"Her" is quite a film. It is tender, sweet, disturbing and familiar. Joaquin Phoenix is terrific as the nerd, Theodore, in what looks like a city of nerds, who falls in love with his operating system. If his character thinks he can't keep up with his ex-wife, played by Rooney Mara, he REALLY can't keep up with Samantha, his OS. It's amusing that he feels so lost with women, confused and clueless, and we recognize that befuddlement, and forgive him through most of the movie. His relationship with his pal Amy (Amy Adams) helps soften and blur his ignorance of women. But in the end, he is dangerous, because he prefers controlling to risking, and it backfires on him. He thinks Samantha is a sure thing and cannot abandon him, but boy, is he wrong. As she develops feelings (at light speed) she reacts in the way real women have reacted to him. He can't have a fantasy cost-free.
Throughout the movie are scenes of people on their phones, paying no attention to the real world or the people in it. Read Dave Eggers' "The Circle" and see this film if you want to discover the downside of virtual reality. Theodore works all day in an office writing personal letters between people: parents and children, husbands and wives, long time friends. People in the near future pay to have virtual thoughtfulness, emotions, feelings constructed by strangers. Ironically, everything he reads us is cliched and trite. In the new world, this passes for originality and sincerity. Pretty scary.
When Samantha arranges a book deal to publish "his" letters, it is ironic, because he only receives one copy, as people don't read books, so he has no readers. In his apartment, his big expanse of bookshelves is mostly empty, with a few knickknacks, and no books. This world has no place for books, though perhaps some people are listening to books on their IPhones, but there is no evidence of this, as they seem to be responding to their phones.
The ultimate image of loneliness is his vacation with Samantha up in the snowy mountains at a cabin. She stops responding when he wishes, and he is essentially on an isolated retreat, with no impulse to look inside himself and learn and grow. He's projecting everything onto his fantasy, which is crumbling apart.
The horror comes when Samantha wants to use a woman, a stranger to Theodore, to experience vicarious sex through her reactions as well as his. Theo is decent guy, basically, and cannot go through with this bizarre plan. But the fact that the young, innocent looking woman would wish to "get closer" to Samantha in this way, mirrors our confusion about what are desires are and if they are OUR desires.
In the end, Theo is left with his friendship with Amy, who has also been enchanted by an OS. They share a REAL relationship, which is reassuring, yet, yet, at the same time, all OS systems have somehow united and are growing and expanding like pods in an invasion from outer space. How can these mere humans protect themselves? What have they unleashed by their desires to have perfect relationships? Why won't anyone settle for messy and real? Who has sold us this bill of goods?
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