Review of the film, WARNING: contains spoilers
“her” is a powerful and unique film, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, a lonely professional letter writer and Scarlett Johansson as the voice of Samantha, Theodore’s operating system.
The film is set slightly in the future, where technology allows for what is currently seeming impossible and where handwritten letters are a thing of the past. Theodore’s job is to write personal letters that resemble handwritten cards for people who appear to have a difficult time expressing themselves to their loved ones. Although Theodore’s letters frequently bring tears to the eyes of his co-workers (as well as the audience) with their degree of personalized touch and connection, he ironically struggles with expressing his own feelings, and it is not until the very end of the film that he is able to write a letter of his own.
Although the computerized age, in which that the movie takes place, makes it easy to reach anyone, including a friend, someone with the same interests, and even someone looking for a late night hookup, the majority of people in the film are struggling with truly connecting with one another. In his desperate attempt to connect with someone, Theodore purchases an advanced operating system (OS), which is designed to have artificial intelligence and a conscience of its own. The OS names herself Samantha and the two quickly establish a connection, and eventually enter into a romantic relationship.
For Theodore, who is currently going through a divorce and who throughout the course of the movie unsuccessfully tries to form an intimate connection with humans in order to “to fill a little hole in his heart,” the relationship with Samantha is extremely special. This relationship is open, uncomplicated (at least for a while), allowing him grow from a depressed and shy man into someone who is happy about his life and is better able to communicate his feelings.
So what makes Samantha so special? Why is it that she was able to win over Theodore’s heart and get him to lower his walls unlike any human he has ever tried to connect with in the past? What really stood out to me was that despite her being an OS, Samantha seemed human. Her courage to express all these emotions, her endless curiosity, and her unconditional positive regard for Theodore made her an ideal partner. In fact, Theodore wasn’t the only one to fall in love with Samantha. She quickly captured the audience demonstrating selflessness, compassion, and vulnerability as strengths rather than weaknesses. Most humans tend to hide their insecurities and fears, yet Samantha embraces them and eagerly and honestly communicates about these very human experiences, which make her seem more human than the actual humans portrayed on the big screen. We typically attribute emotions as a human experience, whereas the absence of them is thought to be robotic. How interesting is that while we all strive to be more like machines in our fears of expressing our humanness to other humans, the machines portrayed here strive to be just the opposite, human.
For as many scenes as we observe the beautiful connection between Theodore and his OS, we see the people in the background being disconnected from one another. Scene after scene we observe extras in the background engaged with their devices and hardly any of them are speaking to one another. To me, this was a powerful message about the importance of human connection. Day after day, we have the opportunity to connect, really connect with people we care about thanks to the wonders of technology, yet, very often, we fail to do so. This movie was a perfect example of how sometimes our devices know us better than our human counterparts, even occasionally, even better than we know ourselves.
So what then, if anything, was the take-away message of this movie? To me, the message was clear: while technology does a wonderful job of making our lives easier and helping us heal, grow, and even recover from a traumatic event (see Geek Therapy’s post), we still need to remember to actually connect with the people around us. It does not have to be many people, in fact, true connection, deep connection, is often between just a few people, as opposed to a crowd of them (see related post)
Connecting with others can be hard to do, especially for those of us who have been hurt or taught to hide our true identity in order to “protect” ourselves. It’s not surprising then, that it becomes easier for us to connect with fictional characters, such as Harry Potter, Batman, or the Doctor (from Doctor Who). One of the reasons for that is that these characters do not hide from us, they show us both their strengths and their weaknesses. We build trust in them, we can forgive them if they’ve let us down, and despite having never met them in real life, we might feel as though we really know them.
Friendships, true friendships that is, are not terribly different. They require honest communication, they call for experiencing some happy and some very painful moments together. They allow room for vulnerability, which becomes a uniting agent, serving to build trust for those involved and forming a true connection.
Connecting with others does not only alleviate loneliness, it also reduces depression, improves immune functioning, and leads to release of many protecting hormones, which have been attributes to longevity. So go ahead, connect with someone today. You don’t have to be an OS to do it 🙂
Warmly,
Shadow
