Her: Not Your Typical Dystopian Science Fiction Film

‘Her’ is a postmodern view of a lonely man who falls in loves with his operating system, it is directed by Spike Jonze starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson (voice). ‘Her’ is different from other science fiction films as it doesn’t aim to make our jaw drop by depicting a dystopian future, there is a reservoir of movies that try to warn us against our overdependency over technology, rather it paints us a very plausible picture of our near future and how over interaction with technology can be. This piece will not discuss about the how good or bad of a film it is (it’s good by the way, do check it out) rather it will focus more on the themes of ‘wants vs needs’ and explore other ideas that are explored in this film.

The film, through its various cinematic techniques does a very good job in making us feel the blossom and decay of relationship throughout its runtime, it does a very good job despite the challenge of having only the presence of one person, the protagonist (Theodore), a lonely man who writes heavy emotional letters—it is through his work we are given the glimpse of what he yearns for— for others.

The movie explores a heavy concept of ‘what does it take for one to fall in love with someone?’ In Theodore’s case the voice was enough to make him fall in love with Samantha (his Operating System). The similarity between Siri and Samantha is conspicuously visible, it can be prophesized that Siri could one day take the form of Samantha.The idea of having a relationship with an AI is not something new, but ‘Her’ explores it with it such sincerity that it actually makes it very relatable, this might be because in this internet age we are mostly connected through texts and calls than in-person interactions.

Jonze questions the themes like loneliness, love and sex in world that is not unlike ours in a distant future. What Jonze main focus seems in this movie is can Artificial Information (AI) be more human than human themselves? The reasoning behind it is not very far-fetched, through machine learning AI is already better at many task than human and with the pace that it is improving and expanding its horizon, it doesn’t seem far-fetched at all to predict a future where AI will be capable of love and reaching a higher consciousness than humans themselves.