My Thoughts on the Movie “Her”
So after much of a delay, I had been able to successfully watch the movie that I have been looking forward to for a while. My expectations going in were very sparse if you could say that. The only thing I had going in was the trailer and the basic story of the movie. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) plays a depressed man who is going through a nasty divorce and in the process, buys a new “OS” who is voiced by “Samantha” (Scarlett Johansson) who of course he falls in love with. Now that is the very BROAD story but there is a lot more to the story than just that.
If I had to describe this movie in one word, I would simply use the word beautiful. This movie is definitely a beautiful film, from the score, to the cinematography. Spike Jonze definitely crafted a film that shows human emotion and interaction at its finest. He brings a plausible future to life with the help of Samantha, cause lets face it we currently have AI assistants that are in their infancy. If you have used Siri and Cortana, then you can relate to the movie Her.
Now something that might deter people from watching this movie is the amount of “awkward” scenes. Just to lay on the quick jist of one, there is a scene where Theodore goes out on a date which he was set up on, and his date who is played by the amazing Olivia Wilde. It goes accordingly but due to reasons that is social interaction, the date just goes from good to total shitstorm. Can’t say what happens, but its just harsh. I am still finding myself rethinking about this scene and how it played out. I don’t know if that was Jonze’s priority but there are many scenes like this, that just make me think and that you began to analyze because they are just so beautifully done and the acting is definitely spot on.
The world that Jonze also crafted is something that is believable and something I expect the world to look like in 20-40 years. The world feels like an Apple store meets Microsoft’s flat design. Now the world is definitely its own character, and the people that live in it, help breath more emotion to a lot of the scenes, take for example everyone living in their own bubble. Everyone has their headphones in, everyone is talking to their own OS while ignoring everything else. You see this in several scenes where Theodore is on a train just listening to his email, or requesting music, and everyone is doing the same. It seems to be a futuristic mirror of ourselves of what we have seen nowadays, where people ignore everything and suddenly find themselves in a fountain. Something else that I noticed from watching this movie, is when Theodore takes out his ear peace, the world is very quiet. No one really talks, and everyone is just always as I said before, in their own bubble.
I have been asked quite a few times, what was the ending like? Was it good? Well I knew the ending about 40 minutes into the film because if you are a nerd like me, you know about AI’s and how it will all go. Not to spoil anything, but the ending is something you can predict, and it plays to the real and not to the audience which I definitely enjoyed more because of it. This movie also plays out some painfully weird scenes where it was hard to watch, not due to violence or anything, but more of the questions that it raises. Like for example, can you fall in love with an AI? Can you even have sex with one? Can you even classify a relationship with an AI as a real relationship? How will other people see you being in a relationship with an AI? The questions that are raised in this movie will probably be asked in the coming years.
I really think that is where Spike Jonze wanted to go with the film, I think he wanted to raise these questions because with how we are going with technology. It definitely made me think…this could become the norm of sociable acceptable love. Also if an AI adapted to your needs and met all those relationship requirements, could you definitely justify yourself as happy cause people have fallen in love through the internet without ever meeting and that IS acceptable.
As you can see this movie definitely left an impression on me about the whole computer human love. And it was definitely an very enjoyable movie, from just how believable all the characters were, and how each of the registered with each other. Also with the big questions this movie raised for me personally, this movie could actually raise a few questions for the future generations who come to have that technology driven life as we are seeing nowadays.