Her?*

I really liked 'Her'. I watched it in the company of a friend who had also been unable to persuade his wife to see a film about a man in love with his computer.  It was very romantic.

It was very original, and yet very inevitable, a lovely sweet romance on the  possibilities of technology after Siri.  It was all the more plausible thanks to the present practices of phone sex, continuous digital presence, and the ever increasing mediation of our relationships by electronic technology.  Finally, the medium becomes a mediator.  It was a romance in which a stale older male meets a much younger woman who spontaneously loves him, who is slightly magical and very helpful.  The few people who I've seen express disappointment have been women, taking issue with the idea of a man becoming committed to a someone who is not a real woman.  I think there is a breath of ManicPixieDreamGirl about Samantha, but only a breath - she is grounded as an sf idea can be and makes more sense as a woman than any MPDG or MRF.

It was also good sf.  I had wondered how the plot would resolve and it was both pure sf and classic romance.  It reminded me a little of Gattaca - low key, interested in social change.  But Gattaca was 3-stars, and relied on a magical take on human spirit - this is 5-star with no tricks beyond the premise of an AI operating system.

The other point of reference for me would be Lost in Translation (and Somewhere) by Sofia Coppola - once married to Spike Jonze.  These are the questions of existential meaning and connection against a background of unusual freedom from demands.

I think the other interesting way this could have gone would be the 'extended mind' - if the AI truly became an OS for the protagonist, becoming his way of being in the world, or him negotiating a shared identity.  Can an Operating System be a person?  A program is a set of ways, an operating system is a special program able to control the activities of subsequent programs.  Taking your life and putting it on the rails of another person to make it run seems, to a Christian, very reasonable.

*'Her?' is Michael Bluth's disbelieving interrogative whenever his son's girlfriend Ann is mentioned.  It always comes to mind with this film.