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?