with Lacey in that it indeed is an odd love story that talks about how technology is slowly making us become more lonely and isolated because we depend so much on it. Many people lose the ability to communicate in person with emotion because technology eliminates the ability to know the genuine thoughts and feelings of one another. However, I feel that this movie might have a deeper meaning to it that what is shown. This movie to me was mediocre mostly because I am not used to the idea of one falling in love with their computer. But overall, the movie was nicely filmed and directed and the dialogue would be just how I would think it to be.

Although these movies are quite different, there are some shots that were similar between them. All three of these movies used close-up shots in order to portray any emotions and feelings the characters had. This way we could see and understand them and be able to notice subtle details like tears. There were also the use of quick shots to be able to show all that is going on at that moment. This allows us to be able to not only focus on one specific event at a time, but to also be able to see the surroundings to make it seem like we are there and can see everything that they see too. Last but not least, full body shots were used for most of the action shots to show what every part of the character's body is doing: arms, legs, head, etc.

Overall, I thought that these three films showed a lot about what Spike Jonze is capable of. He does not solely focus on one type of movie, but in fact can direct and write a wide variety of movies. This makes him unique and is the reason why he is such a well-liked director.