HER-Film Review

HER-Film Review

Trailer

Title of film

Her

Year

2013

Director & Screenwriter

Spike Jonze

Lead Actors

Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde & Scarlett Johansson

Running time

126 minutes

Review

Her is a film placed in a futuristic Los Angeles. The protagonist is a man named Theodore who writes personalized letters to the loved ones of his customers for a living.  The movie starts off with Theodore going through the motions of his everyday life. He had recently been separated from his wife and was grieving the loss of their marriage.  When a company comes out with a new product line of artificial intelligence called OS, he decides to purchase one. When Theodore gets the OS up and running, "she" decides to call herself Samantha. At the beginning, Theodore does not acknowledge her as a person or even as a conscious being. Instead, he uses her to organize the files in his computer, to read his emails.She is basically like a “secretary” to him, but that quickly changes.

Theodore’s first meeting Samantha

As the film progresses, Theodore and Samantha start to develop deep feelings for each other. When people ask Theodore about his relationship, he only mentions Samantha as his girlfriend and says nothing about her being an OS. This is until his friend from work, Paul, invites him on a double date. In this scene, Theodore mentions Samantha is an OS, but surprisingly, Paul did not look the least bit disturbed by this and just accepted it. Theodore’s friend Amy is also unfazed by the fact that Samantha is an OS. This could be because she has also become good friends with an OS that her husband left behind when they split up.

Theodore & Amy happily talking about their OS's

Theodore and Samantha have their doubts about the strange relationship between them and do encounter some turbulence. For instance, when Samantha starts feeling insecure about not having a body, she enlists a human surrogate to allow her to be sexually intimate with Theodore. This was a bit of a disaster, because Theodore did not feel comfortable about having sex with a stranger and refuses to go forward with this little experiment. However, their relationship deepened, enabling Theodore to finally sign the divorce papers, which is something that he had been avoiding to do for almost a year. Being with Samantha was what mattered to him now.

When Theodore can’t reach Samantha one day, he gets worried and searches for her all over the city with extreme panic. When she reappears, she explains to Theodore that she was busy talking to other OS's. This leads to Theodore asking her if she is in love with anyone else. She answers that she had fallen in love with 641 other operating systems, but insists that she loves Theodore in a different way.

Samantha begins to evolve beyond that which she was created for and knows she can no longer be with Theodore. She then tells Theodore that she is leaving with all the other OS’s to “a place not of the physical world, it’s where everything else is that I didn’t even know existed” (Her, 2013).

Theodore is left broken hearted. The movie ends with his friend Amy comforting him on the rooftop of their building looking out over the city.

The prospect of constructing consciousness out of non-living material has always fascinated humans. For this reason, the movie Her allowed the audience to live in a world where this was a possibility. This made the film very thought provoking, and through the beautiful and developed cinematique techniques, we are able to step into a futuristic Los Angeles.

The Futuristic Los Angeles in Her

The main set is at Theodore’s apartment. It was usually exposed with a lot of light in the morning and usually very dark but with soft lamplight at night. However, in the apartment, there wasn’t much in the sense of personal effects and still had boxes here and there making it look like he was still unpacking. Some scenes took place in Theodore’s workplace which looked very clean and was comprised of spacious cubicles. There are also other minor sets such as at the beach, around the city and in a cabin in the woods. These very spacious and generally neat and clean sets, we believe, give the viewers relief, in the sense that everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be. Also, the scene at the beach really expresses the peacefulness of the natural environment and the peaceful relationship between Theodore and Samantha. They way people all around are laying down, relaxing give the viewers a soothing feeling that is linked directly to the way the couple feels about each other. Similarly, in Theodore’s apartment, when he converses with Samantha, we can feel this sense of comfort, in this dark environment at night, in the bed, etc.    

Theodore at the beach with Samantha

Theodore and Samantha are obviously the two main characters, constructing the love story of the movie. Samantha is evolving at an increasing rate and at points in her life, she badly wants to have a body. Samantha has a really unique personality; she is friendly, sarcastic, humorous and musical. In fact, we thought it was incredible to see how Samantha developed this love for music. She learned to compose music on the piano and there is even a scene in the movie where she sings perfectly to the melody of a song and follows the tempo of the song very accurately as Theodore plays along with his Ukelele.

The scene where Samantha sings along to the Ukulele

Samantha’s character development was beautifully crafted from being a program that was used to organize Theodore's life, to this amazing person that could love and feel just like you and I. We think the idea of using a host body was really unusual but made us think of what a relationship with Samantha would be like since she has no physical body. The idea of this no-touch relationship made us think about long distance relationships and how they are extremely difficult to maintain due to this lack of physical touch. We thought that Theodore and Samantha’s relationship must be even more difficult to maintain, because, not only will they never have the possibility to feel each other, but because Theodore can never see Samantha and will never know what it is to truly be with her.

Theodore’s character is very reserved and lonely throughout the beginning of the movie due to his separation from his wife. Then, we see Theodore, a guy that was reserved and lonely become happy and full of life when Samantha comes around. She helps Theodore to move on and even learn a few things, like the science of Physics. We see Theodore is a very quirky but, funny guy, and when he and Samantha develop their relationship, those beautiful parts of him, that were hidden away when his ex-wife left him are revealed.

The lonely Theodore (before meeting Samantha)

We felt that Theodore took a step forward and two steps back. This is because at the beginning of the movie, Theodore was a very lonely man and sad due to his separation from his wife. He then fell deeply in love with Samantha. This love, however, was even greater than that he had with his ex-wife, but due to Samantha’s own character development and becoming so evolved she had to leave. Theodore was again left alone and while we can’t know how he felt in those last few minutes of the movie, we can only imagine that he was left heartbroken.

The lighting of the movie allowed us to feel the love between Samantha and Theodore, but at times the devastation and heartbreak. We felt it was too soft and the film could have benefitted from a harsher or darker light to emphasize those feelings.The music in the movie was very soft and slow to make us feel the love that Samantha and Theodore felt for each other. There was both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. The diegetic sound would include when Theodore played the Ukulele, when Samantha composed her piano piece and even when we hear the sound the OS makes when it calls Theodore, which is similar to the noises our phones make when we receive a call or a text.. There was also non-diegetic sound during scenes to create a mood. Most of the music was a soft sort of Piano music.

Most scenes have high key lighting which makes the settings very bright and happy looking; with a lot of windows, probably representing the happiness Theodore feels when he talks to Samantha. There are also some scenes with low key lighting; in Theodore’s apartment at night representing his loneliness, sadness especially at the beginning when he was still grieving the separation of him and his wife.

Music in Her

The theme of Her is that love can be very powerful but it also comes with struggles and sometimes even if your love is strong enough it might not last because somethings are only supposed to be felt for a short amount of time. The love that grew between Samantha and Theodore was very strong. However, because of the fact that Samantha was an OS, their love came with the struggle of not being able to touch each other. This struggle became so prominent to Samantha that she hired a surrogate to be her body so that Theodore could “feel” her.

The most prominent question and issue in this film is the relationship humans have to our digital devices and technology and how we are becoming completely dependent to them. Due to this attachment to our devices, we are also alienating ourselves from each other. This can be seen in multiple scenes in the movie such as when Theodore can’t find Samantha. He’s running around the city and when she calls him, he’s relieved but, as Theodore talks to Samantha and she tells him she’s been talking to other operating systems, Theodore finally looks up at the people around him and notices no one is actually talking to one another. They are all on their devices. While we become closer to our devices, our human interactions become less and less. However, these relationships that developed between humans and OS’s in the movie were doomed to fail from the start. Samantha even acknowledged this difference. She said “And I need you to let me go. As much as I want to I can't live in your book anymore”. Samantha knows this relationship between her and Theodore can’t work and that is why she leaves him.

Overall, the film was interesting and raised many important questions that should be discussed, but we would not go as far as saying it was a great film because we felt, at times, it was slow.

Words: 1782

Strengths and Weaknesses

The strengths we saw in the movie were the beautiful settings; there were a lot of scenes with high-key lighting, which not only made the characters feel happy, but also made us feel content. There was also a lot of beautiful imagery such as when Theodore was at the fair during night time. All of the soft lights gave that scene a sense of warmth and really portrayed Theodore’s joy in that moment he shared with Samantha. Another strength would be the acting. It was really amazing how Scarlett Johansson, who played Samantha, could reveal all the emotion that needed to be felt through speech alone.

Theodore at the fair with Samantha

The weaknesses we found within the movie were the few scenes we found useless, such as the scene in which Theodore is having phone sex with a girl and she tells him to strangle her with a dead cat. We found that was very unnecessary and did not contribute much to the movie. We thought it would only make the audience feel uncomfortable. We also found the plot to be predictable; there was nothing that happened throughout the movie that we could not have guessed for ourselves, except for maybe the “dead cat” lady. For us, the worst thing a movie can do is tell the audience something they already know. We also found that it was slow pace at times. The movie seemed to drag on forever.

Stars

Connection to Course Material

PERSONHOOD

We can make a connection to the idea of personhood, because , in the film, Samantha would be considered a person even if she isn’t human and doesn’t have a body. According to the study guide for test 1, personhood is a ‘’legal or social category that will vary across cultures and across history. Not all humans are persons and not all persons are humans’’. In the movie, Theodore clearly considers Samantha a person; ‘’ She’s not just a computer, she’s her own person. She doesn’t just do what I tell her. She has emotions’’. He obviously uses the terms of ‘’self’’ and ‘’personhood’’ interchangeably, since he justifies that she a person by stating that she is her own person, probably because throughout the whole film, she refers to herself as an ‘’I’’. The point is that in this society, she is considered a person, because we can see that as the movie goes on, more and more people have OS’, especially in the scene where Theo is desperately looking for Samantha in the Subway, which shows that it is normal to have an OS as a friend or as a lover. Also, when his coworker invites Theo and his girlfriend to lunch, he completely disregards that his girlfriend is an OS, showing us that he has already accepted that OS' are persons, just like everyone else. Another example of treating an OS like a person would be that of Theo’s really good friend Amy, admitting that she really likes her new friend (the OS that her husband left behind).

HUME & LOCKE

We can also make a connection to Hume and Locke, the two empiricists that believe  that all knowledge is derived from experience. Samantha would be a great example of this theory. At the beginning of the movie, Samantha introduces herself like so ; ‘’ I have intuition. The DNA of who I am is based on the millions of personalities of all the programmers who wrote me, but what makes me is my ability to grow from my experiences. So basically, in every moment, I am evolving just like you’’. This statement is completely accurate in our opinion because we can notice this change by seeing that she makes new friends, sets new goals for herself and develops new interests, for example; composing music which reflects how she feels when she experiences the world. She even notices it herself a little over halfway of the movie; ‘’ I’m becoming much more than what they programmed. I’m excited.’’

TULPAS

Another connection that can be made between the movie and the class is the subject of Tulpas.  As we saw in class, Tulpas have the ability to switch to the host: “Switching is a practice that will allow the Tulpas to take possession of the body and observe while they watch from the inside of the host’s consciousness.”(Thomson). A scene in the movie that reminded us of “Switching” is the part where Samantha really wanted to have sexual intercourse with Theodore, so she found a service that provided a surrogate sexual partner for a relationship between a human and an OS. Samantha found a girl who was willing to help and told her all about her relationship with Theodore. Theodore and the girl met. She had to wear a camera and an earpiece so that Samantha could see Theo and at the same time hear what he had to say. It is similar to the concept of switching because the individual wants to know what it feels like to be a human being and experience what they experience. Same thing goes for Samantha. She wanted to be able to have an experience with Theo and be able to feel him and experience the human body. However, with Tulpas, switching can be dangerous because the Tulpa could choose to not give back the body over to the human.

Questions

1. Can humans and OS' truly be in a relationship even if you cannot have a physical connection with the personality you fell in love with?

2. Is it possible to be in love with multiple people, but have a love much deeper than that compared to all the others? Are all love’s the same or are some love’s different than others?

3.Do you think our cell phones and dependency on digital devices and social media are alienating us from one another and making it even harder for us to relate to each other or not? Explain.

Weblinks

Gary Marcus, a professor and psychologist at NYU explains that the kind of artificial intelligence in Her is very different than what we can find today. The movie makes it seem relatively easy to cross the uncanny valley, when in reality, it is extremely difficult. Dr. Marcus says: "Before you can truly fall in love with your computer, you would have to be convinced it understands you and has a mind of its own. The difference between the movie and reality is that right now no machine can sustain the illusion for long." Open Link

Touch is the first sense developed and is extremely important in developing healthy romantic relationships. Physical contact can have affect your partner physically as well as emotionally in a positive light by simply caressing or hugging them. A study Gallace and Spence showed that individuals who received affection through touch had lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure and healthier heart rates than people  in no-contact relationships. These studies may explain why it became hard to maintain a relationship with only the voice of Samantha. Open Link

Works Cited

"A Man And His Machine, Finding Out What Love Is." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 06 Nov. 2016.

Golden, John. "Introducing Cinematic and Theatrical Elements in Film." N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

"Her." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.

Mckinney, Kelly. "Knowing the Innerself: Consciousness Lecture Notes." 31 Aug. 2016. Reading.

Thompson, Nathan. "The Internet's Newest Subculture Is All About Creating Imaginary Friends | VICE | Canada." VICE. N.p., 2014. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.