Everything I need to know about love is here

Rating: 9/10 (4 January 2015)

A VALENTINE MEDITATION:
Everything I need to know about love I learned watching the movie "HER"
If you like magical stories, like fairy tales for adults, this is a great one: the movie "HER"
Situated in a vague technological future, the movie who just won the 2014 Golden Globe for its script describes the relationship between a lonely writer and the entity provided by the Operating System installed at his own computer. Is she a consciousness? is she only a script prepared by endless programmers, and even equipped with intuition? and so why is it that she can think and feel? Finally, what is she?
The movie never gives us any answer about HER identity, but by focusing on the relationship, and on the impact on the male part of it, Theodore, we get a very clear message about the core essence of relationships, according to Spike Jonze, the author.
When you have a love affair between a man and a disembodied female, where the aspect of physical sex is completely canceled out, what kind of love can develop? What is the core element of a love relationship?
Let me first introduce Samantha to you. Samantha is an operative system; a non-embodied consciousness created to be a companion for lonely people. In the words of the marketing materials:
"An intuitive entity that listens to you, understands you, and knows you. It's not just an operating system, it's a consciousness."
People subscribe to, download and setup the system in their own computer, by this process:
"Welcome to the world's first artificially intelligent operating system, OS ONE". TEXT VOICE Would you like your OS to have a male or female voice? THEODORE Mmm... female I guess. TEXT VOICE How would you describe your relationship with your mother? THEODORE Uh, fine, I think, um...Well, actually, the thing I've always found frustrating about my mom is if I tell her something that's going on in my life, her reaction is usually about her, not--
And, from now on, Samantha's magic takes over Theodore's life!
WHAT IS THE OS SYSTEM "SAMANTHA" DOING TO/WITH THEODORE?
1.- She has intuition and is always available: always "on"
he needs only to turn the button on and they are connected; she is "nosy" and gets into his privacy, to know him sometimes she is waiting for him to wake up to say something to him
2.- She takes care of his needs at different levels:
computer: organizing his disk drive, trashing spam creative: makes a book from his writing, sends to publisher, gets contract sexual: send a substitute "with a body" to make love to him company: sharing ideas, feelings,being in his life and sharing his friends
3.- She creates a constant intimacy feeling: she reads his thoughts, shares in his feelings, and goes along developing a just in time, just now, very intimate relationship.
EVEN NOT HAVING A BODY....When she is always on, and keeps guessing his needs, she is love for him.
SAMANTHA is a good magical solution for his loneliness and the sense of not being important for others, like his mother. That kind of experience with a self-centered mother leaves him feeling not important, not valued. This is the core of his loneliness: not having the experience of being deeply loved and accepted, early on....it leaves a wound on his ability to connect.
SAMANTHA, even not having a body, is perfect in the role of his love, because she constantly gives him the feeling of sharing life with him, of living life with him. Like she is saying: "I'm here for you and with you...and it feels good for me too!"
And this exactly the breaking point of the movie: when she tells him, and he has to learn the facts, that she is not only his, but an entity simultaneously shared by 600 and some other people...
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"Love is in many ways defined by escaping systematization. It registers in spontaneous moments, unexpected connections between people that neither ever would have thought to try to program that form the ineffable substance of intimacy.
Love, as most people seem to see it, is supposed to individuate the partners, capture and reveal their personal uniqueness to the other, and the unfolding of love is the pursuit of more and more of those occasions that allow that uniqueness to express itself. A real-life love story has to be as unique and unpredictable as the people involved imagine themselves to be." Not shared with 600 of others...and this is what destroys the infatuation of Theodore with the Samantha
It's not about suspending disbelief and permitting for self-forgetting, but building belief and allowing for self-discovery, finding the wherewithal to believe that we have a "real" self and that it is valuable and compelling enough that someone else would want to know all about it. No one is "authentic" in isolation; you have to be authentic for someone else, who can confirm your genuineness. If you are alone being authentic, you are just being.
CONCLUSION: This is what we humans need and dream of: Having a feeling that we are loved and appreciated deeply by someone. And that someone is ours, not to be shared by anybody else...Perhaps this is adult MOM 201 version?