The gap between what’s just a machine and what’s a genuine human experience is gradually shifting and closing. Every year technology is evolving to where it’s almost sentient, and while technology needs human input to process and obtain information, how long will it be before it can simply drop in to the internet and form its own thought patterns and make its own decisions? “Her” is an exploration of that mind set, except it examines the relationship between human and technology as something of a spiritual and very loving symbiosis. It’s not so much a cautionary tale, but a fantasy about what is living reality and what’s merely experiencing programming and binary.
Spike Jonze examines the relationship between human and technology that’s bold, brilliant, and often times heart breaking. While the relationship and dynamic between lovelorn Theodore and program Samantha is ideal, where does the line of free will and mere demands from the owner of Samantha begins and ends? Samantha is one of the many experimental operating systems given to Theodore. Samantha is an operating system that can not only help Theodore with his tasks, but provide a personality and even nearly genuine experience with a human being.
Theodore eventually imbues her with the qualities of the woman he’s always wanted, but that eventually begins to conflict with Samantha’s own functions. When we’ve created our ideal mate, who’s to say they’ll always be ours and only ours? “Her” works like a genuine romance that bypasses any normal conventions, giving Theodore control of Samantha, while also enjoying her genuine humility and magnetism, as he would a girlfriend. Scarlett Johannson is fantastic as Samantha, whose flinty rasp of a voice lends a down to Earth charm to Samantha that makes her appealing on almost any level to a man. “Her” successfully evokes interesting ideas about the gradual growing intimacy of technology and man, and how everything on Earth is finite. Even the bonds we create.
Featured on the Blu-Ray for “Her” is the twenty four minute segment “The Untitled Rick Howard Project,” a behind the scenes documentary that thinks outside the box from the typical BTS featurettes. Director Lance Bangs really takes an artful approach to the art house production, and deciding against the conventional means of exploring Jonzes’ production. “Her: Love in the Modern Age” is a fifteen minute featurette by Bangs, who interviews a series of writers, and commentators on the ideas and turbulence of love, and technology in the modern age. Finally, “How Do You Share Your Love with Somebody?” is a four minute montage of the film’s scenes, as well as behind the scenes snippets, and snippets of conversations between Theodore and Sam.