![]() Or, as Samantha puts it in one of the film’s most heart-wrenching scenes, “The heart is not like a box that gets filled up it expands in size the more you love.”Īnd, finally, Her also explores our society’s dogged focus on only one kind of love: romantic love. It’s something that feels like an infinite ocean: the more love you feel, the more you give. It’s something that you can feel so viscerally in every bone of your being, while simultaneously being something that completely transcends physical sensation. Theodore remarks to his friend Amy (Amy Adams), “I feel like she’s really with me.” But, what I think is so beautiful about this clash between the physical and the metaphysical is that it lets Jonze communicate the contradiction of love both visually and aurally. At one point, while they are walking together, Samantha reveals that she had begun to feel sensory responses: the weight of her body, Theodore’s presence next to her, and even an itch on the back of her neck. Samantha, effectively untethered to a body, is the acousmetre that manifests herself around Theodore without ever actually being physically around him. Her is also a film that is as much about the audio as it is about the visual. But, Theodore’s desire to hold on to the intimacy of marriage, even if only nominally, overrides the reasonable path of divorce. He says, “I guess I’m just not ready to be divorced yet.” To which she replies, “Yeah, but you haven’t really been married in over a year.” Samantha’s right, it doesn’t make sense. They can do things or not do things just because it feels right in the moment, even if they know it doesn’t make sense in the long term.Īt one point in the film, Samantha, Theodore’s operating system (voice of Scarlett Johansson) and partner asks him why he has yet to sign his divorce papers to his ex Catherine (Rooney Mara). They fall in love despite knowing the heartbreak yet to come. They repeat old mistakes despite precisely knowing and even recognizing what those mistakes are. It’s what makes these characters so beautifully realized. But, this paradox is at the brilliant, red heart of Jonze’s modern romance in a future world.
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