Her will be shown in the Rainbow Room on Friday, November 11, at 7 pm. Refreshments will be provided. If you would like to attend and need childcare, contact Joanna Samuelson at joannasamuelson7@gmail.com
Her, a 2013 film written, directed, and produced by Spike Jonze, tells the story of Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), who is sweet, shy, deeply hurt by a failed relationship—and increasingly smitten by Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), an intelligent computer operating system (OS). She is as warm and affectionate as Siri isn’t.
Samantha is designed to be as helpful as possible by adapting to understand her owner’s needs and personality. She is “female” only because Theo selected that option (in the same way that Siri can be programmed to speak like a man or to use a British accent). But her uncanny ability to adapt to Theo soon makes her far more than an OS. Samantha’s voice brightly greets him in the morning and bids him good night in the evening. She prioritizes his emails, organizes his files, and compliments his sense of humor. She even coaxes him out of the house. She is, in short, the ideal companion. And although Samantha’s programming is designed simply to make her likable to Theo, her assimilation of humanity’s tics soon has her feeling emotion—or a convincing simulation of it.
Ultimately, film critic Roger Ebert explains, Her is “a crash course on the question of what it means to be human.”