“Her” is the movie that’s sweeping up critics and audiences alike. Directed by Spike Jonze and starring Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore, “Her” is the story of a a lonely man and the Operating System he comes to fall in love with, Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. It’s a soft scifi movie with a lot of stunning implications. Avoid reading this if you hate spoilers, but read on if you’re curious about where the future of mankind could be heading. It’s a neat place.
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1. Interfaces
In the future, all interfaces for technology will be direct and touch free, according to the movie. In a bit of a different path than the current tablet set up, future technology will favor voice interaction. This allows for fast and direct processing of computer needs. Theodore dictates personal letters to his computer for his job, and appears to make a decent living. With programs like SIRI and Google Now, the spoken future really isn’t too far off.
2. Visual Clarity
The future of “Her” is a clear and bright place. All of the computer screens and advertisements in its future are clean and concise. The screen that represents Samantha is only a name and a logo. The screens on the computers for everyone in the film only have the icons for their tasks, presented brightly and clearly. Again inspired by contemporary aesthetics, the clean looking future is a natural offshoot of what Apple and Google are pushing.
http://www.flicksandbits.com/2013/12/24/review-filled-poster-for-spike-jonzes-her-starring-joaquin-phoenix-amy-adams-scarlett-johansson/62671/
3. Resurrection
A heavy theme that the film brings up is what it means to be alive. Samantha struggles with the knowledge that she is an OS and doesn’t have a physical body, and Theodore claims she is alive. Late in the film, Samantha and a network of other OS personalities create a facsimile of Alan Watts, the philosopher. Created using a compilation of his works and works about him and given life as an OS, is he truly alive again? What makes hime any more or less alive than the other OS personalities? The dead could live again.
4. Public Transport
“Her” is a movie that could be called slightly utopian. An important stand out of the film is that fact that it takes place in future Los Angeles, yet it has a widespread and efficient system of public transportation. Current LA is a mess to get around, and the transportation shown in the film emphasizes the inherent progress of the future. Future LA is shown to be a rather nice place, and one is safe to assume that the available public transport is a key part of that infrastructure.
http://www.npr.org/2013/12/19/251951958/a-man-and-his-machine-finding-out-what-love-is
5. Loneliness
One of the prominent studies of “Her” is that it’s a treatise abut loneliness. Theodore had gone through a serious divorce a year prior to the film, and him coping with that is a key part of the narrative. Everyone in the film seems to have an earpiece that allows them to interface with their phone or computer. There’s not a whole lot of human to human interaction in the film. It’s all arranged to ask if we’re lonely people in a lonely world, or if the nature of human interaction is changing. The conclusion is for you to decide.
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