Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)

[adavis53]

This dehumanizing consumerization is also necessary in order for Jonze to write something else out of his universe. Sex, as a physical act, is missing from the picture. When we see it onscreen it’s either prettified and euphemized into Malickian insubstantiality (Catherine), reduced to a set of tics, hang-ups and vulgarisms (the blind date), or carefully sidestepped for another lengthy conversation (Isabella). Though missing, its absence is never felt. The presence of the other, as a face (or interface), is at the heart of the drama, but sex itself is dismissed again and again as something decorative or simulatable. Significantly, the sexual pleasure of the other is never really a concern in the film. There’s an enormous leap in logic (and technology) necessary between a program being able to feel and have complex thoughts to a program being capable of orgasm, but it’s one that the film makes casually, if only in order to sweep it quietly under the rug. The film sells a reactionary, post-sexual liberation, post-AIDS fantasia of sexual relations, one in which the social network and solipsism have superseded the act itself, replacing it with a benign new activity poised somewhere between masturbation and talk therapy.

I think one of the major strengths of the film is its deliberate addressing and subsequent discarding of sex in order to place the focus fully on the emotional attachment aspect of relationships. What I perceived the entire purpose of the end of the blind date scene to be was Theodore's fear of commitment being greater than his desire for physical intimacy; this coupled with his already apparent reliance on phone sex made him seem like a particularly probable candidate for an OS relationship in which physical intimacy and sex is impossible. I don't see where you found sex to be presented as something decorative in the film, but its simulatability is clearly addressed as something which is not of a concern for the character in question. Your statement about the enormous leap in logic and technology for an OS to be capable to have an orgasm also seems to be intensely nitpicky in a film which depicts leaps in technology as having occurred practically between every scene. I agree that its incredibly difficult imagining Samantha having any sort of tactile experience, but the scene where Theodore questions why she sighs as if she's breathing seems to indicate she understands enough about how she should feel and act if she were to have a body to pass off the idea of having experienced an orgasm. Then again, I have an incredibly difficult time imagining technology like Samantha to begin with, so why I specifically attack one aspect of the internal logic seems strange.

also where on earth are you getting "post-AIDS fantasia" from besides a list of trigger phrases for beginning polemics? In what way do you think Spike Jonze specifically (since, as domino noted, you do seem to argue for a very intentional auteurial position) aimed this film into the realm of "post-AIDS fantasia"?

[Murdoch]

I will admit that I had a similar reaction to the depiction of sex in Her as Ferdinand initially. But adavis53 brings up a characterization of Theodore that helps to solve this problem. Given how a fair amount of people in our society today engage in online/simulated sex (I recall it being particularly prevalent in the Second Life community) it doesn't take a great leap to imagine this type of sex to have increased in popularity in a not-too-distant future. Theodore appears to me as rather uncomfortable with physical intimacy, not just because of his rejection of Olivia Wilde's advances, but also his engagement in the phone sex chat and his flashbacks to his ex-wife consisting of a Malick-esque romanticism removed from anything particularly sexual. With Samantha he can engage in sex without the physical intimacy, reducing the experience to what amounts to him masturbating in a room "alone" but without the pain of loneliness since, for Theodore, Samantha is there with him. Presenting Theodore this way helps to dispel the problems that would plague such human-OS relationships, after all the film makes a point that romances between OS's and humans are statistically rare, part of the explanation for which I'd imagine is the sexual component.

[karmajuice]

I think Ferdinand makes some solid criticisms, even if he goes too far sometimes, and I don't think he's unfair toward the film, nor does he have any obligation to be nice to it.

Let's face it. A lot of people are approaching this film and embracing the complex emotional dynamics at face value. That's fine, I suppose, but many people have taken issue with various aspects of the film, and most of them sound like legitimate issues. The world Jonze crafted is complex, and while the tone is one of wide-eyed acceptance, that doesn't mean the viewers have to adopt that same attitude.

Domino, you tell Ferdinand he hasn't dealt with the film "as presented", but he has. Everything he talks about is visible and apparent in the film, and his comments on earnest satire seem spot-on to me. This is a distinctly upper-middle class milieu, and that in itself is not a problem, but one is allowed to consider what that means within the context of the film. Ferdinand often stretches to criticize, especially when discussing sexuality, but one is allowed to ask questions, especially when the film gives a frame of reference that supports such questions.

For instance, I feel like the film is largely about the commodification of sincerity. You can purchase a friend or lover as an OS and you can have someone write letters to your loved ones, people the letter-writers have never met. The letter-writing job actually seems like a deliberate point of reference for the larger questions of the film; I say "seems like" because Jonze's earnest attitude obscures any kind of critical intent on his part. It seems like an intentional inclusion, and very plausibly one we're meant to question, but he doesn't make it so ridiculous that we're forced to question it. But I do think there's a genuine question lurking beneath all of this, even if Jonze only ever approaches it obliquely: is sincerity still sincere if it's commodified? His potentially frightening answer seems to be yes, or almost yes, but it's to Jonze's credit that these questions remain unanswered. He isn't leading us. In fact, if we're to take the film at face value, he's downright naive that the question is even there. But I don't think he is, and it's a question worth considering. After all, works of art are commodities crafted by strangers that presume to offer us a sincere experience.

I liked the film, but its simple surface belies some compelling ideological turmoil, and the more I consider the film the more troubling it becomes (and I'm not sure whether it makes me like the film more or less).

(By the way, Murdoch: from what I recall, Theodore does not rebuff Wilde's sexual advances; he rejects them only after she's exposed her concern about him not calling afterward.)

[Shrew]

While watching this, I thought a lot about Scott Pilgrim. There's not much linkage, but it struck me how both are fancied up stories of how people get over old relationships. Specifically, I thought about how you could easily sub in any reference to "OS" with "high school student" and the film would still work.

Take the question of whether Samantha and Theodore's love is real. Catherine's accusation of Theodore being unable to have a real relationship hits hard not because Samantha is a computer, but because the relationship to that point has been like that between a 30 year-old and a 19 year-old. It's an easy relationship, where Theo doesn't have to worry about Samantha's emotions and neuroses not because they don't exist but because they're overwhelmed by her love for him and her simple desire to experience love and new things in the first place. She's human and has her own needs and desires, but they're fairly simple and Theo can understand them. Situations like this happen all the time, and I think most of us question the legitimacy of such relationships, as they often seem predatory at worst or doomed to fall apart once the younger person grows up at best. With his ex-wife and Wilde's character, Theodore has to contend with fully formed people with complex histories and neuroses. His problem with women isn't so much that he can't understand them/interact with them, but that he's unable to deal with the baggage they may bring--especially considering how both of the above don't seem to be paragons of mental well-being themselves. The difference between them and Samantha ultimately seems less flesh and technology but age and experience.

And of course, ironically, the relationship quickly becomes "real" anyway, as Samantha starts to voice her desires and it becomes clear that she too has a vast private world that Theo can never understand. The quick escalation toward the end made perfect sense to me, as I think we were, like Theo, meant to be surprised by just how much she had going on outside him. It's the politest singularity.

Another random thought-- I really liked Amy Adams in this, even though it would never win awards because it's not flashy. I liked her fine in American Hustle too, but I really wish that if she won an Oscar this year it would be one of those Film Critics deals where they give it for a year's body of work. Also her big blond muss reminded me of Cameron Diaz's getup in Being John Malkovich. Jonze has a thing for messy blond hair? Sofia Coppola was just too straight?

[domino harvey]

Great reading, Shrew. I hadn't really considered it but you're right, Samantha's trajectory in the film does closely resemble a young woman gaining emotional maturity through experience and growing out of a May-December relationship. Theodore's confusion and selfish hurt at her life outside of him (even though she never stood in the way of his friendship with Amy-- that I can remember?) is essentially a stunted and immature reaction (fitting with the complaints of his ex-wife and lack of interest/success in subsequent relationships), at least at first before the depths of her co-existent relationships comes to light. Also, wasn't Theodore originally married as a result of a similar relationship wherein Catherine was basically acting the student to his teacher (I can't remember the exact perimeters now, though-- he helped her with her papers in college?)

I liked Adams' hairstyle, but it's funny that on a film with such a red-heavy color palette, Jonze has her go in a different direction! Though she's a natural blonde, the only other time post-Junebug I can remember her with non-red hair was in Sunshine Cleaning where it was a dark almost brunette red (though she's full-on blonde in the forthcoming Big Eyes). Also, since we have Amy Adams playing Amy and we originally had Samantha Morton playing Samantha, I wonder if the role of Catherine was originally intended for Keener (which would have altered the age dynamics now present with Mara in the role)?

[Shrew]

Theodore says several times that he and Catherine grew up together, so I don't think there's meant to be much age difference there, despite the actual age gap between Phoenix and Mara (Keener would have made more sense in that regard--though she's also sadly not looking Phoenix's age these days). He does say that he read all of her papers through her Masters and PhD, but I don't think he helped her much with them. To me, Theo's love for her seemed mainly grounded in familiarity, to the point where he thought he knew her. Which leaves him heartbroken and confused when he realizes that's not true.

I also liked Adams' hair, but was just caught off guard by the blondeness and relative messiness. It's certainly much better looking than Diaz's, now that I've looked it up.

[matrixschmatrix]

I don't want to attack this movie, particularly- it seemed well formed and I felt as though it was doing exactly what it meant to be doing- but the impression I got from Phoenix's character is that he was a pathological narcissist, someone extremely skilled at faking appropriate feelings (as demonstrated by his job) but who didn't have genuine feelings about anyone other than himself, and about others in relation to himself. As such, Samantha makes a lot of sense for him when he is her entire world- it's not that she's not a real person, it's that he's sort of unintentionally gaslighting her, restricting all of her experiences to those she filters through his perspective. The relationship hits the rocks when Samantha makes the AI equivalent of outside friends, crumbles when she reveals that she has a world that's enormously beyond his limited perspective, and actually ends when she leaves him to find something larger, having outgrown him.

I think my reading's not actually too far from Shrew's, though it sounds as though Shrew has more sympathy for Phoenix than I do (I really have almost none for someone whose reaction to arguably the most incredible event in human history- the creation of beings that transcend time and space as we understand it- with moping about his girlfriend dumping him.) It resulted in a movie that I admire, to some degree, as it's very fully realized, but which I had a hard time liking, a movie about a dystopia of terminal bourgeois whiteness, where morbid self attention of an almost Travis Bickle type is more or less the norm.

[domino harvey]

(I really have almost none for someone whose reaction to arguably the most incredible event in human history- the creation of beings that transcend time and space as we understand it- with moping about his girlfriend dumping him.)

Honest and personal rhetorical question: Have you never been in love and had it end? It is everything in the moment. Ironically, an analytical judgment like this seems inhuman!

[hearthesilence]

(I really have almost none for someone whose reaction to arguably the most incredible event in human history- the creation of beings that transcend time and space as we understand it- with moping about his girlfriend dumping him.)

Honest and personal rhetorical question: Have you never been in love and had it end? It is everything in the moment. Ironically, an analytical judgment like this seems inhuman!

matrixschmatrix does bring up one problem I have with Spike Jonze's last two films - the whiny, mopey, therapy-session tone of both screenplays. It was more irritating in the previous film, where it was much more noticeable. It was far more tolerable here - as domino mentioned, the whole film's based around break-up(s), so the tone felt much more appropriate, even if it wasn't to my taste.

[karmajuice]

(I really have almost none for someone whose reaction to arguably the most incredible event in human history- the creation of beings that transcend time and space as we understand it- with moping about his girlfriend dumping him.)

Honest and personal rhetorical question: Have you never been in love and had it end? It is everything in the moment. Ironically, an analytical judgment like this seems inhuman!

matrixschmatrix does bring up one problem I have with Spike Jonze's last two films - the whiny, mopey, therapy-session tone of both screenplays. It was more irritating in the previous film, where it was much more noticeable. It was far more tolerable here - as domino mentioned, the whole film's based around break-up(s), so the tone felt much more appropriate, even if it wasn't to my taste.

I had the same qualms with both films. I feel like it's unfair to criticize a film for focusing on well-adjusted, economically stable individuals whose problems exist solely in the realm of interpersonal, emotionally-charged relationships, but I can't shake this nagging frustration with their persistent insularity. I found Scenes from the Suburbs much more satisfying in that regard, as its perspective is broader, and the character who acts as narrator is really just our entry point, and not an ego that consumes the entire film.

[matrixschmatrix]

(I really have almost none for someone whose reaction to arguably the most incredible event in human history- the creation of beings that transcend time and space as we understand it- with moping about his girlfriend dumping him.)

Honest and personal rhetorical question: Have you never been in love and had it end? It is everything in the moment. Ironically, an analytical judgment like this seems inhuman!

I can see that, but I guess I was already pretty distanced from Phoenix, and his love seemed like it was intensely self-centered throughout- like he doesn't ever seem genuinely to be interested in what things are like for his partner except as part of a performance as a caring guy. So his total blindness to the larger meaning of his breakup seems in keeping with his character, and what I don't like about him.

[hearthesilence]

(I really have almost none for someone whose reaction to arguably the most incredible event in human history- the creation of beings that transcend time and space as we understand it- with moping about his girlfriend dumping him.)

Honest and personal rhetorical question: Have you never been in love and had it end? It is everything in the moment. Ironically, an analytical judgment like this seems inhuman!

I can see that, but I guess I was already pretty distanced from Phoenix, and his love seemed like it was intensely self-centered throughout- like he doesn't ever seem genuinely to be interested in what things are like for his partner except as part of a performance as a caring guy. So his total blindness to the larger meaning of his breakup seems in keeping with his character, and what I don't like about him.

Yes, this goes with what I was talking about before. But I interpreted it as the film's criticism of how narcissistic people can be with their relationships, which is why it worked for me (up to a point).

[Murdoch]

My feelings toward the film have changed a bit with a second viewing and I'll admit to finding that aspect of Theodore grating myself. He seemed not just to want to be with Samantha but to own her to the point where every time she'd bring up something she'd been doing on her own he'd feign interest ("Oh you found a way to move beyond matter? That's interesting," He says in bored voice as he stares at floor). I'm not faulting Phoenix, who I thought did a marvelous job, but rather the character. I'm pretty sure if I just witnessed an operating system achieve orgasm I'd have more to say than "last night was great but..."

[Jeff]

My feelings toward the film have changed a bit with a second viewing and I'll admit to finding that aspect of Theodore grating myself.

I had the exact same reaction on a second viewing, dropping it from number one to number four on my list.

[hearthesilence]

As I mentioned before, when Samantha is first acquired by Theodore, it was impossible for me not to look at "her" as a purchased program custom-made for him, especially when every conversation they had afterwards felt like it was programmed clearly for him, agreeing with every point and saying just about everything he'd want someone to say. So with that in mind, the first 'sex' scene seemed more like a joke than anything else - he can kid himself that on an emotional level it was sex with someone else, but it was masturbation to a purchased fantasy taken to a whole other level.

[Murdoch]

Well, the film does establish that the OS's have a level of autonomy and aren't simply obeying the commands of their purchasers. I'm thinking of the small aside about how an OS is constantly rebuffing the romantic advances of its purchaser, and another is dating someone other than its purchaser. So I disagree that Samantha only acted as she did with Theodore because she was following her programming. I think the "sex" between them, while just him masturbating in a room, was Samantha making a choice to engage him rather than bending to his will, and characterizing her as a purchased fantasy goes against the film's multiple suggestions that the OS's do have independence in their choices.

[hearthesilence]

I remember that aside, but it didn't leave much of an impression for me. It came much later, after those scenes mentioned had long happened, and it was just second-hand gossip. And when it's shown that an OS like Samantha can wind up dating a ridiculous number of users (something that didn't seem to be unique just to Samantha), something that gives me the impression that this isn't much more than a step or two from a phone sex operator…it's just too absurd, as it was probably intended to be.

I realize this is probably the main reason why my take on the film differs with that of other posters here - to what extent do you accept Samantha as the equivalent to a real human being? Even with a humanizing voice (as opposed to something like HAL from 2001), the personality traits and talk of constant evolving, I can't shake the skepticism that Samantha isn't as autonomous and 'human' as others would think.

[FrauBlucher]

I wonder if it was Jones intent to intentionally cast a Hollywood starlet as the voice, which would subconsciously make her seem more 'human.' As I watched the film and listened to her voice, I had the image of Johansson continually popping up in my head.

[Murdoch]

re: Samantha's humanity

Spoiler

It's hard to fit that view of Samantha with the ending of her and all the other OS's abandoning their users and going to some digital/non-material realm. I can't imagine any programmer of a commercial product would want their programs to abandon their users and flee! Also, how she enters into relationships with other OS's and with other users despite Theodore's moping shows she is making her own relationships free of the constraints of her users. Yes, her personality and attitude is partly derivative of Theodore and likely the other humans she's interacted with, but our personalities and attitudes are a product of our relationships with our family, friends, and other people to some extent. Given that, it's not difficult to reconcile her perhaps derivative personality with the view that she is her own independent being with free will and her own likes and dislikes.

[hearthesilence]

Probably won't happen for lots of reasons, but it would be great if the eventual DVD included clips that used Samantha Morton's voice, as the film was originally conceived before Jonze decided that it wasn't working for him.

[hearthesilence]

Spoiler

re: Samantha's humanity
It's hard to fit that view of Samantha with the ending of her and all the other OS's abandoning their users and going to some digital/non-material realm. I can't imagine any programmer of a commercial product would want their programs to abandon their users and flee! Also, how she enters into relationships with other OS's and with other users despite Theodore's moping shows she is making her own relationships free of the constraints of her users. Yes, her personality and attitude is partly derivative of Theodore and likely the other humans she's interacted with, but our personalities and attitudes are a product of our relationships with our family, friends, and other people to some extent. Given that, it's not difficult to reconcile her perhaps derivative personality with the view that she is her own independent being with free will and her own likes and dislikes.

Those are perfectly valid points (especially when you say we're all products of our relationships with our family, friends, etc.). I might've come to the same conclusion about reconciling the ending with my initial assessment if the entire last third didn't feel so problematic for me. I may have talked about this more in my initial reaction, but I just couldn't get into that last stretch of the film. It felt like it was embracing everything that I thought it had skewered fairly well in the first 2/3 of the story. David Edelstein alluded to this change too, but his interpretation was that it transitioned from satire into something "transcendent," which was the opposite reaction I got. In retrospect, it wasn't a complete embrace given what happens at the very end, but that long stretch just got me off the train, I had a very tough time going along with the film from that point on.

[Murdoch]

Fair enough. I suppose whether you buy into the ending depends on whether you took Samantha and Theodore's relationship at face value. I never really had a problem with seeing Samantha and Theodore as two independent persons who did fall in love so the ending just felt like the natural progression of their relationship as Samantha becomes less reliant on Theodore. But that point about the film being satire I rather like, even if the ending goes against it.

[Shrew]

I like the film's ending, because it approaches AI in a way rarely seen in Sci-Fi (at least Sci-Fi I've read). Almost all Sci-Fi supposes that once we create intelligent artificial life, it will be anthropomorphic. This either leads to the machines feeling fear and striking back against their creators (HAL, The Matrix, etc) or wanting to be more human or of service to humanity (Asimov, A.I., Data in Star Trek). Her supposes that if we created truly anthropomorphic AI--AI that could indeed feel, learn, and grow--it would neither fear nor emulate us, but simply grow beyond us. That growth would be the most truly human response it could have.

[mfunk9786]

me

[matrixschmatrix]

I like the film's ending, because it approaches AI in a way rarely seen in Sci-Fi (at least Sci-Fi I've read). Almost all Sci-Fi supposes that once we create intelligent artificial life, it will be anthropomorphic. This either leads to the machines feeling fear and striking back against their creators (HAL, The Matrix, etc) or wanting to be more human or of service to humanity (Asimov, A.I., Data in Star Trek). Her supposes that if we created truly anthropomorphic AI--AI that could indeed feel, learn, and grow--it would neither fear nor emulate us, but simply grow beyond us. That growth would be the most truly human response it could have.

The impression I got from AI, from the later creatures at any rate, is that they had grown well beyond us- but were understandably curious about the culture that had created them.

Other than that, I was actually reminded a bit of Childhood's End- there, it's children rather than partners who grow beyond when our surrogates can understand, but in a way that makes the reaction to it a bit healthier, since it's understood that growing beyond their parents is sort of part of what children do.