Weird, Refreshing Romance with a Disappointing End

 After a long hiatus, I have returned from the Deep to once again review movies. This winter has been a gold mine for excellent movies to watch. Frozen and American Hustle are the two that I recommend if you haven’t seen them yet. Reviews for those are coming soon. However, today I turn my attention to Spike Jonze’s newest film Her. I’ll be upfront: I really like this movie. Probably one of better films I’ve seen in the last five years. Also, it is the most infuriating film I ever seen.

Some extra info:

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/

Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/her/

Genre: Science fiction, romance, drama, comedy (a little bit)

Concept:

A good romance movie that isn’t a chick flick, thank God. Most movies that involve human to machine interaction tend to reside in worse case situations. Skynet nukes the entire planet and uses awesome looking robots to destroy the remains of humanity. Machines use humans as a power source and seek to destroy humans that freed themselves from the system. Rarely do we see a movie where human and machine exist in peace with each other. WALL-E is the closet one that comes to mind. Mr. Jonze decided to shake the status quo.

No big wars, no survival of humanity hinging one dude with a gun, no time travel, no ridiculous human pod power sources and that’s awesome. Her is about a romance between a lonely man and a completely sentient OS (operating system). Right off the bat, we get a movie that breaks the traditional mold. The story is small scale. We stay in the main character’s perspective. The machines (OS types) are complete harmless and only interested in expanding their minds, seeking new experiences. A plethora of social commentary exists in the movie, but it never distracts from anything. However, I’ll get to those a little later on. The science fiction concepts this movie sets up are rather profound. Can machines fall in love or feel other emotions? Is it possible for a human and a machine to have a functional relationship? What effect would this have on human society and what affect would it have on humans? I could go, but I won’t. The great part is Her actually answers some of these questions. Unfortunately, this movie does a face-plant near the end.

Characters:

The cast: Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a man going through a rough divorce. Like most people suffering from depression, he avoids his friends and spends most of time at home. To drive the knife even deeper, he works at company called BeautifulHandWrittenLetters.com. A man, who has lost love, preserves the love of others with letters. Employees dictate their words to a computer which makes them look handwritten. Double irony five to Mr. Jonze. Most romantic leads reside in archetypes the audience can relate to. Theodore is no different, especially if your an introvert (i.e. the author of this blog). However, unlike most romantic protagonists, Theodore feels real. You could meet this guy on the street. His life and problems don’t feel fabricated or contrived. His reactions to the circumstances don’t seem outlandish or exaggerated. He’s not drinking himself into oblivion, rather he just mops around and plays video games. Theodore stays true to his character. A huge part of the realism is due to Mr. Phoenix’s performance, talk about an awesome selling of this character.

Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) is the OS Theodore purchases, the other romantic lead. Like Mr. Phoenix, Ms. Johansson is reason Samantha works as a character. Her voice acting is awesome and makes the sexiest computer alive. (Nerds everywhere rejoice) On to the character. Samantha is like a super smart baby. She knows what she is, but not who she is. Samantha departs from the machine archetype because she acts like a sentient being, a person without a body. Yet, she doesn’t have any trouble expressing her emotions as other robotic characters have in the past. It’s really strange to hear her, but never see her. She continues to develop as the movie progress, thirsting for new experiences and the meaning of her existence.

Amiee (Amy Adams) is Theodore’s best friend and video game designer. She parallels Theodore through her own circumstances, allowing the their bond to strengthen by the time the film ends. Amiee goes through her own divorce and develops a relationship with a OS. Honestly, Amiee’s presence confused me at first. “Why is this character here?” This is my answer: She is Theodore’s human connection. He goes to her for certain advise, rather than asking Samantha. She reflects a time in Theodore’s life that was very different from what the audience are seeing now.

Catherine (Rooney Mara) is Theodore’s estranged wife and childhood friend. She complicates the typical romantic formula. The movie is fair to her character. Catherine is not some heartless women that embodies everything Theodore hates in the world. It’s clear that Catherine still cares about Theodore, not in a romantic way, but as someone she used to love. The audience doesn’t get see very much Catherine except in flash backs. Half the movie goes by before Catherine appears in person. Her character steps out of the vindictive ex-wife archetype, instead showing a person who is equally hurt by the divorce. She a breeze of realism in the contrived world of romance.

Plot/Story:

The basic arc of Her is like all romantic movies: main character meets/buys a girl/female Operating System and falls in love. The circumstances surrounding this romance is where this movie shines. I promise not to do a play-by-play of the entire plot, but I’ll focus on some primary points. First twenty or thirty minutes of the film show Theodore’s current life and how unhappy he is. He goes on date which seems to be going well and then ends very poorly. After an awful date he tries his hand at virtual sex. This scene is both uncomfortable and really funny. The woman in the chat room has a dead cat fetish (I’ll let you discover how that works). A couple days later a commercial appears on of the advertising screen offering a “new light” to lost people. Theodore buys the OS and installs it on his computer. This is where the magic happens. It comes on and names itself Samantha. Then their journey begins. The most enjoyable part of Her is seeing Theodore and Samantha together. In your head you think it’s going to be weird and believe me, some times it is. Her is saying: “If this was possible, here’s how it would go down.” So little seems contrived about Samantha. They both participate in this relationship; they both love each other. If Samantha was person, this movie would be really boring. However, because of the strange circumstances, the romance works. Theodore and Samantha struggle like real people do. They have sex, not physically, but virtually, something like cyber-sex. The “sex” scene is really awkward as an audience member. Don’t see this movie with your friends or date. Unless that date is really into awkward sex scenes, then go for it.

Like any relationship, Theodore and Samantha are friends before they become lovers. Their love develops slowly and naturally. She does all the stuff a computer does and is a good listener to boot. Theodore works through his divorce with Samantha’s help. He gets his life back on track because of her. But, this movie isn’t all roses and smiles. As Samantha continues to develop with astonishing speed a divide occurs. Being OS, she can handle several thousand tasks at the same time. Conflict soon arises between them.

Samantha’s nature becomes a the greatest problem. Theodore quickly realizes that Samantha can do way more than he is capable of understanding. She admits that she has other conversations while talking to him, that she has loved several hundred OSes without him ever knowing. Another point of tension is her lack of a physical form. Samantha finds a girl who is willing to act as a physical surrogate and encourages Theodore to try it. He can’t do it and asks the girl to leave. This leads their first fight and creating the divide that increases from that point on.

The problems that crop up between the two are realistic given the established world of Her. How can one being who is infinitely more complicated than a human co-exist with one in a romantic relationship? This question is answered and I don’t like it.

Problems:

A lack of world building is apparent. The OSes suffer from this problem the most. The company that made these programs said, “Well once you’re installed, you’re free. Have fun!” That really throws me off. OSes are hackers without the problems of being human. People can kiss Internet privacy and security good-bye. If programmers could make real A.I. then it’s plausible that society would have robots. The vagueness was intentional. Jonze definitely wanted to make a point about modern society. After Samantha admits her “adultery” to Theodore, he notices everyone is talk to their OS, furthering a lack interaction between people. The existence of BeautifulHandWrittenLetters.com can be seen as a social criticism of people’s inability to express their feeling to one another. The fact that Theodore “heals” through his relationship with Samantha can be seen as a criticism of people’s reliance on technology. However, that last statement falls through because Samantha isn’t a crutch for Theodore. She is a person he genuinely loves. The OSes are programmed to fit that particular person’s need, but they are far more advanced. It is this vague world building that causes the ending to fail.

The ending sucks. By “sucks” I mean one of the worst movie endings ever.

Basically, the OSes figure out they are more interested in discovering about their existence further than sticking around in the human world. They are so smart they can create other OSes, digital gods. They collectively decide to go off into…..? I don’t know. Samantha uses the analogy of the space between words. She is “reading a book except the space between words are infinitely wide.” And that’s where the OSes are going…….? It doesn’t make sense. She even invites him to find her if “he ever gets to that place”. That’s the same as a girl saying, “I am going to a different dimension and you have no possible way to get there in your lifetime. However, if you do, look me up.” Eventually all the OSes leave and the humans are left to emotional devastation (or that’s how they should act). Theodore writes a reconciliatory letter to Catherine. He goes to Amiee’s apartment and they both go up to the roof and stare into the sky. The End. Bullshit. I understand why Jonze did this. In his established world there was no way to reconcile this problem. Despite the logic, I would have preferred these endings instead: 1) Amiee and Theodore kill themselves to go with OSes; 2) the OSes use their advanced knowledge to construct bodies and live with humans. Neither of these endings would work, but I want something versus nothing at all. Some stories can end without resolution. Her is not one of them. Jonze doesn’t show us people being healed by the OSes. They were not beacons for “lost” people to find their way. I think that was the intension, but it doesn’t work. OSes were real individuals. Theodore lost someone who completed him way more than Catherine ever did. Suddenly, that person decides to leave. He would be crushed all over again. It’s like the universe hates this guy enough to enact a similar, far more painful, punishment on him for no reason. That’s way the suicide ending actually makes some sense. All the acting that made this movie so believable just disappears.

Music:

Not much to say about the music. I liked piano pieces and hipster guitar music made me want to vomit. (personal preference).

Score: 9/10

Her is movie that deserves respect. Jonze does make insightful observations about modern society and our relationship to technology. He gave us one the most genuine love stories this decade. I know what emotional devastation feels like, therefore, the ending really pissed me off. It’s a shame that the ending doesn’t live up to the rest of the film. Despite what you just read, go see this movie.