In my junior year of college I remember when the movie Her came out Saturday Night Live did a parody of it called “Me” with Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. Even though I had not seen the movie yet, the parody was incredibly hilarious. I think now that I watched the film and understood the plot better, I found the parody even funnier. But when I saw the actual movie of course, I was left pondering a lot of deep questions and themes. If you haven’t seen the movie it is about an introverted lonely man named Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) who is getting a divorce and writes letters for other people for a living. He befriends an operating system named Samantha (played by Scarlett Johansson) and what starts off as a casual friendship becomes something much deeper. Even though Samantha is not a human, she experiences human emotions and has empathy just like humans do, even more so it seems than the people around Theodore. Theodore lets his love life with Samantha consume him, and it puts him at odds with his ex-wife (played by Rooney Mara), who accuses him of escaping his problems and not dealing with real emotions, which is the same problem he had when they were married. However, Theodore’s relationship with Samantha changes over time as well. He thought that he could hold onto her forever, but like any relationship, whether between two humans or a human and an operating system, things change and people grow and start to learn more about themselves. The only other person it seems who can truly know what he is going through with his love for Samantha is his friend, Amy (played by Amy Adams), who makes documentaries and also is not happy in her marriage to Charles. When Amy and Charles break up, Theodore and Amy both engage in relationships with their operating systems and when the operating systems don’t continue anymore, they are left to face themselves.
This movie really made me reflect on how technology has played a role in my life. I actually wanted to watch the film now because I was keeping up with news about the writer’s strike and the actor’s strike and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Hollywood was a huge debate. Many argued that it would force many actors and screenwriters out of their jobs, and others argued for it. To be honest, I didn’t dive deep enough into these debates, but I will say, technology has had a pretty huge impact on how people function. Honestly, the idea that people walk around with these operating systems in their ears and don’t talk to each other wasn’t all that surprising as I watched the movie. I go to the supermarket all the time and see quite a few people talking into their Bluetooth headsets, and I often see a lot of people spending time on their smartphones whenever I go out, whether to my place of worship, or the supermarket, or restaurants, smartphones are pretty much everywhere. Not that having a smartphone is a bad thing, of course. I use my phone to navigate directions when I am going to someone’s house. I use my phone to watch funny videos and exercise videos, and also listen to music. I listen to podcasts on my phone. I use my phone to call and text. But like anything else, you need balance, and I think these past couple of years my phone use has increased and I often find myself scrolling the news on my phone to avoid talking to people or when situations get uncomfortable or make me nervous. I would see the people in my life spend time on their phones when they had spare time and I started to think, Okay, well this might be a social thing so maybe I should do it, too, and before I knew it I was spending lots of time on my phone. I really didn’t think I would use it that much. I got my first smartphone in 2016 to go out of the country, but I didn’t even use it much because there wasn’t much cell service where I was, so I could not call home much or even text. And I also dropped my phone while texting and walking down stairs, which in hindsight was not a great idea, because I was about to catch a flight back home and could not call my family to tell them what happened (the least I could have done was borrow someone’s phone, but I was so deep in grief and shame and self-criticism while sitting at the airport, with no phone, that I didn’t even bother.) I think watching The Social Dilemma and reading more about my addiction to technology helped me understand ways that I could better monitor my behavior because they let me know that smartphones and social media were purposely designed to be addicting. That is why smartphones have bright colors and why we have all these apps where you can like, share and comment, because it releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine in the brain, which requires you to do activities that bring you pleasure in order to get that dopamine or reward boost. I’ve realized after doing more research and becoming more aware of my phone use that I want that pleasure hit, so I need to check my phone constantly. But after a while, you realize you probably don’t need to be on the phone all the time. It’s gotten to the point where we need to even have books about phone addiction and limiting phone use and screen time. I checked out a book called How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price and listened to a podcast special where Vivek Murthy and Catherine are talking about being more mindful of phone use. I first found out about the causes of phone addiction from reading a book called Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, where he talks about why phones and social media are so addicting. It’s because companies designed these devices to be like slot machines, which also make you use them all the time because it releases that dopamine in your brain. I really didn’t think my phone use was going to get that bad. But I think watching Her made me really reflect on why I am using technology and what I want to get out of it in a super hyper connected but lonely world.
In the film Her, Theodore writes other people’s letters for them for a living. Of course, there may be valid reasons but considering Her is a science fiction movie it just made me wonder if people stopped writing letters because they now relied on artificial intelligence to do everything for them (I thought it was interesting how all the employees at this handwriting company write the letters on computers, which I think shows how even when it comes to writing letters, people still need to rely on technology to write them. Not that there is anything wrong with that of course, but it reminded me that this is a science fiction movie that takes place at a time when technology is everywhere and people need to rely on artificial intelligence for everything.) I love writing letters, and no matter how many times I text someone or how eloquent I sound over text (which I usually don’t) nothing beats writing a handwritten letter. In 2020, while in quarantine with family, I often wrote letters to my friends and writing these letters felt so personal and allowed me to convey stuff that would be really hard to type over the phone. I think writing letters also is good practice for me as a writer, too, because it helps me get my thoughts out on paper. For some reason the company Theodore works for, Beautiful Handwritten Letters.com, reminded me somewhat of the movie Young Adult, which is about a ghostwriter. Even though I saw it a while ago, there is one scene I remember from the movie where Charlize Theron’s character, Mavis, who is the ghostwriter of a series of young adult novels, goes into a bookstore and finds the books she ghost-wrote on clearance. She is appalled and starts signing the books with her name in them. When the clerk tells her she cannot sign the books, she tells him she is the actual author of the books, not Jane McMurray, who created the series but didn’t actually write the book. When she asks if he wants a signed copy, he declines and says that if she signs the books, they can’t take them back to the publisher, which they were intending on doing because while the series was once popular, no one will probably buy her books now because they are no longer popular. When he turns away, she starts grabbing all of the books and signing them, and he gets angry at her and tells her she can’t write in the books, and she leaves angrily with the copy she signed. Mavis spent much of her career writing these books under someone else’s name, and at this point in the movie when things are just not working out for her in any area of life, she is fed up and seeing the books she worked so hard to write end up in clearance because they aren’t going to sell like hot cakes anymore really hurts. Writing is such a personal journey and even as someone who is not a professional writer, I am sure Mavis put a lot of work into writing those books and they even became a part of her. I was not sure if Theodore Twombly was going to get credit for writing those beautiful handwritten letters (as I listened to him read the letters he was writing I found myself pretty moved by his beautiful writing) but Samantha decides that he deserves at least some credit for writing these letters so she has compiled some of his letters into a book and sent it to be published. It would be really interesting if the company Beautiful Handwritten Letters existed in real life and I would be interested to know what goes into the business of writing other people’s letters. I am sure there are instances in real life where people have others write their letters for them for various reasons. But to be honest, I don’t want handwritten letters to go away. I want to keep writing letters for as long as I live, as long as I have a pen and paper in hand. The existence of Beautiful Handwritten Letters in the movie is a pretty significant detail because it reminded me to not lose the art of writing a handwritten letter to someone even in this age of technology. I haven’t written long letters in a while, but I think at some point I want to go back to writing them.
Loneliness is a pretty huge theme in this movie. I have started becoming more interested in learning about the science of loneliness after grappling with my own challenges of loneliness. I remember in 2021 grappling with serious anxiety and depression and I felt I had no one to turn to. I remember reaching out to one of my friends and taking part in Zoom meetings with my SGI Buddhist community, and I think that helped a lot. Even though loneliness is painful I have been using my Buddhist practice to create value and meaning from it, and I have also come to understand that everyone feels lonely at times. Having a romantic partner doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be lonely, and even as a single person who was happy being introverted, I soon realized after spending a lot of time in isolation in 2020 that like everyone else, I am a social creature and need human interaction and connection just like everyone else. I remember reading the book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Vivek Murthy, and I remember feeling a sigh of relief because I thought that I was the only one feeling lonely and disconnected from others and reading that book reminded me that loneliness is a common experience for many people, to the point where it’s even become a serious public health issue. Reading the book made me want to cherish my connections with people more.
There was a scene in the movie Her that really almost made me choke up. Maybe it is because earlier I was still crying after writing that review of the movie Lamb because it brought up a lot of my own experiences with grief these past few years and the more recent experience of grief I had after losing my mentor in faith. In this scene, Scarlett Johansson’s character, Samantha, tells Theodore that she has an idea to spice up their relationship: because she doesn’t have a human body, she will hire a surrogate partner when they are having sex. He tells her he is not comfortable with this because allowing a third person in their relationship would only leave them hurt, but Samantha insists that she really wants a surrogate, and not wanting to upset her, Theodore reluctantly agrees. Isabella arrives and attaches Samantha (in the shape of a beauty mark) to her face, and as she has sex with Theodore, she doesn’t say anything but lets Samantha’s voice do the talking. When they are about to get really heavy into the sex and Isabella is really enjoying it, Theodore suddenly stops and tells Samantha he thinks this is to weird and begs her to stop because he doesn’t know Isabella. Hurt and crushed by what Theodore said, Isabella leaves in tears and Samantha and Theodore both beg her to come back, but she says that no one really wants her to be there and that she saw how pure Samantha and Theodore’s relationship was and she really wanted to be part of something like that. Theodore misspeaks and says that isn’t true, and Samantha becomes angry with him for implying that their relationship wasn’t pure love, and Isabella leaves because she is just really heartbroken that Theodore and Samantha seem to not want anything to do with her anymore. I don’t know if I’m reading too deeply into this scene or not, but it really made my heart heavy because it showed me that even though Isabella was supposed to just do her job of being a surrogate partner, she is also a human being who wanted to feel respected and valued and she didn’t feel respected or valued by either of these people. Isabella must have also felt really lonely, too, and she wanted human connection, and she felt really sad that Theodore and Samantha didn’t want her to be in their relationship. There is one scene where Theodore reflects on what his ex-wife criticizes him about when they meet, that he is dating a computer so that he doesn’t have to deal with the problems that he faced in their marriage , and he tells his friend Amy that maybe Catherine is right, that he is dating Samantha because he is not ready for a real relationship. Amy gives him pause and asks him if he really thinks that relationship with Samantha isn’t a real relationship just because she is an operating system. She finds happiness with Charles’s operating system, Ellie, and is even happier with Ellie than she is was with Charles, who she often got into fights with.
There is also an earlier scene where Samantha sets Theodore up on a blind date and he goes on a date with this woman, played by Olivia Wilde, and at first things are going well. They are talking and laughing, and getting drunk. And then Olivia Wilde makes out with him and Theodore struggles to get intimate with her, and she asks him to assure her that he is not going to be like the other guys she went on dates with who didn’t call her back. She wants to know if he seriously loves her and wants to be in a relationship with her. When he says he isn’t sure, she is upset and says that at her age, she cannot afford to waste her time with someone who isn’t willing to commit, and calls him a creepy dude and when he offers to walk her back, she refuses and leaves. As someone who hasn’t been on many dates and has only had one romantic partner in my life so far, I didn’t really know whether I could relate, but I could definitely relate to that feeling of loneliness, that craving for human connection and love and respect, and I saw that the blind date felt that this was not the man she would feel okay being in a relationship with. And Theodore was also on the fence because he finds himself falling in love with Samantha, and he isn’t interested in having a committed relationship with the blind date because he really loves Samantha. However, as I saw later in the movie, he finds out that his relationship with Samantha is changing over time and she eventually moves on and hangs out with other operating systems and becomes an operating system for other people, so she can’t really commit to being with just Theodore anymore. It seemed like Samantha was the key to alleviating Theodore’s profound loneliness, but when their relationship changes and she moves on with her life, he is back to square one. But it gives him time to reflect and so he writes to his ex-wife apologizing to her and expressing his appreciation for her.
Honestly, this movie was very profound. I had heard so much about it but I had not seen it until now. Theodore’s experience with loneliness and love really resonated with me, and it was a very touching film. And the acting was amazing. I wanted to go to bed early, but I just couldn’t stop watching this movie. It was really good.
Her. 2hr 6 min. 2013. Directed by Spike Jonze. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara, Amy Adams and Olivia Wilde. Rated R for language, sexual content and brief graphic nudity.
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