Thoughts on... Her by Spike Jonze
Her is an incredible movie. It was so well done and it left me pondering, thinking, anticipating and fearing what our future might be like.
Will we be in a world where hyper-smart operating systems dominate our lives, keyboards are obsolete and everything is voice-controlled?
Will we be like one of those faceless people, who are all busy talking into their devices, eyes trained on the floor, no eye contact between flesh and blood?
Will we be so reliant on our devices and artificial intelligence that we lose sight of what is important and lose the ability to be alone?
Will we all be like the lead, Theodore Twombly, heading straight towards an unavoidable and incompatible relationship with our hyper-smart devices while human contact is slowly frittering to oblivion? A relationship in which, you know, is destined to end. And end badly.
This is essentially the crux of the film. Love between a live beating heart and a ‘live’ motherboard. However, Her makes it believable. At one point in the film I felt that their relationship is more authentic than some real-life relationships I’ve came across. Their human/digital relationship is validated by how happy and alive (ironically) they make each other feel. While I do feel happy for Theodore, in an I-am-happy-that-he-is-happy kind of way, it is tinged with a bittersweet refrain.
The film touches on themes of isolation, lack of human connection and contact, heavy dependence on technology, love and relationships, and the inability to be alone anymore. In the film, everyone is never truly ‘alone’. They are ‘alone’ in the physical sense, Theodore in his sprawling but sparse apartment, but they are never really left ‘alone’. Their devices accompany them constantly; artificial intelligences that speaks and listens to them, just like a normal human entity. These devices keep the humans preoccupied and are close to replacing the need for actual human-to-human connection and physicality. After all, isn’t it simpler to communicate with artificial intelligence, one that makes no judgements of you, doesn’t demand anything from you and has no expectations?
Yet the humans are terribly lonely. They are so isolated and confined within their unnatural relationships with their devices, that they developed strong animalistic craving to feel another person, to touch, to have intercourse. It isn’t surprising that the first thing Theodore did when he is unable to sleep is to call a sex line and have phone intercourse, and on his first date (since being estranged from his wife) his only aim is to have sex with his date, played by Olivia Wilde, and never to see her again after. It isn’t only Theodore. Olivia Wilde’s character let slip that she has dated one too many who slept with her and never called her back.
While watching the film, I was filled with this overwhelming sense of sadness, of total isolation. Loneliness at its best. I have never felt more loneliness, experienced vicariously through Theodore, than was encapsulated in the film. Theodore works in a company that writes personal letters on behalf of his clients. All he does is narrate the letters to his computer, who types the letters out using typefaces that resembles handwriting and prints them out, all ready to be mailed. In one scene, Theodore reveals that he has written letters on behalf of the husband of a couple for eight years and he knows every little detail about their relationship. This struck a nerve. As heart-warming as it is to still have the concept of a handwritten letter in an age where emails and chat apps are prevalent, it is also eerily creepy. How something as personal and private as a handwritten letter has been outsourced to strangers to do it. This completely defeats the idea of a handwritten letter, in which you draft it with your own hand and pour your heart into it. It is something shared only between you and the receiver, no one else. This is made scarier by the fact that Theodore is a lovely letter-writer, he understands his client’s relationships inside-out and he composes touchingly beautiful letters for them. Yet, he is the outsider in these three-way relationships, ultimately alone and lonely.
Jonze is onto something. Her will strike a chord with viewers worldwide, where everyone uses or comes into contact with technology one way or another. Is technology to be embraced whole-heartedly? Should we be too reliant on technology? Is there a danger to being overly ‘friendly’ with technology? I think what Jonze is trying to say is to strike a balance; to use technology in moderation, to never let it replace real human connections. In reality, technology is very much part of our lives and it is almost impossible to eradicate it. Neither is there a need to. What we should focus on at the end of the day are the people around us, the physical sensations from another’s touch, the air that we breathe and the rising sun.
Will we be in a world where hyper-smart operating systems dominate our lives, keyboards are obsolete and everything is voice-controlled?
Will we be like one of those faceless people, who are all busy talking into their devices, eyes trained on the floor, no eye contact between flesh and blood?
Will we be so reliant on our devices and artificial intelligence that we lose sight of what is important and lose the ability to be alone?
Will we all be like the lead, Theodore Twombly, heading straight towards an unavoidable and incompatible relationship with our hyper-smart devices while human contact is slowly frittering to oblivion? A relationship in which, you know, is destined to end. And end badly.
This is essentially the crux of the film. Love between a live beating heart and a ‘live’ motherboard. However, Her makes it believable. At one point in the film I felt that their relationship is more authentic than some real-life relationships I’ve came across. Their human/digital relationship is validated by how happy and alive (ironically) they make each other feel. While I do feel happy for Theodore, in an I-am-happy-that-he-is-happy kind of way, it is tinged with a bittersweet refrain.
The film touches on themes of isolation, lack of human connection and contact, heavy dependence on technology, love and relationships, and the inability to be alone anymore. In the film, everyone is never truly ‘alone’. They are ‘alone’ in the physical sense, Theodore in his sprawling but sparse apartment, but they are never really left ‘alone’. Their devices accompany them constantly; artificial intelligences that speaks and listens to them, just like a normal human entity. These devices keep the humans preoccupied and are close to replacing the need for actual human-to-human connection and physicality. After all, isn’t it simpler to communicate with artificial intelligence, one that makes no judgements of you, doesn’t demand anything from you and has no expectations?
Yet the humans are terribly lonely. They are so isolated and confined within their unnatural relationships with their devices, that they developed strong animalistic craving to feel another person, to touch, to have intercourse. It isn’t surprising that the first thing Theodore did when he is unable to sleep is to call a sex line and have phone intercourse, and on his first date (since being estranged from his wife) his only aim is to have sex with his date, played by Olivia Wilde, and never to see her again after. It isn’t only Theodore. Olivia Wilde’s character let slip that she has dated one too many who slept with her and never called her back.
While watching the film, I was filled with this overwhelming sense of sadness, of total isolation. Loneliness at its best. I have never felt more loneliness, experienced vicariously through Theodore, than was encapsulated in the film. Theodore works in a company that writes personal letters on behalf of his clients. All he does is narrate the letters to his computer, who types the letters out using typefaces that resembles handwriting and prints them out, all ready to be mailed. In one scene, Theodore reveals that he has written letters on behalf of the husband of a couple for eight years and he knows every little detail about their relationship. This struck a nerve. As heart-warming as it is to still have the concept of a handwritten letter in an age where emails and chat apps are prevalent, it is also eerily creepy. How something as personal and private as a handwritten letter has been outsourced to strangers to do it. This completely defeats the idea of a handwritten letter, in which you draft it with your own hand and pour your heart into it. It is something shared only between you and the receiver, no one else. This is made scarier by the fact that Theodore is a lovely letter-writer, he understands his client’s relationships inside-out and he composes touchingly beautiful letters for them. Yet, he is the outsider in these three-way relationships, ultimately alone and lonely.
Jonze is onto something. Her will strike a chord with viewers worldwide, where everyone uses or comes into contact with technology one way or another. Is technology to be embraced whole-heartedly? Should we be too reliant on technology? Is there a danger to being overly ‘friendly’ with technology? I think what Jonze is trying to say is to strike a balance; to use technology in moderation, to never let it replace real human connections. In reality, technology is very much part of our lives and it is almost impossible to eradicate it. Neither is there a need to. What we should focus on at the end of the day are the people around us, the physical sensations from another’s touch, the air that we breathe and the rising sun.
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