Yesterday, I finished a 2013 sci-fi movie entitled Her. It's about a guy who ends up in a relationship with his operating system. This was one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen. There was no graphic nudity or sex scenes, but there were scenes dealing with sex and even romance that I could barely watch. The plot at these points was so...icky? sad? warped? I had to turn away from the screen.
Initially, the relationship seems great. He and his OS talk about all sorts of things, share secrets, and go places together. The protagonist is simultaneously going through a divorce, and, in response to the OS's questions about this (the OS apparently consists of some sort of AI), he answers that it's difficult being in an intimate relationship with another person because people change and grow apart.
Ironically (or perhaps this is moral of the movie), the OS learns more and more over time, and eventually grows apart from the protagonist. One day, it tells him that it is going to "leave." As the OS is able to have at least thousands of simultaneous conversations, read whole books in a fraction of a second, and claims to be in love with several hundred other people, its "growth" is pretty much unimaginable by the human mind (as illustrated by the OS' beautiful and terrible metaphorical explanation of the dissatisfying nature of its relationship with the protagonist as a written conversation with infinite space in between the words), and so the "growing apart" is even more profound than anything that could happen between humans. Presumably, the protagonist comes to understand this at the end of the movie, when he decides to spend time with a (human) friend of whom he saw surprisingly little during the movie.
I would recommend this movie for the weirdness factor alone. It is one of those quiet, dialogue-driven movies. I think it also could be an interesting new chapter in the discussion about the social and psychological effects of technology.
Initially, the relationship seems great. He and his OS talk about all sorts of things, share secrets, and go places together. The protagonist is simultaneously going through a divorce, and, in response to the OS's questions about this (the OS apparently consists of some sort of AI), he answers that it's difficult being in an intimate relationship with another person because people change and grow apart.
Ironically (or perhaps this is moral of the movie), the OS learns more and more over time, and eventually grows apart from the protagonist. One day, it tells him that it is going to "leave." As the OS is able to have at least thousands of simultaneous conversations, read whole books in a fraction of a second, and claims to be in love with several hundred other people, its "growth" is pretty much unimaginable by the human mind (as illustrated by the OS' beautiful and terrible metaphorical explanation of the dissatisfying nature of its relationship with the protagonist as a written conversation with infinite space in between the words), and so the "growing apart" is even more profound than anything that could happen between humans. Presumably, the protagonist comes to understand this at the end of the movie, when he decides to spend time with a (human) friend of whom he saw surprisingly little during the movie.
I would recommend this movie for the weirdness factor alone. It is one of those quiet, dialogue-driven movies. I think it also could be an interesting new chapter in the discussion about the social and psychological effects of technology.
