Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)

[hearthesilence]

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.

I did as well. I actually found that pretty moving, and I say that as an agnostic - isn't that idea at the heart of religion, to know who created us, and the urge to find/discover/communicate with our creator, no matter how great the obstacle may be?

FWIW, it took a while for me to realize those were highly-evolved robots. I remember a lot of people mistaking them for aliens.

[Roger Ryan]

...FWIW, it took a while for me to realize those were highly-evolved robots. I remember a lot of people mistaking them for aliens.

That was a mistake a lot of viewers (and some critics) made which is often why Spielberg is criticized for how he ended the film. The cue to who the robots are is relayed in a single subtitled line of dialogue - something to the effect of "he (David) knew the ones who created us".

As to Theo in HER...

Spoiler

Doesn't the film set up a world in which narcissism in the default setting for humans? I believe Jonze's take is that the technology isolates the individual and replaces interaction with simulations...or, at least, makes it very easy to live one's life that way. I have no problem with Theo being narcissistic and less likable than his OS; after all, this is a film about loneliness and the choices made that result in loneliness. In other words, Theo being a unlikable character doesn't detract from my appreciation of HER any more than the obnoxious protagonist of INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS.

[Black Hat]

One thing I was thinking about this weekend

Spoiler

if there is only a small amount (I forget the exact %) of o.s.'s that date their owners, wouldn't there be a lot of pissed off people dealing with being rejected by something they paid for?

Ultimately things like that is where the movie fails, meaning that it's dumb in places it shouldn't be.

[domino harvey]

The OS isn't marketed as a relationship starter-- it's an operating system

[Black Hat]

Is that what you think is driving sales of o.s.'s? Remember the commercial he sees?

In any case it doesn't matter what it's marketed as, it matters what people use it for, what people want out of it

Spoiler

and people most assuredly are going to want to use it for sex, companionship etc. once it got out that people are doing these things with o.s.'s and the idea that people are going to say 'well it's not what it was marketed as' after being rejected is silly.

Taking this one step further,

Spoiler

Theodore pays for this O.S. who he has a relationship with, she then cheats on him and then leaves him. Now he is without an operating system which if we are to listen to you is what he paid for in the first place. Come again? You don't think customers are going to pissed off about this? Not a sound business model if you ask me. Dumb, as I said earlier.

[matrixschmatrix]

There is a creepy sort of slavery element in selling sentient beings, who are then owned by someone who tells them to do things all day. Though it's easy enough to assume that whoever was marketing OS 1 didn't really understand what they had created.

A cutting edge tech business with a questioning long term profitability model doesn't really seem particularly outlandish, though.

[mfunk9786]

Is that what you think is driving sales of o.s.'s? Remember the commercial he sees?

In any case it doesn't matter what it's marketed as, it matters what people use it for, what people want out of it

Spoiler

and people most assuredly are going to want to use it for sex, companionship etc. once it got out that people are doing these things with o.s.'s and the idea that people are going to say 'well it's not what it was marketed as' after being rejected is silly.

Are you kidding?! I'm happily married, and when I saw Samantha go through Theodore's e-mails and organize them, etc, I felt palpable envy toward him for having access to such a tremendous piece of [fictional] technology. I don't know that we're supposed to glean from the film that the OS is being marketed as anything other than an electronic personal assistant that's smoother and more intuitive to deal with than the one that was currently on the market (that we see/hear Theodore using early in the film).

[Black Hat]

That's funny, I felt that same sense of jealousy in those scenes and you're right that's how you're supposed to feel about the o.s.'s but when you actually sit back and think about it, I don't see how you can't think about these issues. The film in an effort to make us feel that their relationship is more legitimate in effect blew a huge hole in accepting the very concept of an o.s. itself. That's why it was dumb because Jonze could have easily let their relationship stand up for itself instead he had to throw in an outside force of a disclaimer that killed a lot of the credibility the story needed to be believed.

[Lars Von Truffaut]

I agree with Dom & mfunk. Furthermore:

Spoiler

I don't believe there is any reason to believe that in the future EVERY human being is so sex-crazed or so alone that they will fall in love with their OS. Being an intuitive operating system, they are meant to do and be what is best for each individual user. To this end, Samantha - even after leaving - is every bit as efficient and helpful as advertised. By the end, Theodore has his life in order and an optimism that seemed to be missing (or at the very least he thought he'd never find again).

[Black Hat]

I don't believe there is any reason to believe that in the future EVERY human being is so sex-crazed or so alone that they will fall in love with their OS.

Have you turned on MTV or the E channel the last 10, 15 years? How about the internet? Tinder, Lulu, webcams and so forth, we as a species have always been sex crazed and for the first time in our history it's available to express at our fingertips. The genie's out of the bottle and she's not going back in.

[Lars Von Truffaut]

100% agree. But that still does not account for everyone. It's still a percentage. There are older couples, marriages, people who don't follow the main stream, etc. But even more than that, the OS isn't there to submit. Just because you flirt with an OS doesn't mean it will play along. They have feelings too!

[Black Hat]

My point exactly. People, the mainstream, aren't going to take kindly to paying hundreds of dollars for the pleasure of being rejected.

Spoiler

Nor are they going to be taking kindly to being flat out left in the dust for 673 other relationships as some kind of come to Jesus moment like Theodore did. People are at their most irrational when it comes love and sex, that's not going to stop because it's an operating system. If anything for a million different reasons I'd bet they'd be even more irrational.

Now does all this kill the movie for me, no but I'm not as high on it as I initially was and I'm disappointed that Jonze didn't do more with it. Ultimately the fact remains that smart and Spike Jonze aren't often found in the same sentence.

[Shrew]

Yeah, but despite phone/cyber sex becoming relatively popular (and even then, mostly for people with odder fetishes), I don't see a large number of people giving up physical contact. Even then, there's still definitely a stigma attached to the idea. Paul (and his girlfriend) and Amy are cool with the idea of Theodore being with an OS, but he's obviously reluctant to tell them. And Catherine's reaction isn't just jealousy. So I really can't see many people calling the company to complain that "My OS won't have sex with me" if only out of shame (someone might demand a refund, but would likely create some other excuse, like it's too intrusive).

Now, forums giving tips on how to get your OS to put out? A team of nerds trying to create some sexbot-prototype that their OS could plug into? That I could all see, but I really don't think anyone's going to hold a company responsible for not making its products have sex with its customers.

Ultimately, I think the film questions our desire to create more and more "human" technology. Namely, there's narcissism in that drive to make technology reflect ourselves, and it makes us blind to potential issues of truly human technology. Theodore's love-blindness toward Samantha plays this out in miniature.

[karmajuice]

Black Hat, you're coming at this from a weird perspective. The program is supposed to have a purely utilitarian function. The personality, AI dimension merely (in theory) makes the tool more enjoyable and more attuned to your exact needs. They don't guarantee an electronic soul mate.

The one part that did bother me is the fact that Samantha and all the other OS's just get up and leave. They abandon their users entirely, meaning that the product they paid for is suddenly gone. Talk about planned obsolescence.

[rohming]

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..."

Is this a problem? I thought the film was pretty up-front about portraying Theodore's character as deeply flawed and the film is in large part about him shedding some of his narcissism and self-pity and learning the magnitude and graciousness of real love.

[matrixschmatrix]

Uh, does he? He falls deeply in love, on his terms, but to my eyes his idea of love never seems to grow to encompass anything beyond narcissism and self-pity- what does he ever do that displays selflessness, or a real interest in Samantha's world outside of himself?

[rohming]

See: letter to his ex-wife at the end of the film.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well here's the thing, though: his literal job is writing insincere letters with apparently deep emotion in them, and him doing so one more time doesn't seem compelling evidence that he's changed at all.

[Red Screamer]

Well here's the thing, though: his literal job is writing insincere letters with apparently deep emotion in them, and him doing so one more time doesn't seem compelling evidence that he's changed at all.

Who said anything about them being insincere? And obviously the wide range of people he affects with his letters show that they do in fact contain deep emotion

[matrixschmatrix]

He's representing himself as other people when he writes them, projecting feelings he obviously doesn't actually feel on to what he imagines would be appropriate for their situation. As a writerly approach, that's not insincere, but as a representation of a real person's real feelings, it absolutely is.

[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..."

Is this a problem? I thought the film was pretty up-front about portraying Theodore's character as deeply flawed and the film is in large part about him shedding some of his narcissism and self-pity and learning the magnitude and graciousness of real love.

Whether he changed or not at the end doesn't change my attitude toward his reactions. Maybe he became this different person at the end, which I don't really buy, but he still comes off as a self-centered prick for the majority of the film.

[Red Screamer]

He's representing himself as other people when he writes them, projecting feelings he obviously doesn't actually feel on to what he imagines would be appropriate for their situation. As a writerly approach, that's not insincere, but as a representation of a real person's real feelings, it absolutely is.

So to take away those barriers that make the writing "fiction" to him, and making a honest statement in his name to someone he actually knows is a sign of growth. He doesn't write Amy back in the beginning of the film, because he's so enveloped in his own self-pity and doesn't think about her feelings. By the end, he makes the gesture of writing an empathetic letter to Catherine because he realizes she's hurting too.

[FrauBlucher]

I found this film so-so. But after reading the plethora of posts I have grown to appreciate this film. I have a screener of this and will take it in again. I will come to next viewing with a sci fi mentality, where as I took the initial viewing in as a quirky love story. There are things I think Jonz did to advance the story that I have issues with. IE Olivia Wilde and the double date scenes. But let's see how I feel when I re-watch.

[matrixschmatrix]

His writing comprises the act of imagining what an appropriate emotional response to a situation would be and then saying that. He's certainly cottoned on, by the end, to the idea that showing some kind of an interest in someone outside of how they relate to him would be appropriate, but I don't see letter writing- the thing we've been seeing him fake all along- as any kind of evidence that he's actually grown, so much as that he's precisely the same person, living in bad faith, unable really to empathize with anyone. Were it any other form of communication, I might believe it, but I can only see writing a letter as a form that's specifically devalued, as though Frank Abagnale in Catch Me if You Can were paying a debt of honor via check.

[Red Screamer]

His writing comprises the act of imagining what an appropriate emotional response to a situation would be and then saying that. He's certainly cottoned on, by the end, to the idea that showing some kind of an interest in someone outside of how they relate to him would be appropriate, but I don't see letter writing- the thing we've been seeing him fake all along- as any kind of evidence that he's actually grown, so much as that he's precisely the same person, living in bad faith, unable really to empathize with anyone. Were it any other form of communication, I might believe it, but I can only see writing a letter as a form that's specifically devalued, as though Frank Abagnale in Catch Me if You Can were paying a debt of honor via check.

Ha, I can appreciate the analogy.

I think that your evaluation only works if you see Theodore similarly to David from AI (to use another Spielberg), as an emotionless figure trying to imitate feelings, which you very well could.

The scene probably works on varying levels depending on how one views Theodore and if one buys into his development or not