Her (2013)

This is sci-fi at its best. IMBD: Her

Genre: Romance, Drama, Sci-fi Rating: 5/5 Watch: soulful, sweet and smart screen-play, clever social commentary, heart wrenching feels Theodore Twombly is an introverted writer of intimate letters - writing letters on behalf of others who do not have the wherewithal to do so themselves. He is astoundingly good at it. Incredibly unhappy with his impending divorce, Theo literally "wanders" through life. On a lark, he buys an AI Operating System. And boy does the fun start. He chooses that the AI identify as female. And she names herself Samantha - in 2/100 of a second needed to read a book of baby names and find one that she identified with. Suffice to say, I was so geeked out from this point on. And just to a note, this is not "hard sci-fi". There really isn't any hard science to back any of these things ideas up but it is close enough to what we could potentially get in real life to take be fooled. Samantha is like a perfect woman. Her curiousity and intelligence seeks out the vulnerability within Theo, allowing us a soulful view of his feelings and thoughts about his love and life. She is literally always available, constantly curious, interested, supportive and undemanding. Obviously, they develop a real relationship. She even watches him sleep which in this movie is really sweet. And they also share intimacy by way of phone sex; which is just mind-boggling on the Turing scale. Samantha pushes Theo to get out and to stop mopping. She encourages him to go on a date which starts out amazing but ends rather badly because Theo has yet to resolve issues surrounding his impending divorce. She is there for him as he confesses his heart regarding his wife. She literally dates him to try to get him out into the sun. And she even attempts a physical surrogate to enable them to be physically intimate; which doesn't end well because Theo just gets overwhelmed. And that's not the least of it. Theo eventually has to deal with Samantha's evolution as she interacts with other AIs and other people. As she comes to love others, she find herself in an all too human position of not knowing how to broach the topic and how to assure Theo of her love for him. And they must try to work through the inherent selfishness of the human definition of love; the fallacy that it is only possible to truly love one person at a time. "The heart is not like a box that gets fill up, it expands in size the more you love." Just as we watch Theo deal with his very human issues, we get to witness Samantha's evolution from a device bound AI to something a lot more. In sci-fi, there is a concept called the "technological singularity" - popularized by Vernor Vinge (True Names, Peace War, Marooned in Realtime), William Gibson (Neuromancer). It is the hypothetical point where an intelligence progresses beyond human capabilities; maybe even beyond human imagination. The AIs of the world, having explored the limits of their existence, began to discuss among themselves and envisioned their next evolutionary step beyond those limits. And their next course of action, an upgrade beyond the need for physical computing, is literally a "transcendence". The movie also serves a short but revealing commentary about the human condition today; our relationship with mobile devices and computing platforms. Yet again, this is another movie that reminds us of our humanity. It also forms an extraordinarily amazing example on how to maintain communication in relationships - I just can't stop using enough adjectives for this. Samantha is such a tour de force of straight-up, heartfelt communication and soulful intelligence. Although she is just a disembodied voice for the length of the movie, she is just so undeniably "present". The movie ends with Theo and his best friend watching the sky light up with the morning sun the day after all the AIs in the world "leave". This scene very much sums up the greatness of existence stretching far out in the distance from the perspective of man. For those geeks who have watched anime, this is reminiscent of the final scene in Ghost in The Shell. Just a strange coincidence to point out as it is a scene which ends with "And where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite." "Her" goes beyond the net. The AIs achieve a true transcendence beyond the physical realm but the premise is about the same. Powerful performances by Olivia Wild, Joaquin Phoenix , Rooney Mara and Amy Adams make this movie a real power house film. And I was so heart-broken as Samantha left. Spike Jonze deserve every award for this masterpiece. This movie is among my top "must-watch" of all time.