But even if it wasn’t intended as a counterpoint to the collective upswing in robophobia, Her does the job nicely. As a relationship movie, it more than holds its own, with sci-fi elements that function more like magical realism, using a fantasy of hyper-intelligent software to expose truths about love and loss. “I was trying to write about it in terms of a relationship movie.”Īnd yet, I’m still claiming Her for team robot. She’s an unbounded, fully self-aware AI, and that’s never played for scares.ĭid you intentionally avoid even a hint of the evil robot trope? And, maybe more importantly, there’s nothing sinister about Samantha’s hunger for knowledge, or her ability to pry into her owner’s e-mails and other data without his permission. Although she becomes smarter (not a spoiler, since the rapid ability to learn and adapt is introduced in her first scene). I also care about what doesn’t happen in Her.Ĭonsider this a mild spoiler alert: Samantha’s character arc does not end in world domination. “That’s the one thing for sure that I know-I don’t know anything.”īut some of us do care about sci-fi cliches, namely the preemptive myth of the evil robot, and the way pop culture drives collective fears of technology. Despite having written and directed a movie about a lonely guy (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with his disembodied OS, Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), he didn’t claim any specific prescience or insight. And, to his credit, when I interviewed Jonze in October after watching a press screening of Her, he didn’t pretend at being interested in the future of machine intelligence, or the feasibility of human-computer love affairs. Jonze didn’t consult with computer scientists while writing the screenplay. ![]() That his new movie Her is the smartest, most thoughtful on-screen exploration of artificial intelligence (AI) in years appears to be a happy accident. ![]() Either Spike Jonze is intentionally coy, or he really doesn’t care, one way or another, about science fiction cliches.
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