How do we learn to love virtually

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2014)

In a not so distant future, the technology advancement has allowed human being for once, to directly communicate with a machine through an interface that makes it as easy as if we are talking to one another. We no longer limit ourselves to have a relationship in real world with real person, but also in a virtual world with a machine disguised as virtual person. The exploration of such obscure relationship has been the center of Spike Jones's HER. This funny and yet well-thought story looks at Theodore Twombly (by Joaquin Phoenix), who has a routine job of helping others to write comforting letter to their love ones. At the same time, he is also facing his own misery in dealing with a divorce with his wife, Catherine (by Rooney Mara). Just like many lonely singles in the modern society, Theodore spent most of his free time "between internet porn and video game" in order to keep his mind away from his sinking relationship. However, he soon found a new artificial intelligence operating system, which called herself as Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) and started to communicate with her instead. At first, it was as a good friend/assistant (much like what Siri does for the Apple iOS) but before Theodore knows, he starts to develop a serious relationship with "it". For Theodore, dating the Samantha felt like a much needed new chapter in his life. Yet, as both Theodore and Samantha struggle to come to terms with the inevitable difference and distances between reality and virtual worlds, the relationship has also taken its turn to for the worse for its eventual failure.
It is rare for a commercial science fiction/romantic comedy to enable us to examine so many aspects of our modern life and our relationship with technology. The world in "Her" is a future in which we all know we are heading toward. Thus the film has posted questions of both philosophical and psychological nature. How do we define love relationship and whether our desire can solely be satisfied by our own thoughts? Whether or not a human to human's love is still what we need to make ourselves happy and fulfilled? More importantly, the film also deals with in the time of these advancement of technologies, what would be the effect on human's relationship with one another, the fear for facing one another; and whether human indeed has what it takes to handle the machine once it start learning its way to feel human emotions and replicates them, as in the case of Samantha towards the end of the film. Are we still feeling just as loss and lonely as we were, before the virtual person becomes our "best" love?