Reboot

Rating: 5/10 (29 December 2013)

Let me begin by saying that I liked the acting - especially the subtle performance given by Joaquin Phoenix. The ennui, the angst, the soulful stares into blue-tinted cityscapes and, of course, the film's core premise indeed very much do point to the 'not-too-distant- future. It is a future wherein post-modern existentialism catches-up with itself and apparently (an inference drawn from their odd absence in the film) people can't even form emotional relationships with dogs and cats - let alone live people.
What I couldn't quite grapple with are the characters. It bothered me that there is a total lack of any indication from any of the main characters they themselves are responsible for the insular condition in which they find themselves: phone sex with a computer OS and dog-humping a refrigerator. As Hamlet would (and, in fact did) say, "That it has come to this.".
When becomes so self-engaged and self-absorbed that he / she is unaware of his / her own, solipsisms - eyes that say the only pain is my pain - and then do something about perhaps changing that comprehension of reality, when a person cannot conceive of a love with another human that is, in part compromise through the good time and the bad times and acceptance of the full dimension of the other, then I guess it comes down to what we see in the movie: fornication with a computer program because human relationships simply demand more than any of the significant characters in the film are willing to offer. In fact, they even stoop to jealousy and anger when the OS doesn't constantly stroke their fragile egos.
Ayn Rand famously said, "Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit." This, she said, points to the virtue of selfishness. I guess even this virtue has a dark side and we see it in this film.
Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a selfish, pathetic (and I might add, sartorially handicapped) creature who, because of his own self- sustaining introversion and unwillingness to engage with the world on a 'give-and-take' basis, deserved precisely what he got.