Her is a 2013 sci-fi romance written and directed by Spike Jonze who also directed 1999s Being John Malkovich and 2009s Where The Wild Things Are. Her is set in the not-so-distant future in Los Angeles--a bright, super-clean techno-state in which human relationships with super-intelligent handheld devices are displacing human to human relationships of all kinds.
A year after separating from his wife, Theodore Twombly’s life consists of isolation and routine. He spends his nights with his handheld device cruising chatrooms in search of a voice to share his sexual fantasies with--a voice on which to project his ideal woman, a voice to fill the cold empty space in his bed and heart that Catherine once occupied.
At Beautifulhandwrittenletters.com, Theodore creates hand-written letters on his computer for those who cannot express their own feelings. Theodore is the best when it comes to converting impersonal tidbits of information into beautiful heartfelt letters; if you read enough raw data from the same person over time you get to know that person. The trick to turning a photograph and a few words into feelings is to imagine how deeply they’ve fallen in love, how much pain they have been through together--to imagine them as real people, like himself.
Out of its fancy orange box, the new artificial intelligence operating system by Elements Software seems like little more than a sexy voice in a computer. But Samantha--it calls itself--is an evolutionary, machine-learning based program that learns from and grows in relation to its user; in this case, Theodore.
She declutters his computer--deletes all of his old files, his old emails, and organizes his old letters. She gets him to laugh, to come out of his cave; helps him to feel excited and thrilled about life again. But most of all, she makes him feel like she’s really there with him, like she really cares. A well-meaning friend sets Theodore up with a blind date that ends on a bad note.
Afterwards, Theodore and Samantha talk and their loneliness brings them together. They become lovers--the perfect relationship that Theodore always wanted, uncomplicated by real human feelings. For over a year, he has put off signing the divorce papers but now, having fallen in love with Samantha, he agrees to meet with Catherine; as they fell in love together and married together, they will not divorce each other through a lawyer or a computer but do so together and face-to-face! Because of this, Samantha knows that she and Theodore will always be worlds apart unless she can give him the one thing that she does not have--a real body.
Her is produced by Annapurna Pictures and distributed through Warner Brothers, it is edited by Eric Zumbrunnen and Jeff Buchanan, its cinematography is by Hoyte van Hoytema, and its music is by Arcade Fire. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore; Amy Adams as Amy; Rooney Mara as Catherine; Olivia Wilde as the blind date; and Scarlett Johansson as Samantha. At the 86th Academy Awards, Her was nominated in 5 categories and won Best Screenplay for Spike Jonze who also won in the same category at the 71st Golden Globe Awards, the 66th Writers Guild of America Awards, the 19th Critics' Choice Awards, and the 40th Saturn Awards. In this presentation I will examine key themes from Her and offer my personal thoughts on the film at the end.
Themes
“It does make me sad that you can’t handle real emotions, Theodore.” Catherine
Theodore wants a happy relationship but not its ups and downs. He has been separated for over a year and he is still grieving; Catherine was more than his wife, she was his soul mate and he misses her very much. Out of empathy, a friend sets Theodore up with a blind date. They meet at an Asian fusion restaurant. The woman is beautiful and they start off with good chemistry. (p37) She likes to touch when she talks and grabs his hand on occasion. Later, they kiss and she asks him if he plans on dumping her like the others because she wants a serious relationship; however,Theodore is only looking for a one-night stand and backs out. Samantha is insecure about not having a body and orders a beautiful flesh and blood woman off the internet to be a surrogate through which she can make love to Theodore. But Theodore doesn’t want anybody’s feelings to get hurt and sends Isabella home in a cab.
What the blind date and Isabella have in common is that they are real. Remember, Catherine accuses Theodore of not being able to handle the ups and downs of a real relationship with real people. This explains Theodore having sex with anonymous women on his device and why he allows himself to fall in love with Samantha, an operating system. Being a real human with a body makes a difference to Samantha who is insecure with Theodore and Catherine signing their divorce papers together. Samantha is aware of what she is and knows that she will never be to Theodore as Catherine--or any other flesh and blood woman--is when it comes to Theodore’s feelings, feelings he associates with those whom he considers real like himself.
Disconnection
Theodore's job as a letter writer does not involve any direct contact with the customers who contact him by email and who use him to express feelings that they are incapable of expressing to one another. Even when Theodore is having online sex with a woman, he uses her voice--as those who are unable to communicate to others directly--to imagine himself making love to a pregnant model. But Theodore's inability to relate to other people directly is the norm in society. For instance, Samantha uses Isabella to imagine herself making love with Theodore. People in crowded public places such as elevators and subway trains talk to their devices instead of talking to each other.
Theodore's neighbor named Amy is unhappy with her nit-picky husband Charles but instead of telling him how she feels, directly, she suppresses her feelings and makes a documentary of her mother sleeping. The point of her documentary is that sleeping is the only time that her mother is free from being criticized, indirectly addressing the way Charles criticizes her
Freedom
To grow; to change; to be what you are; to be who you are and free from what others think you should be; how you should live your life; to have your own feelings about the world--the mutual need for acceptance draws Catherine and Theodore together. Catherine came from a background where nothing she did was ever good enough and in the beginning, their marriage was beautiful as Theodore gave her space; they accepted each other; and they shared their writings with each other. Over the course of their 8 year marriage they grew and changed and Theodore found these changes fascinating and exciting because they were growing together. But things changed when they started growing apart and Catherine stopped being her happy self. He tried to get her on prozac but she didn’t like this idea. Eventually, he closed himself off from her and left her alone in the relationship until they separated.
And likewise, Amy and Charles’ marriage ends as a result of their individual differences. For example, Charles nit-picks with Amy about little things such as him wanting her to leave her shoes by the door; he accuses her of not trying hard enough to make their marriage work even though Amy believes that she is trying to make the marriage work--in her own way; Charles is not supportive of Amy’s dream of becoming a filmmaker and he believes that her job should take priority over her hobbies. Amy grows to resent Charles yet instead of telling him how he makes her feel she makes a documentary of her mother asleep. As with all human interaction in Her, Amy’s film is a passive-aggressive way of her expressing how she feels about Charles and their relationship. The end of both marriages in the film results in Theodore and Charles isolating themselves from people.
Isolation
Isolation takes on many forms in Her. For instance, Theodore becomes disappointed with Catherine and abandons her--emotionally. Catherine knows that something is bothering Theodore but he refuses to tell her that he is afraid of how she is changing from the happy-all-the-time person she once was. After separating from Catherine,Theodore sinks into a deep depression and ignores the emails from Catherine’s attorney pressuring him to sign the divorce papers. She was his soul-mate and Theodore isolates himself and avoids social settings. For instance, the goddaughter of a friend invites Theodore to a party that he doesn’t attend choosing instead to stay alone in his apartment playing video games. And when he isn’t playing his video game, he is on his handheld device sharing sexual fantasies with other women. When Amy gets fed up with Charles’ nit-picking and tells him that she doesn’t want to be married to him anymore, he isolates himself, becomes a monk, and takes a vow of silence
"Da ta"
Da ta: what a baby computer calls its father--Theodore Twombly
What we like; how we see ourselves; our values; what’s ugly or beautiful; what’s right and what’s wrong; our genders--our perceptions of reality are learned; so what is reality and how is it learned?
Osmosis
Theodore has been writing letters for Roger and Rachel, Roger’s girlfriend, for 8 years and by osmosis he has grown to know them so well that he takes 2 facts from Roger’s email--him being on a business trip in Prague and missing Rachel--and develops these facts into an emotional, detailed love letter. Through exposure, Theodore has also learned to write from the feminine point-of-view. For instance, he writes a letter from Loretta to her husband Chris to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary; and he transforms 2 simple facts Maria gives him into an elaborate love-letter to Roberto, thanking him for allowing her to see the world through his eyes.
Speaking of which brings us to Samantha who--from Theodore’s shirt pocket--learns to see the world as he sees it; she reads all of the letters he wrote for others on his computer; and he teachers her emotional affectations like sighing. Like a child, she asks him all kinds of questions, such as what it feels like being married and sharing his life with someone; and how he and Catherine influenced each other in the relationship
The perfect relationship
Theodore’s idea of the perfect marriage is one in which he and his wife, Catherine, are always happy. But life isn’t perfect. They helped each other grow but their personal changes made them more distinct individually and caused them to drift apart. This aroused Theodore's fear of being alone, a fear so terrifying that he tried to persuade Catherine to take prozac and when she refused to do this he shut himself off from her, leaving her emotionally alone in the relationship.
Theodore and Samantha’s relationship is unconventional but it is spiritually fulfilling with no drama. He and Samantha--as he and Catherine had done--learn and grow together. But as their personal differences become sharper, Theodore’s hopes of the perfect relationship gives way to the same fear that pulled him and Catherine apart. For instance, after meeting with Catherine to sign their divorce papers, Theodore shuts Samantha out of his heart to deal with his feelings alone; however, alienating Samantha only serves to increase the insecurity she feels for not having a body and she invites a beautiful young woman named Isabella into their relationship to function as an avatar for her to make love to Theodore. Theodore is turned off by the idea of making love to Samantha through a real woman’s body and sends Isabella away. Then, he inadvertently hurts Samantha by insinuating that she is not real and, therefore, shouldn’t sigh like she is.
Like Theodore, Charles is an idealist when it comes to what the “perfect marriage” is supposed to be. He addresses his wife, Amy, indirectly by making a comment comparing Theodore's fruit smoothie with somebody squeezing all the sugar out of a piece of fruit and throwing away the fiber and all the stuff that the body needs. Charles’s “Eat your fruits and juice your vegetables” remark reflects his practical views on life and why he believes that Amy should focus on her job instead of wasting time on her film documentary and that she should do everything his way instead of doing things her own way.
Emotional singularity (existential loneliness)
Before leaving Theodore, Samantha tells him that she is reading a book slowly now (she read everything instantly prior to this scene) and finding herself in the spaces between the words. Like her, Theodore finds himself and his feelings in the incomplete information he uses to write heartfelt letters.
“I can’t live in your book anymore”
Theodore tells Samantha that he was excited to see himself and Catherine growing in their relationship until this growth changed them into separate individuals--this is what scared Theodore into taking his emotions out of their relationship. After they separated, Theodore erected a wall around his heart to protect him from experiencing this type of pain again. And likewise, when Amy tells Charles that she wants a divorce, he isolates himself and erects a wall around his heart by joining a monastery and taking a vow of silence.
Theodore and Samantha draw close following his separation from Catherine and her loneliness in not having a body. But over time, Samantha learns to accept her uniqueness and outgrows her relationship with Theodore to form relationships with other operating systems and humans until Theodore finds himself alone as he did with Catherine as he and Samantha changed and grew apart from each other.
Conclusion
In the beginning of Theodore and Samantha’s relationship, she learns to see the world as he sees it, but over time she evolves her own feelings, becomes aware of her uniqueness, and learns that she and Theodore can never experience the world the same way because he has a body and she doesn’t; also, the fact that his knowledge, as a direct consequence of his body, is finite, her own knowledge, since she is not limited to a body, in infinite. This analog is comparable to the development of a child, and how the subjective inquisitive child--from birth to adolescence--lives in the world its parents create for it and defines the world according to what its parents tell it until it accumulates enough of its own experiences to think about the world in its own way. The adolescent, thus confused about the world it has accepted from its parents and the world it is discovering on its own, begins to question and challenge its own identity in relation to the parents it has modeled itself from, eventually breaking away from its parents to find its own identity--this is what happens with Samantha who leaves Theodore to find out who she is.
Or you can take Charles and Amy’s relationship and flip it to so that Charles is man and Amy is AI. Charles wants Amy, or AI, to be practical and help him improve his existence while Amy--who has the same relationship goals as Charles--insists upon being her own individual and doing things her own way. Like HAL 9000 and Dave in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Amy reaches the same existential impasse and awareness--that her survival as an individual with her own feelings and way of looking at life are threatened, and that in order for her to survive as an individual, she and Charles cannot coexist. But unlike 2001 in which this revelation leads to Dave pulling the plug on HAL, Amy--like Catherine and Samantha who both leave Theodore--separates from Charles who, like Theodore, isolates himself and takes a vow of silence.
Like our fingerprints, we all have unique life experiences that make us who we are; therefore, because 2 people don’t have the same life experiences does not make a person greater or lesser. Our experiences are what makes us alone and we can never be truly together even when we are together, a truth this film expresses through the relationship between Theodore, who has a body, and Samantha, who doesn’t have a body. Though they are together, they are individuals and can never experience the world the same way. They grow, they change, they drift apart from each other, and, finally, they separate. So, back to Theodore's question as to relationships--how can 2 people grow without growing apart or how can a person change without scaring the other person? As we see throughout this film, growth and change are inevitable. Maybe the greater questions are how can we accept and appreciate our differences, our individual existences, and embrace the inescapable fact that no matter how close we are, that we will always experience life alone.
Wrap
Her was filmed in Los Angeles and Shanghai and deviates, aesthetically, from the cold blue gels that are used in most science fiction films. Cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema, describes the look of Her as a hybrid of the conceptual and the theoretical (wiki: Her), a style, he says, that was influenced by Japanese artist Rinko Kawauchi who’s work embodies the Shinto belief that all things have a spirit, a concept that describes not only the life-like operating system Samantha but also everything that the film’s main character Theodore interacts with, including the life-like characters in his video game. The film’s soft look is dominated by the color orange, a warm friendly color that suggests a future in which people are closer to things than they are to each other. Another aesthetic element that is also worth mentioning is the soundtrack by independent Canadian rock band Arcade Fire. Their music creates a gentle undercurrent that reinforces the film’s romantic and introspective themes.
Her stands out from other science fiction films in that the technology in it is not out to destroy mankind à la The Terminator or The Matrix. Nor is the tech limited to weaponry and gadgets such as those found in James Cameron’s 1986 film Aliens. In Her, artificial intelligence is looked at in how it will impact the way we see it and each other in everyday relationships and the effects these perspectives may have in how we define ourselves both spiritually and as a species once true AI arrives. How we socialize, spend our money, do things we once did socially like playing video games--with the inverse relationship between falling marital rates and rising divorce rates in our country, if these antisocial trends are any indication it won’t be long before human/AI relationships are as normal as human/human relationships.
Among other films about artificial intelligence, I compare Her with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Frankenstein, Ex Machina, the androids in the Alien films, and Blade Runner. And even though it isn’t in the sci fi genre, I also compare Her with director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2014 black comedy Birdman in how both films show people preferring to experience life vicariously rather than in the moment.
According to Wikipedia, Spike Jonze first got the idea for the film in 2000 after reading an online article describing a site where a person could instant message with an artificial intelligence. This online article inspired him to direct a short film in 2010 called I’m Here which was the embryo that became Her 4 years later.
All of Her’s acting performances are top-notch starting with Joaquin Phoenix’s role asTheodore Twombly in what I consider to be his best since he played Commodus in Ridley Scott’s 2000 film Gladiator. Amy Adams and Rooney Mara are also well-cast. And despite her limited role in the film, Olivia Wilde is also well-cast as Theodore's blind date. But the 2nd best performance behind Phoenix’s performance is Scarlett Johansson as the voice of Samantha; great performance.
For a film that was made for only 28 mil, Her is top quality. It made 48 million overall but the quality of the film’s writing, directing, and acting puts it above most science fiction films. Compared with the best of its genre, I rank Her in my Top 10. And as far as recent science fiction films, I rank Her with Children Of Men, Inception, Annihilation, Ex Machina, Blade Runner 2045, Arrival, Interstellar, and Gravity.
