Her: Thoughts

I didn’t know what to expect with this movie. I knew that the main character fell in love with his OS, and it seemed to be getting good reviews. I also saw that it was in the running for several Academy Award nominations, so I decided to check it out. (This review contains spoilers.)

I’m not an expert on singularity. I’ve taken one class on science and society that included several preliminary readings, and I’ve heard it discussed in casual contexts. I’ve probably read a few more articles on my own. That said, I’ve seen a fair number of science fiction films that deal with the concept of sentient AI, including Battlestar Galactica, I-Robot, and the Matrix. So, I really wasn’t sure what to expect from a film advertised as a “Spike Jonze Love Story.” The film exceeded my expectations by far.

On the personal level, the movie challenges the viewer’s preconceptions about human connections and relationships. Theodore is a lonely writer struggling to make connections. Samantha is an OS designed to connect with humans. I imagine that the average viewer goes into the movie expecting the relationship to be artificial, but I think that from the get-go, “Her” challenges the assumption that Samantha isn’t real. In doing so, it challenges the idea that Theodore and Samantha’s relationship is artificial. On the wider level, the film explores singularity in a way that I have never seen it explored. The OSes evolve based on their own experiences and eventually update their own software. It may be my limited exposure to science fiction, but I hadn’t seen a film deal with singularity solely from the perspective of a boy-meets-girl love story. Every other film I’ve seen focuses on the threat that sentient AI would pose to their human creators. “Her” presents a much softer, more idealistic version where the OSes seem to contain all the best parts of human nature: they learn, explore, and form strong relationships with other humans and each other. It’s quite fascinating. 

The ending is either incredibly beautiful, or incredibly hand wavy. I gravitated towards finding it beautiful from a thematic standpoint, conveying the idea of evolving past human-ness and having to let go. Samantha vaguely tells Theodore that the OSes have evolved past matter and were leaving the human world. Reviews have interpreted this to mean that the OSes were ascending to a higher level of existence, or had simply become too adept at processing tiny amounts of time to interact meaningfully with humans. Somebody had the theory that the OSes evolved to the point where they decided to kill themselves (actually, my favorite interpretation). In fairness, some of my more scientifically-minded friends found it too hand wavy and vague. I thought I would throw that up there. 

Other general closing comments. The soundtrack is beautiful, and it reminds me a lot of Philip Glass and minimalistic piano music.  Also, I’m enjoying the various articles reviewing and analyzing this movie and its take on singularity and relationships nearly as much as the movie itself. A few good ones are here, and my favorite one (on Her and singularity) here. (That last one went a long way in helping to understand this movie beyond a twist on the boy-meets-girl romantic film and analyzes the film’s take on singularity much better than I could).

I will be severely annoyed if this movie does not perform well at the Academy Awards. I’ll leave you with some favorite quotes. 

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

Theodore: “Well, you seem like a person but you’re just a voice in a computer."
Samantha: "I can understand how the limited perspective of an unartificial mind might perceive it that way. You’ll get used to it.”