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8:42 a.m. - 2014-02-08 Some people won't like "Her," just as audiences either loved or hated "Lost In Translation." Twombly, played with wonderful understatement by Joaquin Phoenix, is physically unattractive and self-involved. He works at a job writing love letters for other people, a task which seems grounded in cynicism. His soon to be ex-wife (Rooney Mara) complains of his detachment. His private life, aside from his platonic friendship with Amy (Amy Adams) consists largely of video games and phone sex with strangers. When a beautiful blind date (Olivia Wilde) expresses interest in a long-term relationship (OK, it does come a little early!), he starts making excuses right away. Then Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johansson) comes into Twombly's life, and everything starts to change for the better. The new personalized OS is an efficient secretary, then a good friend, then a lover without benefits, though she does try unsuccessfully to get Twombly involved with a human surrogate (Portia Doubleday). The surrogate idea seems too strange even for Twombly, but is his reluctance about the strangeness or about the physical intimacy with another human? What at first seems to be a spoof of our growing dependence on technology in everything we do evolves, just as Samantha is evolving, into a bittersweet love story. When Samantha decides to leave Twombly--leave humankind, in fact--we are saddened. We share his sense of loss and loneliness. A good script and Johansson's remarkable voice have made Samantha seem every bit as real as the other characters in the film. At the same time we understand the futility of their relationship. But here's the thing: Samantha is not like Pinocchio wanting to be a real boy. Human awareness is just the first rung on her intellectual ladder. Through the years science fiction has shown us machines that tragically tried and failed to emulate true human identity: HAL, Commander Data, the robots of "AI." We sensed their sad futility and felt sorry for them. How tragic not to be like us. But Samantha, short of having a physical body, becomes human and then more than human. It is Twombly who cannot keep up with her rapid advancement. SHE grows beyond HIM. Several times in the movie Samantha tells Twombly that she can't find the words to express what she is feeling. She would have access to every word in every language on the planet, so what this means is that she is having thoughts and feelings beyond what any human ever felt the need to express. There is a scene on a train when Samantha and Twombly are playing a game: he is supposed to guess how many trees are visible on the mountain they are passing. He doesn't even come close. His efforts are like those of a young child in comparison to Samantha's quick and accurate data processing. When Twombly "takes" Samantha on a picnic with two of his friends, she explains how she no longer regrets not having a body, that it gives her a wonderful kind of freedom. One of the friends jokes that she feels better than "stupid humans." Samantha denies this, but the superiority is there if not the arrogance that goes with superiority. Samantha has grown to the point where she needs more than what human beings can provide. Recent events have shown us Deep Blue outplaying Garry Kasparov at chess and Watson beating human champions on "Jeopardy." "Her" suggests that artificial intelligence might evolve beyond its own need for humans. It's a wonderful, original, sad and frightening idea.
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