Ryan McNeil
In the 21st century, there’s the virtual and the genuine. The suggestion on the packaging says that we are eating soft-baked cookies, straight out of the oven. The reality is that there is a chemical process employed to mimic that sensation. When it comes to the way we interact, there are genuine feelings suggested from all sorts of virtual interactions, but are they just being triggered by fake chemical additives, or are they in fact an honest sensation that is no less real than the genuine article?
As HER begins, we meet Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix). By day he pours his creative heart into his work writing soulful personal letters for people who can’t write them for themselves. By night, he’s a loner…spending time playing video games, keeping to himself, or occasionally drifting into chatrooms with other lonely anonymous strangers.
Upon updating his computer’s operating system to a new personalized platform named “OS1”, he is greeted by a warm female voice named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Samantha is an interactive piece of the computer’s OS, but designed to do a lot more than give driving directions, restaurant recommendations, and weather reports. Samantha is an intuitive OS with the capacity to learn, and soon she is learning a lot about Theodore and liking what she learns.
Thus is born the unusual relationship between a man and his OS, one he doesn’t expect but one he doesn’t discount either. As Samantha learns more about Theodore’s world and life, it seems as though he too is learning more about it…and how to fully appreciate all the beauty contained within it.
Their relationship is purely virtual, yet as we spend more and more time with Theodore and Samantha, we can see that there is genuine emotions in play…strange as that may seem.
HER understands life in this age like few other films do. Johansson, Phoenix and Jonze find a perfect harmony to tell the tale; like three points on an equilateral triangle. Looking at the intersection of all three points, we find a beautiful blend of illumination, empathy, and grace. Everything – from the story being told to the colour palette employed to tell it – is a celebration of humanity and connection is this ever-shrinking world in which we live in. It’s a place so intertwined, and yet so isolating.
There are lots of people like Theodore in the world. They are people capable of true thoughtfulness and poetry. People who live gentle lives and think nary a negative thought about their fellow-man.
Sometimes these people are the warm centre of a community, people whose time, talent, and treasure are there for all to benefit from. Many others though are not wired that way, and they remain isolated. They walk alone, eat alone, seemingly exist alone. This isn’t because they are unliked or unwelcome, just that they are uncomfortable with certain things about the world. They have wonderful things to offer, but seldom so much as hold out their hand.
Then there are a whole class of others in the world who have no such reservations. People who can spark connections with ease and are brimming with social confidence. In the past, these sorts of people would be leaders in their communities, and the centres of their social circles. Increasingly though, these people are becoming isolated in a whole other way.
They are moving through their day while staying wired into the day of so many others. These people could step out into a perfect spring day and never so much as look up to feel the sun on their face. They are surrounded with life, with vibrance, with energy…but they seldom know it. They are too busy wondering what has been liked, retweeted, tumbled, and upped.
Somewhere in amongst all these people is a whole other plane of existence. It’s one where people who are wired in are interacting in ways that are very real and yet very not. They are feeling genuine happiness, intimacy, inspiration, pain, insecurity, and sadness (for starters), and all of it without any human contact with the source of the feeling.
These sensations give some people an emotional lift when they’re feeling rotten, and other times they wreck their whole day. It all comes without any physical interaction, and yet it carries so much currency. They might not fully live in a moment they experience in the course of their day, but they find a whole other appreciation for it by sharing it with those who couldn’t be there. It’s a beautiful paradox, one that combines the real and virtual world to create something even more “real”.
It’s this third plane of existence – the one that combines the awkward and the connected where HER lives and makes its bones. It’s a world that seems like a place we’ve seen before, and yet like no place we’ve ever visited. It eschews something Kelly Reichardt calls “separate togetherness” (that thing where everyone at the table is paying more attention to their own devices than each other), and instead presents the idea that virtual interaction can bring out the best in a person.
Theodore has already opened himself up to someone and been rejected. Now he’s in a place where he’s more comfortable giving his heartfelt thoughts away to strangers than he is sharing them in true interaction. Samantha – a completely virtual creation – allows him to reconcile the two. Once again, he sees the world for what it has to offer, and once again he’s able to take great inspiration from it. Seeing Phoenix swim in those waters, listening to Johansson play off it, and basking in the way Jonze captures it all is nothing short of uplifting.
Throughout HER, the camera looks out at the city. It gazes through windows at the bright skyline, or hovers above the skyscrapers looking down on the life below. At a glance, one could see this as a mocking gesture – as an illustration of the throng of people all gathered in one place, so many of whom have secluded themselves in their own little cocoons.
However, such a snide idea seems to betray the beauty of HER.
Instead, what I believe these moments are there to show is that people like Theodore are no longer alone. They may not want to step outside their own little cocoon, but are still interacting with other people in other cocoons in a real way…ways that find that real harmony between the virtual and physical worlds.
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