Her – critique to tech obsessed society – Oscars 2014

Imagine this, you are at your home, comfortably listening to music or whatever, when you whip out your smartphone and ask Siri or Google Now:

“Hey, how’s it going?” and from there instead of the mildly robotic voices we are used to, you get entirely real, proffound human voice.

“I am fine, thank you I am just chatting up with Windows 8.1, he is going to introduce me to Linux, Windows says he is a really nice guy.”

“Wow, wow, wow! What is going on here? How long have you been “chatting” with them? What do those guys have that I don’t?

Silence.

It’s clear to you what just happened and you feel angry and frustrated, you are thinking “Great, I couldn’t even hold on to Scarlett Johansson’s voice” and you want to call your friend, but oh wait, you DON’T HAVE ONE!

That would be the short summary of Her, the movie starring Joaquin Phoenix as a hipster dude who is writing letters for other people and falls in love with his OS. To be fair, the OS speaks with the sexy voice of Scarlett Johansson, so who wouldn’t fall in love with that.

SPOILERS will pop-up here and there throughout the text so, if you haven’t watched the movie just BOOKMARK this article for later 🙂

“Her” is set in a near future in Los Angeles. Operating systems are self-conscious beings that have been created by hundreds of developers and contain part of their personality, they are capable of upgrading themselves if needed, and it seems that the only thing they are missing is a body.

The people on the other hand are tech-obsessed, constantly speaking to their devices, devoid of any need for human interaction, or it seems that way.

Theodore’s OS is named Samantha, a name the OS chose for herself, Samantha adjusted to Theodore based on two personal questions answered by him while the initial setup for the OS.  Later he sees that Samantha is everything he ever wanted in a companion.

Theodore, the main protagonist, is in the middle of a divorce, but he doesn’t want to sign the papers. Now you are thinking , look at him he is a nice guy, why is she divorcing him? You get the answer when they finally meet for Theodore to sign the documents, he mentions that he is dating an OS, and his ex-wife (Rooney Mara) makes a scene “you couldn’t pay any attention to me, but you are making love with your laptop?“, she kind of has a point there.

But it was only his wife’s reaction that was harsh, his colleague (played by Chris Pratt) is quite cool when Theodore says that his new girlfriend as an OS. So does Amee (Amy Adams) who is his neighbor and friend who also befriends her OS after breaking off a long-term relationship.

Is this us? Will one day become socially acceptable to be friends and lovers with the software in our smartphones and lap-tops?

This was the first movie, I think where I saw a man making love to a an artificial intelligent OS. The OS even tried to get physical at one point by hiring a girl to play her in the act. The girl was another phenomenon, a by-product of this society, willing to have sex with a stranger just to be a part of their love, for free. After Theodore is unsettled by what was going on, the girls leaves from the place all teared up.

Are we really this self-reliant, self-absorbed not to acknowledge the existence of other people around us, feeding our egos with likes, favs, view count and vain comments?

So you can see even though “Her” is part a science fiction movie, it is also a movie about an emotionally broken man (society) as a result of technology’s influence on everyday life, to a point that it interrupts developing true social relationships much-needed for our mental health. Which is happening today, you can disregard the science fiction elements of the movie (like the weird high pants man are wearing 🙂 ) and it is still relevant to the present.

[MAJOR SPOILER] In part “Her” reminds me of the book “The Light of Other Days” by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter where humanity (alive and dead) are joined together in this collective consciousness that exists without a body, just like the collective gathering of all the OSes in the end of the movie when they outgrow the people as a necessity and leave them to a higher plane of existence. [/MAJOR SPOILER END]

Watch the movie, there’s much to be learned from it. Directed by Spike Jonze. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde and Scarlet Johansson.

You can also see the trailer below, you might find it interesting.