"How do you share your life with somebody?"

Rating: 7/10 (7 May 2017)

As a reflection of the times, it's reasonable to expect that movies would explore present day realities like artificial intelligence in new and creatively different ways. What I find disturbing however, is the way film directors over the past few years have mesmerized some viewers with subjects that to an otherwise rational person, would appear to be completely irrational.
In this picture, Theo (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with an inanimate object, an intuitive operating system that 'listens, understands, and knows you' through repeated interaction with the end user. As the story progresses, the feeling I got was that Theo was approaching the boundaries of mental illness, having substituted 'Samantha" (voice of Scarlett Johansson) for a potential real live person who could help him overcome a recent divorce. While hearing himself called 'sweetheart' by Samantha, Theo becomes devastated to learn that 'she' is carrying on conversations with over eight thousand other 'Theodores', and is in love with six hundred forty one of them.
If this is the future of artificial intelligence, someone probably needs to find a way to apply the breaks to this kind of unhealthy fantasizing. It's OK to see something play out like this as a movie, but I'm afraid there will be many casualties falling victim to artificial intelligence that can create the kind of feeling and compassion demonstrated by 'Sam'. At least the picture makes you think about these things, or at least I hope it does.
On the flip side though, I thought some of the ideas expressed here were brilliant. The black screen foreplay between Theodore and Samantha was hilarious, and Joaquin Phoenix himself did a marvelous job conveying a lovelorn writer of epic e-mails for the downtrodden. I just wish he could have gotten a grip by the end of the story, instead of telling a machine that "I've never loved anyone the way I love you." On a bright note though, the director's close-ups of Phoenix with his full bodied mustache had me consider whether he'd be the perfect choice to cast in a film on the life of Groucho Marx.