HER

Movie : HER
Directed by : Spike Jonze

I recently watched this movie a couple days ago with some of my friends. Here, I'm not going to analyze this movie like what I usually do whenever I'm working on my college paper, though the theory of Baudrillard crossed my mind while I typed. Instead, I'm going to talk about the story line and also about the movie itself.

HER is a movie that won several awards, included Oscars and Academy Awards, and some nominees in Golden Globe of course. But, no. That is not the reason why I decided to watch this movie. Nowadays, we decided to go to the cinema and watch the movie because we attracted to the actors or actresses in it or some of us might go because of the poster that really intriguing yet interesting. Others might excited to watch a movie because of the good review the movie make in one of the movie magazines. Well, that's not me.

Actually, I fell in love with the movie from the first time I read the story. HER's story is about a guy named Theodore Twombly who fell in love with a female voice of an OS (Operating System). That's it. That sentence have me accidentally in love with the idea of this love story. A man who head over heels with a female voice. It's simple yet complicated, makes me excited to go to the cinema as soon as possible.

When I watched the movie, I loved it from the very start. I like how the angle of the camera moves and the tone that Jonze used to depict the scene. The time setting was in 2025, though the choice of costume for each actors and actresses showed in late 60's. I squealed like a fat boy finally sees his cake arrived. I'm sorry, but I'm a fanatic of vintage and retro things. Hope is not a sin.

I'm not a big fan of romance but if the romantic things happened in my life, I would be damned to refuse it. Of course there are several romance movie that stole my heart because I'm such a hopeless romantic. I don't like cheesy and some cliche things, that's why I choose really carefully whenever I wanted to watch some movie that has special love ingredients in it.

HER is another story. The reason why I adore this movie so much is because it teaches me a lesson. Like, you can't choose who you are going to fall in love with. I'm sound a little bit cheesy, aren't I?

Theodore is a human and he is falling in love with Samantha who is only a female voice of an OS. Theodore who was going through a divorce found that Samantha really gets him in any possible way. He found comfort that he can't find in any female human. Despite his solitude and loneliness, Theodore feels safe whenever he made a contact with Samantha. He started to tell Samantha about his day, he also took Samantha on a date. Yeah, a human and an female voice of an OS spent the day together. That's really cute, isn't it?

But then, like any other love stories the story had to reach its climax and find the completion. Either, it has to come to the story line that Samantha is actually real and she can be together with Theodore or Theodore has to face the truth that Samantha is only a program and she always will be. Well, the latter reason sounds more make sense and in the end of the movie, Theodore had to say goodbye to Samantha because the creators of the OS's decided to shut them down. It leaves Theodore with a broken heart.

Like what I said above, it's a simple yet a complicated love story and the movie just beautiful. No doubt if it won many awards for several nominees, including The Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay. It shows me how a person can completely went head over heels over a voice program and Joaquin Phoenix, a man who portrayed Theodore Twombly, is a great actor. When he madly deeply in love with Samantha, he showed through his acting convincingly and not forget about the way he brokenhearted when he found out that Samantha had to leave. It makes me want to hug him and say, "It's okay, Theodore. It's okay. I feel you." (and maybe with a little pat on his back.)

What Theodore felt with Samantha is something that I'm longing for. Theodore let himself being vulnerable and let Samantha in into his life, though he knew from the very beginning that she was just a program. But then, the love grows between them and Theodore did not mind to be a fool for Samantha. Later, he found out that Samantha was not only talking to him, in fact Samantha talked to a lot of people, 8316 to be exact and she admitted that there are 641 of them that she fall in love with.

Theodore knew that he is going to get his heart broken in the end, but he kept his opinion that he really loved Samantha. In the movie showed how Samantha turned Theodore's world upside down but still he can't let her go.

Despite the love story between Theodore and Samantha which happened between a human and a program, I think that everyone has the similar love story with a different plot. The point is, when we decided to fall, we are going to get hurt in the end, sooner or later; with different "how" and "why". The first thing to do is to let ourselves being vulnerable then we invited them in into our lives, learning about each other, falling in love with each other in every single day. Isn't it worth it?

And yes, every person we loved are going to leave us and make our heart broken. The only thing we need to do is that we have to find someone who worth the wound.