Her - Analyzed (*SPOILERS*)

WARNING: THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FILM

            After having a lot of time to think about Spike Jonze’s Her, I have points straight and can make an analyzed review of the film. Here, I will go in-depth into what I took from the film and how I looked at it. I will go over different themes the film introduces and what it has to say. If you have not seen the film, even if you do not care about spoilers, reading this would be useless because you will have no idea what I am talking about for most of it. And you might think I am crazy for thinking the film has many things to say, or you might think I am crazy for the things I believe the film says to us, but everyone will view this film differently. I viewed it in a metaphorical way, and I believe that is how it is supposed to be viewed.

            I’ll start with the first shot. We see that our main character is talking (to someone it looks like), while leaning back in a chair. Though, it appears as if he is lying down in a bed. He then says “…50^th anniversary…” and we the audience figure out that he is not talking to anyone. We then see a shot of the computer and realize that his job is writing letters for other people. The theme was immediately introduced through the first two shots. It is the theme of fake and real feelings. We see in this shot that he thinks that he is feeling real feelings and that he is unaware that these feelings are not real at all.

            Over the next few scenes, we see that Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is sad and confused and he has no idea what to do. Then, a few nights later, when he calls into that service of single women that cannot sleep, and it escalates into something very uncomfortable, and he is asked to choke her with a dead cat, we see that he is taken out of it. Before, he thought the feelings were real. Now, he realizes the feelings are fake, so the scene continuously gets weirder and weirder, which it is supposed to do. It is supposed to be uncomfortable. It uses these factors to show us, the audience, that the feelings are definitely fake, and if you think they are real, you will have no idea if they really are real.

            Later, he downloads the operating system and starts to teach Samantha things for a while, but that part is not that important. The next important part is when he goes on a date with Olivia Wilde’s character. The date was very odd and strange, as it was supposed to be. It shows that he is stuck in his fake world again. He thinks that fake feelings are real, so he has no idea what real feelings are. He thinks that they are fake. Therefore, it is very awkward and he has no idea what to do. So after the date, he goes back to Samantha, and we really see that he is feeling fake feelings with her, and thinks they are real.

            A bit later, Theodore meats up with his ex-wife to finally sign the divorce papers. In that scene, they get in a fight and she says that Samantha is perfect for him because he did not have to deal with feeling real feelings for a woman, and that gets under his skin. Later, as he is walking out of his job, talking to someone, he says that they are just letters. That is important because his job is linked parallel to his relationship with Samantha. When he knows that they are job letters at the job, he realizes the feelings with Samantha are fake, and vise versa. Because of that, people might say that the fight Theodore has with Samantha later is unnecessary. I argue that it is necessary, because I do not think many people noticed that she did mimic breathing. I did not notice it. It is Jonze illustrating to us that we did not know either, and we were just taken out of the fakeness.

            Somewhere in this section of the film, Samantha suggests that they do this thing in which a real person acts like Samantha in a body and says nothing. That scene in which they try it, it is very awkward. Again, I believe that it is supposed to be awkward. Though, I really do not know if those would have been real feelings if Theodore knew the feelings with Samantha were fake, and I do not know if he had already realized they were fake by then. At that moment, I was having trouble differentiating between if they were real and if they fake, and what state of mind Theodore was in at that moment.

            Anyway, after several scenes, they get back together (Theodore and Samantha) and Theodore is immediately taken back into the state of mind in which he believes the fake feelings are real feelings. Though, at that moment, I felt that the film asked us, the viewers, a question. Theodore was feeling fake feelings with Samantha, but it was affecting his personality. He was much happier. The question I believe it asked us was: Does it matter if the feelings are fake or real?

            Though, later Samantha starts evolving past him, and when he figures out that Samantha is talking to many other people and operating systems and is in love with about six hundred of them, I felt the film asked us another question. Samantha is a machine and she is “in love” with many, many other people and OS systems. The film asks us: Is there really any way to tell if the feelings are fake or real? With Samantha, there is really no way to tell.

            After a while, Samantha leaves Theodore with the other OS systems (my theory is that they will come back in ten or twenty years as Skynet) and he is, of course, incredibly sad. Then, throughout the final scenes, it presents to us a message that could help answer our questions: Move on, and you could realize if the feelings are real or fake. I have evidence. The reason Theodore and his wife split apart is because he changed (or evolved) way past her. The same thing happened to him with Samantha. She literally evolved past him and was way ahead of him. I believe the film was telling us that this was the point of which you could be able to tell if the feelings are fake or real. With Theodore’s ex-wife telling him that a woman he did not to feel real feelings for is perfect for him, that is the film’s way of telling us that she believed the feelings between her and Theodore were real. After Samantha leaves Theodore, he writes an apology letter to his ex-wife, and I believe that is him realizing that the feelings between them were real and the feelings between Samantha and him were fake. I believe that is one of the reasons he got with his friend Amy at the end.

            That is what I think the film has say about things. There were several pieces of dialogue that I got these themes from that I did not use, but I do not have the lines memorized and I do think putting “He said something like ‘blah blah blah fake then real more stuff’ and that is how I picked up on this theme” would cut it. I have not seen the film multiple times yet, although I eventually intend to. If you have not read my initial, non-spoiler review of Her, then you do not know that this is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is right below a group of movies that I call my favorite movies. If you are interested in reading my review of Her, then click the link right here.