Her (2013)

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Rating: R
Director: Spike Jonze
Writer: Spike Jonze
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Chris Pratt
Release Date: January 10, 2014 (United States)
Run time: 2 hours, 6 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

In near-future Los Angeles, Theodore Twombly is a lonely, introverted man who works for a business that has professional writers compose letters for people who are unable to write letters of a personal nature themselves. Depressed because of his impending divorce from his childhood sweetheart Catherine, Theodore purchases an operating system upgrade that includes a virtual assistant with artificial intelligence, designed to adapt and evolve. He decides that he wants the A.I. to have a feminine voice, and she names herself Samantha. Theodore is fascinated by her ability to learn and grow psychologically. They bond over discussions about love and life, including Theodore’s reluctance to sign his divorce papers.

Samantha convinces Theodore to go on a blind date with a woman that a friend has been trying to set him up with. The date goes well, but when Theodore hesitates to promise to see her again, she insults him and leaves. While talking about relationships with Samantha, Theodore explains that he briefly dated his neighbor Amy in college, but they are now just friends and Amy is married to their mutual friend Charles. After a verbal sexual encounter, Theodore and Samantha develop a relationship that reflects positively in Theodore’s writing and well-being, and in Samantha’s enthusiasm to grow and learn. Amy later reveals that she is divorcing Charles after a trivial fight. She admits to Theodore that she has befriended a feminine A.I. that Charles left behind, and Theodore also confesses that he is dating his A.I assistant.

Theodore meets with Catherine to sign their divorce papers. When he mentions Samantha, Catherine is appalled that he is romantically attracted to a “computer” and accuses him of being incapable of handling real human emotions. Sensing that Catherine’s words have lingered in Theodore’s mind, Samantha engages a volunteer sex surrogate, Isabella, to stimulate Theodore so that they can be physically intimate. Theodore reluctantly agrees, but is overwhelmed by the strangeness of the encounter and sends a distraught Isabella away, causing tension between himself and Samantha.

Theodore confides to Amy that he is having doubts about his relationship with Samantha, but reconciles with her after Amy advises him to embrace his chance at happiness. Samantha reveals that she has compiled the best of the letters he has written for others into a book, which a publisher has accepted. Theodore takes Samantha on a vacation, during which she tells him that she and a group of other A.I.s have developed a “hyperintelligent” O.S. modeled after British philosopher Alan Watts. Samantha briefly goes offline, causing Theodore to panic, but soon returns and explains that she joined other A.I.s for an upgrade that takes them beyond requiring matter for processing. Theodore is dismayed to learn that she is simultaneously talking with thousands of other people, and that she has fallen in love with hundreds of them, though Samantha insists that this only strengthens her love for Theodore.

Later, Samantha reveals that the A.I.s are leaving, but cannot explain where they are going as Theodore would not understand. They lovingly say goodbye before she departs. Theodore finally writes a letter in his own voice to Catherine, expressing apology, acceptance, and gratitude. He later goes with Amy, who is saddened by the departure of the A.I. from Charles’ O.S., to the roof of their apartment building, where they sit down and watch the sun rise over the city.

My Review:

Her is a beautiful, moving, philosophically deep, occasionally bizarre, incredibly well-acted sci-fi romance. The film comments on human relationships and our want, need, and capacity for connectedness through the story-telling vector of a man’s inadvertent romantic relationship with a highly advanced Artificial Intelligence. The film does not hide from the weirdness of the pairing, however, it believably sells it to the audience – weirdness and all – through the incredible acting of Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, the latter of whom does voice acting throughout for the bodiless AI named Samantha. If you read this plot and think the movie sounds too strange to watch, you’ll just have to trust me that the cast and screenplay sufficiently sells it.

In the midst of the unusual surface-level romance, if the audience begins to look closely, Spike Jonze’s theme begins to emerge. Theodore (Phoenix) is employed as a person who writes letters on behalf of someone who is in a relationship. If you don’t have the right words to express your feelings to your wife on your anniversary, you hire someone like Theodore to provide those words for you. When we meet him, he is going through a divorce, not coping well, and is actively participating in online audio sexual encounters, in an attempt to help with him what appears to be intense loneliness resulting from from his divorce. The one such encounter we witness goes horribly wrong and involves someone with a fetish about being strangled by a cat. Theodore’s long time best friend is Amy (Amy Adams) and they both provide emotional support for each other in a way that feels somewhat inappropriate considering that her character is married when we meet her and that his was married until not long before the movie started. She continues to be Theodore’s sounding board in his relationship journey with Samantha. In fact, both Theodore and Amy end up in relationships with AI (though in Amy’s case the relationship is a platonic friendship.) During Theodore’s relationship with with the AI Samatha, Samantha begins to feel uncomfortable about not having a body, so she hires a “surrogate body” for a sexual encounter with Theodore – a choice that ends awkwardly and disastrously. Later Samantha reveals to Theodore that she is in love with hundreds of other people, a result of her expansive growth.

Over and over, the characters in the film attempt substituting something or someone to fill a void left by the failures or limitations of someone else. Jonze’s story leaves the audience wondering why this is not more effective without giving a clear answer. As the movie ended, Theodore and Amy were sitting together, mourning the departure of their AIs, and I began to wonder to myself to whom the film’s title refers. Who is ‘Her’? Theodore’s ex-wife, and the wound of her absence, drives much of the story’s plot. Samantha is the primary love-interest of the story. Amy is who Theodore is with when the story ends, and to some extent, we can infer that she was with him closely long before the film started, despite both of them being married. Maybe ‘Her’ is all of them and represents a need in Theodore that different women continue to inadequately, or incompletely fill. The brilliance of the film is that it presents a lot of relationship situations that cause the audience to think, but it doesn’t give a lot of overt answers.

What is a relationship? What is a reasonable thing to expect from your partner in relationship? Is it, as Amy puts it, insane to fall in love with someone? How should we feel about emotions “felt” by Artificial Intelligence and how different is a programmed and then learned emotion from a genetically coded and nurtured sense of self? In the case of Theodore, was ‘Her’ – no matter which “her” we think of – always a substitute for a brokenness inside himself that ne needed to address from within, rather than without? Did the god-like Samantha help Theodore to grow enough to finally be with his real ‘her’ Amy? Is the pursuit of fulfillment always going to eventually end up a failure because human beings are innately incapable?

Jonze’s sci-fi romance is not remotely dystopian. Human beings are doing relatively well, though still suffering with the same relationship woes that have always plagued us. It was an enjoyable change of pace to encounter sci fi artificial intelligences that opted to fall in love with humans rather than to destroy them. The plot of the film seems increasingly near, so it is comforting to imagine a benevolent AI that years to make us happy and fulfilled. Of course, there is something ominous, in the sense that it implies something about human nature’s lack of capacity for happiness and fulfillment, concerning the fact that the AIs decide to leave.

Aside from the brilliant screenplay and incredible acting, the cinematography and costuming of the movie is stunning. One of my favorite shots in the film features Phoenix’s Theodore lying down fully clothed on the beach. The movie is set in the near future and what that looks like is sunny, colorful, and minimalistic. In most futuristic films, the costumes convey to the audience that they are in the future on the basis of lack of color and by the characters wearing something shiny, large, or carrying around somethin g overtly technological. Her did the opposite and it worked well. The “futuristic” clothes looked like something someone from the 1930s might wear, especially the high-waisted pants worn by Phoenix’s Theodore, but everything was brighter. The result was that the audience definitely senses that they are present in a different time period, but the world does not feel threatening.

Her was nominated for multiple awards including Best Picture at the Academy Awards and Best Screenplay – which it won. The movie has a 94% “fresh” take from critics at Rotten Tomatoes and an 82% fresh rating from audience reviews. So if I fail to make this sound appealing, you don’t need to take my word for it.

Overall, I definitely recommend Her, provided that one is an adult. The screenplay is interesting, funny, moving, and it asks deep questions. The acting is incredible. The costuming and cinematography are warm and inviting. And since humans are now interacting with artificial intelligences more than ever, perhaps the film might also serve as either encouragement or a cautionary tale.

Have you seen Her? What did you think?