Summary And Review Of The Movie Her: Redefining Human Relationships
Her is one the peculiar films which is directed by Spike Jonson and the main character played by the famous American actor Joaquin Phoenix (Theodore Twombly). The movie got released in 2013 and filled the box office with almost 50 million American dollars. This film is a romantic science fiction, which is not too far from our timeline and which could happen to one of us after 30, 40 years. Director has fantastically studied the busy and lonely life of the currant generation and tried to convert it as a message through a movie. The curiosity which has been carried out throw-out the film is just out of the box.
The main character
Theodore is a divorced lonely and depressed man who is working at a place where they compose letters for people who can not write letters. Theodore lives alone in his mansion. The way Spike Johnson has showed the depressed life of a divorced man who is in the need for love is very realistic. Then the character calls Samantha who named herself and she comes equipped with a very tangible personality that’s just conveyed through an amazing voice. Samantha is an artificial intelligent operating system which Theodore bought, at first we see her as nothing more than a voice of a computer. Throughout the movie, her character is developed to more than an answering machine and the way the director has giving soul to a voice which is just belongs to a fictional character is more than words.
Theodore starts talking with Samantha to get rid of his lonely depressed life. At the very beginning he doesn’t find her real. As days pass they started talking every day and Samantha started growing her knowledge by each conversation with him. After few months she is becoming a part of Theodore’s life. And both of them started liking each other. The only person ostracizing Theodore is himself. Even when it comes to the point that he falls in love with Samantha but they are afraid to say it because of the difference in their forms. The rest of the society around him such as Theodore’s coworkers his friends they become more curious about his critical relationship with an artificial intelligent. But after a couple of months the rest of the world is also started getting attached to their AIs. Theodore becomes aware of this whole community because of the fact that all the other individual OS which he almost feels as spirits talking with Samantha simultaneously while he is also talking to her. But he never stopped loving her.
On a fine day he comes back from the office and when he tried to connect with Samantha she was no more. The operating process stopped working in this planet and Samantha had left him a massage about her leaving this world and forever gone. That’s where director had put up all the emotions together and made us to get tears and feel sorry for Theodore and his virtual relationship. The way the narrative plays out we are made to sympathize Theodore and even to come to sympathize with Samantha who is essentially faceless, but she becomes as real to us as she becomes to Theodore. It’s just brilliant to look at to experience then just flows so stunningly, and we also started to engage to that environment which is absolutely comical.
As an audience I expected from the film was for it to end in some sort of terrible horrific tragedy because that’s what we have been seeing in all the movies which has fictional characters. This film was an absolute refreshment and the messages that it conveyed is what the current generation should understand. The main message of this movie is an idea of intimacy, what constitutes intimacy is it a physical exchange between people? Or is it an attraction of communication. What we see here is just how complex intimacy is and how intimacy is ultimately contingent within two characters who are being intimate with one another, accepting and loving themselves before they are able to love others. The movie has brought back to emotions and struggles that we are familiar with. Even though it’s set in the future world where the possibilities seems limitless. The background melody is one of the reasons behind the success story of this film. The music team “Arcade fire” has done an amazing job to convey the minimalistic emotions and giving soul to this film.
Our decision and understanding of Samantha depends largely on something we trusted before we began the movie. Simply, "What does it mean to be human?" If being human can, indeed, boil down to a complicated setup of algorithms and syntax, then Samantha should feel total human to us. If being human, however, is expressed by metaphysical uniqueness as well as physical features and chemical processes then Samantha's eager to be viewed as human as you and I will come as an embarrassing surprise. Although I trust the film implies the first, it is our presupposition which inevitably decides our perception and acceptability of Samantha.
This movie might be read as a risk of the dominant role that technology plays in our lives – though for many who are lonely a machine who listens and comprehends us would be a gift from god. The computer plays a healing role for the spirits, and teaches him about love and himself, but the complication between virtual and incorporate beings is too wide for that kind of love to ever be totally satisfying. On the other hand, human relationship are never totally satisfying, and Theodore knows this, so he is open to Samantha. The conflict of the gulf between them mixing their emotional intimacy provides some interesting tensions in the movie.
It's a fantastic thought-investigation for looking at virtual relationships, which are already beginning to exist as computers become more advanced, and how complicated and risk that is. It is not just a fictional movie, but it is a highly emotional self-examining movie about the depths of human nature, through the circumstances of a depressed, unloved man. It is likely looking into his subconscious. A joy for him is to understand how many others out there are just like him, in their personal universe, possibly talking closely with artificial intelligent as he does. It prompted me a lot of the novel "Pincher Martin”. It's a thought-persuading movie that brings light on the cultural moment that most of us occupy in this modern age that cannot possibly last. It is a restricted circle, and like everything will change, as the character in the movie learns.
