HER (2013) - How do we learn to love virtually



In a not so distant future, the technology advancement has allowed human being for once, to directly communicate with a machine through an interface that makes it as easy as if we are talking to one another. We no longer limit ourselves to have a relationship in real world with real person, but also in a virtual world with a machine disguised as virtual person. The exploration of such obscure relationship has been  the center of Spike Jones’s HER.  This funny and yet well-thought story looks at Theodore Twombly (by Joaquin Phoenix), who has a routine job of helping others to write comforting letter to their love ones. At the same time, he is also facing his own misery in dealing with a divorce with his wife, Catherine (by Rooney Mara). Just like many lonely singles in the modern society, Theodore spent most of his free time “between internet porn and video game” in order to keep his mind away from his sinking relationship. However, he soon found a new artificial intelligence operating system, which called herself as Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) and started to communicate with her instead. At first, it was as a good friend/assistant (much like what Siri does for the Apple iOS) but before Theodore knows, he starts to develop a serious relationship with “it”. For Theodore, dating the Samantha felt like a much needed new chapter in his life. Yet, as both Theodore and Samantha struggle to come to terms with the inevitable difference and distances between reality and virtual worlds, the relationship has also taken its turn to for the worse for its eventual failure.

One of the film’s brilliances is obviously the depiction of Phoenix’s character, to which he played out so wonderfully as a kind-hearted man who has  left vulnerable after his failure in marriage and has lived with the fear of any new romantic relationship. His encounter with Samantha was first thought as a breakthrough and the film detailed on so well about what a modern day lonely man needs from a love relationship. The non-existence of the physical form of Samantha actually allows him to move away, or at least blinded him from the pain and misunderstanding caused by a physical person (as proved by the fact when the scapegoat of Samantha appeared in his house, his desire to the relationship with Samantha had retreated). The escapism  also allows Theodore to continue to ‘live’ his love life from his happy memories with Catherine, as well as feeling less guilty to himself, for the fact that he finally becomes the one that stopping himself for lingering onto his old relationship.  Phoenix has once again proved that he is one of the elite actors today with his refrained, complicated yet sensitive performance. It is certainly a worthy follow up, as well as striking contrast of his work from last year Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master”. In fact, it is also the third solitary performances this year, with Sandra Bullock’s Gravity and Robert Redford’s All is Lost, in all of which, the protagonist has to be dealt with no one but him/herself with their lives.

Scarlett Johansson, with her sensual and sexy voice performance as Samantha, has given the “operation system” the liveliness that it needs. This is certainly a fitting homage and a tribute to HAL-9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 (or to a lesser extent, GERTY from Duncan Jones’ “Moon”), only wittier, sensitive and much more advance. The performance was so good that her physical absence was never really noticed.  Jonze also allows Samantha to be as human as possible by giving “her” an evolving consciousness through her Artificial intelligence. Her self-awareness of learning how a human behaves also slowly transforms her relationship with Theodore from an personal and intimate yet non-physical one to one that complicated with multiple lovers at multiple time zone. It therefore posted a question even if human can indeed have a romantic relationship with a virtual person, whether or not a human can also tolerate the infidelity, or has the right feel about jealousy even if he/she is not real.

Perhaps the lack of physical presence of Samantha has also given a chance for the rest of the female characters’ in the film to shine on their own ways. Amy Adam’s role as Theodore’s best friend was a very comfy and kind reminder of what it means by real life and physical friendship, in the world we only get touched with each other via electronic means on the internet. Ronney Mara’s more minor role as Catherine was nonetheless an excellent presence and the only character that is trying to remind Theodore how ridiculous and in-mature for “dating” an OS, which eventually proved very much correct as the inability of Theodore to deal with changes of a person in a relationship regardless of whether she is real or not.

Jonze had created this futuristic world that is very much a believable one. The city skylines (through brilliant use of CG) between LA/Barcelona/Shanghai has been very well mixed in creating one great modern city we have all accustomed to. This helped in removing the kind of alienation that we had with typical sci-fi movie and makes the characters within more related to our current time. Jonze has long be a tour-de-force in terms of creating surreal yet believable spaces since his MV days to Being John Malkovich (the “7 ½ floor” ). In “Her”, such tradition has been carried through with modern building in color-tinted windows, a cross-continent train for a Sunday getaway. However, it was the little gadget that Samantha lived within, had been the gem of the film. Instead of using a modern smart-phone that we are all accustomed to, a cigarette box like device was used here as the connection between Samantha and Theodore, a device that he keeps close to his heart as well as his bedside.  It is as if a symbolic gesture of reminiscing the day where reality has not other shape or form other than itself.

It is rare for a commercial science fiction/romantic comedy  to enable us to examine so many aspects of our modern life and our relationship with technology. The world in “Her” is a future in which we all know we are heading toward. Thus the film has posted questions of both philosophical and psychological nature. How do we define love relationship and whether our desire can solely be satisfied by our own thoughts? Whether or not a human to human’s love is still what we need to make ourselves happy and fulfilled? More importantly, the film also deals with in the time of these advancement of technologies, what would be the effect on human’s relationship with one another, the fear for facing one another; and whether human indeed has what it takes to handle the machine once it start learning its way to feel human emotions and replicates them, as in the case of Samantha towards the end of the film. Are we still feeling just as loss and lonely as we were, before the virtual person becomes our “best” love?

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