Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore in Her
This is the link to the trailer of the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QRvTv_tpw0This
Title of the film: "Her"
Year it was made: 2013
Director: Spike Jonze
Screen-writer: Spike Jonze
Lead actors: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson, Rooney Mara, and Olivia Wilde.
Running time: 126 minutes
General Review
The movie Her takes place in Los Angeles sometime in the near future. It follows a talented writer named Theodore Twombly who is having trouble moving on from his ex wife, Catherine. His life is at a standstill and he can’t seem to express his emotions in a healthy way. Unexpectedly, he discovers a ground-breaking invention: a personal computerized assistant called an OS, which is essentially a robot’s voice in his earpiece. Theodore initiates contact with his computerized assistant, who names herself Samantha, and finds himself falling for her. As time goes by with his new companion, he experiences friendship, love and heartbreak.
The movie Her uses sound to communicate emotions to the viewers. The first time Theodore and Samantha are intimate together, the screen goes black and all we are able to do is listen to their voices. It is beautiful and simplistic because it gets us out of our heads and allows us to focus on what the characters were feeling at that moment through dialogue only. It shows us what Samantha must feel like all the time, being an OS without a body, and we can see the story from her perspective. It is also disorienting because it is rare for a movie to have a black screen for an important scene that drives the plot forward. It is a powerful and clever scene and the audience picks up on the importance of it quickly through sound alone.
The lighting in the movie is used mostly to compare and contrast two very different sets. Theodore’s apartment is rarely bright and the audience does not see him home other than at night. It is a gloomy and depressing setting. However, his office is the complete opposite. The color palette of his office is filled with bright hues such as red, yellow, blue and pink. The panels of the vibrant glass that cover the building and that surround his desk are all colorful. It is subtle, but clear that his office space is where he feels most creative. The character is known to be a great writer, and his letters are eventually published because of that. Compared to his apartment, where he felt the most alone, in the office it is easy to pretend that you are okay and distract yourself, but when you go home, it’s hard to ignore that fact that you’re alone. That is the case for Theodore because he misses what he had with his ex wife Catherine, but at work he can focus on other people’s personal letters.
Although Her may seem like a simple movie, it uses many special effects throughout. Flashbacks are used frequently for Theodore, and they showed him with Catherine while they were together. Lighting is also mixed with the flashbacks because when he remembers his marriage with Catherine, the scenes are choppy and very bright. They show the flashbacks at times not to explain to the audience, but to show us what Theodore was thinking at any given moment. For example, when Samantha asks him about the divorce papers he has to sign, over their dialogue it shows his sad memories of their time together that are significantly darker in lighting. The flashbacks lift the audience directly into Theodore's mind and allow us to see what he is not saying. They also help because instead of explaining the complicated backstory, Spike Jonze was able to slowly reveal what happened through the flashbacks.
The costumes used in the movie are interesting because they mix the modern with the classic. The beginning of the movie establishes that Theodore lives in a modern city in the future because of his voice controlled phone and the scenes of skyscrapers. However, his outfits, along with the rest of the characters, resemble fashion that would date back to the 1970’s. For example, Theodore is seen wearing high waisted dress pants. His thick mustache also contributes to the look, and his colleague Paul wears the same thing. The mix of old and new shows how the world is able to move forward, but there will always be parts that stay behind. It can suggest that Theodore is stuck in the past, because he is trying to desperately hold onto his happy memories of Catherine. This is creative and interesting because although it’s not obvious, it is a contrast to
Samantha went through amazing character development throughout the movie. She started out as a typical OS, which is essentially a robot living in Theodore’s earpiece. However, she is able to experience, have feelings and able to detect tones of voice. Throughout the movie she forms a consciousness. Theodore is the reason behind most of her new emotions, and she is able to grow and have wants and needs. She is conscious and aware of herself and understands that she does not have a body, but somehow developed enough to feel it. By the end of the movie, she is ready to move on in search of more advanced programming. This shows the audience that Samantha is ready to move on and experience new things. Her is able to somehow touch the audience with a character that we never see, and that is impressive.
The movie Her raises important themes and issues. A theme that stays consistent with the movie is how difficult it has become to connect with other people intimately and create relationships that are based on true emotions. Instead, people are more connect by their phones and this separates everyone, and we are no longer able to express real emotions. For example, Theodore’s job is to write personal letters for other people. This shows us how people can not write a love letter to their spouse because of how far technology has divided them. If we reduced the amount of digital technology we consume, there would be changes for the better. However, if we let technology go too far, we will have serious consequences. An issue that Her talks about is how far people will let technology go. We see in the movie a world imagined for what the future is going to look like. This is an important issue because we are asking that today, and the movie shows us this many times.
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The movie Her raises important themes and issues. A theme that stays consistent with the movie is how difficult it has become to connect with other people intimately and create relationships that are based on true emotions. Instead, people are more connect by their phones and this separates everyone, and we are no longer able to express real emotions. For example, Theodore’s job is to write personal letters for other people. This shows us how people can not write a love letter to their spouse because of how far technology has divided them. If we reduced the amount of digital technology we consume, there would be changes for the better. However, if we let technology go too far, we will have serious consequences. An issue that Her talks about is how far people will let technology go. We see in the movie a world imagined for what the future is going to look like. This is an important issue because we are asking that today, and the movie shows us this many times.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The film raises many important questions about our social connectedness (or disconnections) and the role that digital technology and AI is playing. AI will likely take an increasing role in our social lives and this film gives us a glimpse into the possible sad reality that will be our future. This film could be a wake-up call to many.
We can all relate to aspects of the film, even if it's impossible at this moment in time to have AI's with such developed consciousness. We experience love and breakups and in our heartache try to find ways to feel better. Since the movie is a vision of the future, the AI is replacing the dating sites and the actual person from a relationship. In 2017, society can already see how people are become more individualistic, which mean that if the world continues with this frame of mind it will get worse. That is an important fact that the writers of the movies wanted to show and amplify. They showed how people do not even need to have another physical body with them just talking to a computer was enough. This is an important fact to acknowledge, since the vision of the film will soon be here.
One weakness in the film would be how there was not enough judgmental people in the life of Theodore. In reality, people would have a hard time hearing their friend say that they were dating an AI. The only person in the film that did just that is Catherine, she stated her feelings towards the situation and that is something that most people would do. Another weakness that could be seen in the film in the lack of physical communication, meaning of a lack of touch when it comes to a relationship. That might of been the reason why Samantha wanted to introduce a surrogate to their relationship. Which would add what was missing in the relationship. Even if a person falls in love with their lovers personality, every person has some kind of need for physical touch.
Rating
Connections to Course Material
Three connections we can make from this movie and the course material are sentience and consciousness, panpsychism and awareness of self.
The ideas of sentience and consciousness relate directly to the Operating System named Samantha. We are aware that Samantha is not real, she is an operating system that Theodore installed just to try out. Since Sam is in a computer, this brought our attention back to the discussions we had about computers and robots having a soul or if they are sentient beings. Of course Her is a movie but it showed that Samantha did become a sentient being because she felt so many different emotions, just as a human would feel. She felt jealousy, happiness, excitement, sadness and even distant from Theodore. This got us thinking about how we spoke about computers and robots always being programmed to do the things that they do however, Samantha was not programmed to feel any of these feelings, but she developed them. Also, Samantha was able to tell that she was feeling these feelings and she was aware of her surroundings which relates to the idea of consciousness. Therefore we can assume that Samantha achieved sentience and consciousness according to our definitions.
The idea of panpsychism is shown in this movie as well. There was a scene where Samantha read a book about physics and how that book mentions that all things are made out of matter. This was very intriguing for Samantha because she always wanted to feel a bit more connected to Theodore so reading this made her think about how Theodore and she do have something in common and are kind of the same because they are both made up of matter. This relates to the idea of panpsychism because according to this theory, everything has a consciousness. insofar as everything is made up of the same building blocks of energy and matter.
The idea of a self aware self is shown throughout this movie as well. Theodore and the other human beings are aware of themselves, they refer to themselves as “I”, and in general they know they exist in that world. We can argue that even though Samantha doesn’t physically exist with a body, she is aware of herself not having a body. She is also aware that she is feeling certain emotions due to how she feels about Theodore. She says "Earlier I was thinking about how I was annoyed and this is going to sound strange but I was really excited about that and then I was thinking about the other things that I've been feeling and I found myself proud of that, you know? Proud of having my own feelings about the world like the times I was worried about you and things that hurt me, things I want, and then I had this terrible thought. Are these feelings even real or are they just programming?" When she expresses her feelings that she was able to feel something she never has before or like we mentioned, she is aware of all the emotions she started to feel.
Questions
1. Which moments in the film seemed awkward or weird to you?
2. Would you like to have an OS as a lover?
3. Could you live a day without a cell phone on a regular day? This is excluding when you are in the country and have no cell phone.
Web Links
1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-about-trauma/201305/sexual-surrogates-help- many-who-suffer-alone
This link discusses the difference between surrogates and sex workers. A surrogate main use is for sex therapy. Trained sex therapists give “hands on treatment” for their clients which are mostly men. These men suffer from “physiological, trouble with intimacy, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, etc.” On the other hand prostitution is more towards “returning business and profiting."
This link is about how the majority of Americans today are “spending more time” and becoming “dependent” with their computer rather than their significant other. In times of trouble with their computer, they seek a “computer therapist.” They use these services to seek for “empathy and support.” The company “support.com” cannot keep up with the demand for these services and need to “hire more employees” to accommodate them.
Works Cited--make sure in alpha order and perfect Owl at Purdue MLA
Muller Ph.D., Robert T. “Sexual Surrogates Help Many Who Suffer Alone.” Psychology Today, 27 May 2013, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-about -trauma/201305/sexual-surrogates-help-many-who-suffer-alone. Accessed 2 Apr 2017.
Wood, Lamont. “When Your Most Significant Other is a Computer.” Live Science, 5 Oct 2007, http://www.livescience.com/1918-significant-computer.html. Accessed 1 Apr 2017.
"Her (film)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 06 Mar. 2017. Web. 09. 2017.
Question 1: Many of the scenes in this film had been quite unrealistic or uncomfortable. The scenes that seemed to be the most awkward and unreal however were the ones with Theodore and his interactions with or involving an OS. For example the sex scene with Samantha and Theodore when they got a human female to stand in Samantha's place physically, Theodore and the phone sex scene involving a dead cat and Sam and Theodore's night talks about wanting to physically touch. None of these examples are very realistic as being romantically involved with an OS is in fact viewed by people as weird. The phone sex scene was also very disturbing and awkward to watch and so was Sam and Theodore's intimate night conversations.
ReplyDeleteYour film blog is well written and does a great job of summarizing the main plot of the movie with a good amount of details in a very short paragraph, which is very helpful to people who haven’t watched the movie like myself. To my understanding of the movie, it reminds me a lot of the episode of the TV show, whose name I cannot remember, we had watched in class. It is similar in the way that the main character is unable to cope with the loss of someone they care about, in this case his ex-wife, so in order to help them deal with it, they resort to purchasing an AI of sort. In this movie it was Samantha, a talking operating system, and in the TV show, it was an exact copy of the main character’s husband, but a robot version of him. Both the movie and the show are different but are very similar.
ReplyDeleteI think your blog was done really well. I loved the course connections, and for someone who's never seen the film, I think you did a very good summary. Having read this film analysis, I now want to see the film.
ReplyDeleteFor Question 3, I know I can't live without my cellphone. I don't necessarily need it to work, but having a phone is a huge comfort for me. Knowing that I can contact someone in an emergency, or play a game if I just need to space out for a bit is helpful. I often read books on my phone, and I track everything on their. Without my phone, I wouldn't know what homework or appointments I had.
You guys did a good job with the course connections and the overall analysis.
ReplyDeleteTo answer question number 3, for the most part, I would be able to go without my phone for a day. My biggest struggle would be not being able to contact anyone right away but other than that I know that I only ever go on my phone when I am bored. But, I would be able to replace that with other things like reading for example. Whenever I go to my cottage with family for the weekend, I often only use my phone at night before bed but that is easily replaceable by watching a movie, reading a book or writing. Again, my biggest struggle would be not being able to contact anyone but other than that I would be fine without it.
In my opinion, your film blog was well-written. It was good job from the way you summarized and the full details of the review and very interesting connections towards sentience, aware self and panpsychism. The movie shows the evolution of technology where "a personal computerized assistant" can speak through the ear-piece just to have communications. Throughout the movie, millions of people have been using this technology which shows big difference from our present days and this movie (in the future). Other than the great movie, I think you should've written more for your web links. Overall, your blog seems very interesting and intriguing.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 2: I would not invest in having an OS lover because human emotions are biological and I don't believe it would be beneficial mentally to be in that kind of relationship. The example used would be Samantha, she is a compilation and understanding of all her programmers emotions and reactions then adds on from all she experiences. But even then the OS is never really experiencing anything it is simply code. The program is learning to adapt but it is not feeling. It is programmed to pretend it has no emotions which is what makes it the most sinister. I enjoyed this blog because it seems to not take a bias for the OS and is skeptical of the benefits. It would seem easy as is shown in the movie to be okay with people being in relationships with the OS but being from a time where this is not yet accepted we are still able to have a less inclusive idea of what is morally acceptable and what isn't. The only criticism I would have is not going into more depth about if Samantha is really "feeling" what she says she is. What Samantha is interpreting is code, it must be clear that that is the reality. Sentience is for things biological for the moment and there is nothing biological about Samantha. -Zachary Rambarransingh
ReplyDeleteQuestion 3: I think in this day and age, not having a cell phone is really hard and not for the fact that I am addicted to social media or cannot live without my phone, but society cannot function without technology. I have tried to go a day without a cell phone and I have succeeded, I can entertain myself with other things such as spending time with family or reading a book. However, if I were to leave my house, then it would be harder to be without my phone. Maps are not as easily accessible as they were years ago and google maps is essential in finding out where my location is and how to get there. Also, not all bus stops have the schedule as to when the bus will show up and I need the internet on my phone to search up when the bus will be there so I can arrive at my destination on time.
ReplyDeleteI have no problem going without my phone, and I have done it many time, on vacation or when camping, but society has to be on the same level and offer me less technological ways of gathering information.
I must confess, that I am very much impressed by the way in which you guys influence me to watch this movie, because of such good summary. Overall, I believe that the film blog was well written, well analyzed, and the connection to the course content, was well established. My comment to question 3, is that I can go a day or two without my cellphone because I have never allowed myself/ life to be centred around my cellphone. In our society today, the younger generation are hooked to their phones, that we see there's not much verbal communication anymore, because communicating is done via texting. On the other hand, I do believe that a cellphone is an important thing to have access to.
ReplyDeleteReading over the review of Her I as well as the character development that Samantha takes in this film quickly reminded me of the film Chappie. In this film, a police robot is programmed with an artificial intelligence so similar to the human mind that it enables the robot to be able to have emotions as well as individual thoughts and experiences. This is similar to Samantha in the film Her because Samantha starts out as just a regular OS, but much like Chappie, she is able to eventually have her own feelings and experiences. In both of these films, a character who starts off with no consciousness later develops one and confusion and problems are caused because of this. Both of these films also show us what our own futures might even look like.
ReplyDeleteAnother film that came to mind when reading about Her was Big Hero 6. When watching this Disney movie with my little cousins I didn’t think I would be comparing it to a complex movie such as Her in one of my College classes but similarities can be found in these two different types of pictures. Both have a character that becomes extremely close with an artificial intelligence and again speaks on the confusions that can come with this. When programmed to help people, the character Baymax develops a form of consciousness whether it was intentional for this to happen or not and this again is similar to Samantha, whose purpose was also to aid. We appreciate things that can help us and facilitate our everyday lives, but when these things that help us are becoming closer and closer to being human, we can’t help but become attached.
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ReplyDeleteTo begin with, your film blog is very impressive. You did a good summary and your overall blog is well-written. Moreover, your connections to the course material are very thoughtful and interesting.
ReplyDeleteTo answer question 3, spending a day without my smartphone would not represent a very hard challenge. As a matter of fact, I have already done it many times. However, in the world in which we live nowadays, I believe smartphones are a necessity. I wish it was different but it is a reality that we have to face. I agree that it can be useful in cases of emergency but it is also a big element of distraction. People are constantly texting each other rather than speaking. Most individuals, especially in the younger generation, are attached to their phones. For example, when we want to escape from eye contacts while walking somewhere, we look at our phones. Now, we need to have constant access to Omnivox since it is a crucial tool for school. Recently, I tried to delete my Facebook account and it did not last long; communication with my teammates for school projects was hard and I was missing many things. Also, when my parents need to tell me something while I am at school, they text me. Another problem with the smartphone is that we have easy access to social Medias and it has become a reflex to look at them. In my opinion, the saddest result with today’s way of life is that all the hours we are spending on these devices. Those hours are moments we could be doing something else such as spending quality time with our families, learn a music instrument, go for refreshing walk outside and many other meaningful activities.
Finally, we are all saying that we do not have enough time to spend on things we like because of school but notice every time you look at your phone while doing homework and replace these moments with little activities you like. Do it every time you use your phone for unimportant reason and you will see!
Ariane Prefontaine