Review: Her (2013)
When at the theatre, you will meet people without meeting people. Depending on where you sit, you may see some reactions and wonder why you laughed but no one else did. It’s that uncanny absorption, knowing people without knowing them. You can tell what they like, what they don’t like, what they respond to, but you will never know their name. That’s the communal aspect of movies. Strangers together in the dark feeling human but not knowing any of the humans around them. I had a chance encounter with one of these strangers while drying my hands in the ladies restroom. A woman, middle aged applying a ghastly maroon lipstick talked trash about Her. She said she didn’t like virtual reality. Unsolicited, the woman notices me with the paper towels in the corner. She asked, did you just see that movie? Her? I responded, why yes. I quite liked it. I didn’t like it, she said. I don’t get that virtual reality stuff. I asked if she thought it said anything about society. She leaned and whispered yea, that society stinks. As I threw away the towels I added yes, society stinks, but it’s important to remind people why it stinks. She smiled, closing her lipstick and said “I’ll give you that.”
As we age, we look back on the past with an almost rosy nostalgia. Why not remember a simpler time as better? At least it’s always simpler than the future. We like to go where our happy memories live. The future seems too complicated, a sterile and haughty newcomer we aren’t sure we like the older we get. This woman was greyed with indifference toward these new innovations. Yet I knew what she was saying. What was human about Her? The whole film is a man interacting with a computer. There are few genuine flesh and blood interactions spotted in between. You never see Samantha’s face (the operating system is named Samantha), simply because she has none. She doesn’t have a body, either. So how can you love something that doesn’t have a body? How can you love something that doesn’t breath like you do? How can you feel something that doesn’t feel you back? We can love a top because it makes us look nice, or bungee jumping cause it makes our hearts beat fast, but can you love a computer for all the attributes a human has?
Somehow, it works, and with cruel poetry. Her makes you feel an uneasiness of familiarity. The world the protagonist lives is a world much like our own only hyperbolized into an impossible but all too explainable future. People walk around talking to their headsets as if they are in conversation with another person. It’s that terrible feeling we have when we walk into a cafe where everyone is staring at their laptops (not even their coffee!) and certainly not one another. What’s human about that? Maybe we aren’t human anymore. But maybe that’s what Her is trying to tell us. Has our technology turned us into what it is? If so, what’s so bad about falling in love with someone who is, in all their glory and functionality, an information system. A smart box. But a human smart box. Nonetheless, with wires instead of veins. Unless, of course, she’s wireless.
Her has a pathos we don’t see much of in the world of explosions and excessive reboots/remakes/sequels. Spike Jonze is good with the beauty float. The film is glossy but betrays its gloss with that feeling that’s detached from its own pretty imagery. For a film about the relationship between a man and his computer, it is a remarkably human story. But this is the new version of human. Or, perhaps, it shows how love can transcend form. Her – her – a pronoun reserved for women, namely human women, makes the title all much more than just a word. Samantha isn’t a her, but she seems like one. Why can’t she be one? What if we’ve invented a new human, one that is better than us but is still modeled after us? It can feel soon enough like us too. It can feel heartbreak and ecstasy. How can we fault the computers for these feelings when we are the reason they feel them? There is a new her. As irreconcilable as it seems in our hearts, we know we must move on into this uncertain future where human may not be human anymore. We are what we make. We feel love, and even with our objects, we want them to love us back.
Her makes you laugh, and at moments, wince with an understanding about what the film is really about. We are consumed by our things that think for us, our smart phones that are getting smarter than us. Still, what if something that wasn’t meant to feel, feels? And in this world increasingly dependent on machines, one has to wonder if we are draining our human-ness from life. Or maybe we are just creating new versions of human because we don’t feel connected to our current ones. Her tells us that this new human is possible, and although it may not be good, it is part of now. It’s a now we’ve made and a now we need to come to terms with.
Diamond Serious 