Review of Her (2013) by Clarisesamuels — 02 Jun 2014

This movie really has to be rated on two levels—a philosophical level and a purely cinematic level. For philosophy, it gets a 10 and for cinematic achievement it gets a 5, which averages out to 7.5. Director Spike Jonze raises questions that AI experts and philosophers have been arguing about since the invention of the Turing test in 1950. In this film Theodore Twombly, played by Joaquin Phoenix, comes across a new AI operating system called OS1, not to be confused with IBM's now discontinued OS/2 released in 1987. When Theodore signs on, he starts an interview where he is asked if he wants a female voice or male voice. He is also asked to describe his relationship with his mother. After being cut off in the middle of his reply, his very own, supposedly customized operating system comes to life in the form of Samantha, the voice of Scarlett Johansson.

Samantha sorts his email and does other computerlike tasks, but her engaging personality is such that she can also talk to him about his problems, accompany him when he walks out the door (as long as he keeps his handheld computer with the photographic eye in his shirt pocket), and finally fall in love. Can a person fall in love with a computer operating system? Philosophically exploring this question is a great thesis, but it makes for a slow-moving film. The kind of man who would resort to this kind of romance, which includes two cybersex scenes that are positively uninviting, has to be a desperado. And Theodore is most definitely an antisocial nerd who has turned inwardly to such an extreme that he is pathetically deluded. He has a few coworkers he talks to, he has two friends in his building, and he has an ex-wife that is presented as the main reason he has receded into such a high level of self-stimulation. His full-time Internet-based job is to write letters for any occasion (BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com), and then he comes home and plays with 3-D video games. Such is his rather circumscribed life until he signs on to OS1 and meets Samantha. Phoenix does a good job of portraying the kind of antisocial behavior that is required for this lifestyle; but the characterization goes overboard, and Theodore elicits little sympathy from the viewer. He is too strange, too reclusive, and too disconsolate.

After a while, the viewer starts to wonder where the film is going with this theme. The only tension to keep the plot moving is the question of how will Theodore resolve his delusional romance with an operating system. The film raises philosophical questions about the true nature of romantic love. Is everyone who falls in love deluded to some extent? Are we talking to the Other when we are in love, or are we talking to the illusion that we have created in our minds? And if a computer can simulate that illusion, then what is this emotional and psychological process really based upon? Phoenix's greatest scenes are when he is walking around with a goofy smile and a strange shimmer in his eyes because he is a man in love. But that biochemical/sociopsychological state has been induced by an entity that is basically a figment of his imagination, a computer program that acts like a human. The question of what is this thing called love takes on new dimensions.

With respect to cinematic matters, the movie swerves into Theodore's banal and tepid friendship with a neighbor (Amy Adams), who like him, finds herself traumatically divorced. Flashbacks to his ex-wife (Rooney Mara) become overly repetitive, and the sterile world of the near future is constantly referencing a society that we already see on the streets—people walking around in public seemingly talking to themselves out loud, but they are really plugged in to their cell phones. The director noted in an interview that in order to provide contrast for the very blue skies, they introduced red into the landscape. This red color comes out as bright orange on the DVD version. It appears everywhere—Theodore's shirts, his interior décor, sheets and pillows, buildings, and even industrial trailers in the background are all a day-glow orange. One wonders what the symbolic significance of orange might be only to find out that it was all supposed to be red. Red has symbolic significance; orange does not. The streets of the futuristic city are in fact Shanghai. The mist in the background is not a theatrical element; it is merely the air pollution and smog that are poisoning the city in real life.

In the end, Her has to tackle the problem of how to resolve a romantic relationship with a computer. We eventually reach a resolution in the final scenes, although it is not a logical or satisfactory conclusion. Theodore has presumably been changed by the experience although no radical change is evident, and the vague, open ending leaves more questions than it answers.