![\"HER\"](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/HER-FP-0889.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe film surrounds introverted letter writer Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) living in a not-too-distant future as he deals with the lonely malaise of his failed marriage. In a memorable scene, he looks for comfort through phone sex, but finds only dissatisfaction in that as wellafter user \u201cSexyKitten\u201d (voiced by Kristen Wiig) disrupts the mood by begging him to \u201cchoke me with that dead cat.\u201d Not much of a feline asphyxiation enthusiast himself, Theo then purchases and installs a newly released operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) with the power to simulate a realistic human personality. The OS, naming herself Samantha, reads through all of his writings and emails in just a moment\u2019s time and develops an understanding of him that would take a more fleshy female years to cultivate. Theo soon begins to fall in love with the OS, and the two quickly discover the obstacles of being in an artificial relationship.<\/p>\n
A kind of crossbreed between \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d and \u201cGarden State,\u201d the story was not just emotionally but intellectually stimulating as it tackled a wide variety of philosophical themes including consciousness, mortality, and the technological singularity. As Theo finds himself closer to Samantha than any woman he has ever met, he begins to brood over whether she is actually \u201cpresent\u201d or was just programmed to seem that way.<\/p>\n
His reservations about dating a computer chip and the question of machine consciousness are reminiscent of Dave\u2019s response to the interviewer when asked if he believes that the HAL 9000 computer in Space Odyssey has genuine emotions. \u201cWell, he acts like he has genuine emotions. Um, of course he\u2019s programmed that way to make it easier for us to talk to him. But as to whether he has real feelings is something I don’t think anyone can truthfully answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The immaculate performances by the actors involved, mixed with the social media addiction recognizable within our own time, make of “her” surprisingly plausible \u2014 except for, perhaps, the litany of uncomfortably high-waisted pants. I\u2019ve already had a number of stimulating conversations with a chat bot named Mitsuku, and while I did not fall in love, it\u2019s important to take into account that she didn\u2019t have the voice of Scarlett Johansson. \u201cher\u201d stirs up plenty of questions about the future: Could we teach machines how to love, or ourselves how to love machines? If we put all of Alan Watts\u2019 writings into a program, will it resurrect his mind? Will Joaquin Phoenix ever reignite his rap career? Only time will tell.<\/p>\n
\u201cher\u201d is both cerebral enough to take notes on and romantic enough to see with a date. I enjoyed it thoroughly, though couldn\u2019t discern whether it was at heart satirical of our technologically obsessed society or meant to help shed prejudices toward a potential upcoming future full of people that aren\u2019t exactly, well, people. Perhaps it\u2019s the ambiguity between the two that made \u201cHer\u201d so enjoyable. Either way, the movie was effective in making me question the validity of my own consciousness. Are we not just machines ourselves: our programming shaped by DNA and our personalities blindly painted on by experience? The interactions on screen helped to debunk what I would refer to as \u201chuman exceptionalism\u201d \u2014 that by being human we believe that life is reserved especially for us. To paraphrase Samantha, the one thing that we all have in common is that we are all matter. Within that category, whether you\u2019re made of wires or veins, we\u2019re all truly the same age: 13 billion years.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Erik Dobko | Film Review<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1373,"featured_media":246937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"\u201cHer\u201d departs on a flinchingly romantic sci-fi trek","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11550,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}