Watching "Her" last night with my husband in our home, and in 2013 in theatres with him when we were still friends, are the most intimate movie experiences of my life.
Choosing to take Kyle to this movie was a kind of strange choice in 2013. We were at that fragile stage in our friendship where we were both very aware of our feelings for each other, but still had reservations and dared not speak of it. We encouraged each other's pursuits in online dating at this point and I remember feeling a kind of odd relief when he would go on a date with someone, thinking "good, if this works out then these feelings wont be allowed. I wont have this awful obligation to do something about them". It was a strange and deeply lonely time in many ways, and an especially strange time to go to such an obviously romantic film with him. The longing to be experiencing the love, sex, and relationships everyone around us appeared to know was overwhelming at the time and was tied to awful apprehensions and fear of those same things. I didn't understand love, sex, or relationships then and this made me feel deeply lonely.
Despite it being one of the more liberating times of my life I felt more frightened and insecure than ever. I hadn't yet come out and everywhere I looked was evidence that I shouldn't be this way and that my feelings for Kyle presented an awful reality- either I find a way to fix what is wrong with me, or I will live with this regretful silence for the rest of my life. I am not exaggerating when I say that "Her" is likely the most validating film I have ever seen for my experience not just of my sexuality, but of loneliness, empathy, and most importantly intimacy.
Everything in this film evokes a specific feeling. The music, the distinctly soft aesthetic, Joaquin
Phoenix's incredibly open and vulnerable performance, Scarlet Johansson's voice, the impossibly naturalistic city skyline, and and even the lighting all takes the viewer to this place where they are given every opportunity to feel cozy and comfortable. That comfortable feeling is continually contradicted with the heaviness of the isolation Theodore feels and the longing, the confusion, the troubling difficulties of relationships in the film. "Her" continues to show us characters who are looking for ways to examine and understand intimacy. We see this in Theodore's relationship with Samantha, Amy's film and thesis of her mother sleeping, and Samantha's regretful longing to have a body.
"Her" captures loneliness like no other film I have seen. That vacant, longing, quiet lack of connection in
Theo's life hits me just as hard seeing it now as it did then. But despite this, and despite the bittersweet ending, "Her" is a uniquely optimistic movie. While some characters question the validity of Theodore's relationship with Sam and the couple's insecurities are examined with unflinching honesty, the majority of people in Theodore's life accept what he has with Sam as love just like any other. Even when the film is at its climax and Theodore is forced to consider that they were doomed from the start, Amy responds to his question of his relationship's validity with "I don't know. I wasn't in it". Amy can't know if Theo and Sam's relationship was comparable to others, but Sam's not having a body and Theo ultimately not being able to evolve with Sam doesn't change that. In the wake of Theo's divorce and comments throughout the film about our past just being a romantic story we tell ourselves, this accepting sentiment is especially meaningful. I am no stranger to people reacting to my own relationship with pity and scorn. Theo's ex-wife believes he is settling and is only choosing to be with Sam out of loneliness, and I know people think the same of my husband. People have told me, in what they believe to be flattering praise of him, that he must be such a noble man to stay with someone like me and marry me.
It is ok if you do not understand Theo or my husband, and it is ok if you feel sympathetic to Sam and I's regretful longing for a body that romantic relationships usually call for. However, nobody can deny our experiences. This film validates the experience of a non-sexual relationship and the love, connection, and intimacy that grows between people in that vulnerable space.
Sam's worry that she is unable able to offer a necessary physicality to her relationship with Theo is a very specific insecurity I've been familiar with before. I think it's very interesting that after Sam has evolved and is erased along with the other OS's we see that Theo had the same insecurity, something universally human and non-human, it appears- Theo also feared that he wasn't good enough. When Sam is evolving and Theo is unable to keep up, Theo is faced with the fear that the person he loves, just like all those before him, is going to "out-grow" him or grow tired of him. This self-defeating insecurity is seen in both characters who don't realise that they were never "not enough" for the other. Sam never leaves Theo, she just starts having other relationships with "people" like her. She explicitly says that she is still in love with him and their relationship is different, but just the idea of not being able to present the entirety of human emotion and relationships to Sam sends Theo in to despair. On the other hand we have Sam, who laments not having a body to love Theo the way she believes he deserves, and the way she so desperately wants to love him. Sam worries that Theo will eventually move on with another woman, like Amy, because they do have bodies. Yet, Theo assures her time and time again that he loves Sam and their relationship just as it is. In fact, when Sam employs the surrogate so she can have sex with Theo, Theo convinces her that they are happier without the surrogate and that he doesn't think they should "pretend you are something you aren't". Theo doesn't need Sam to have a body. Sam doesn't need Theo to be Alan Watts. Their relationship is valid and loved by both for what it is and the intimacy they share is profound and meaningful. Naturally, this entire narrative speaks to me. It wasn't long after seeing this movie, in 2014, that I was having these same worries and conversations.
In many ways, this film was a premonition for me. It is not just that it validated the isolation and loneliness of that time and examined the perspective of people like me while asserting the possibility of people loving me regardless. I remember watching this movie in 2013 and blissfully living in an imaginary world where relationships like Theo's and Sam's were real. Watching "Her" was the first time I opened myself up to the possibility that a sexless relationship could exist and be meaningful and happy- that a man could love someone like me without resentment. Of course, Sam and Theo's relationship does not last, but again this is not because Sam doesn't have a body or because Theo couldn't evolve with Sam. To each other, these were not deficits in their relationship because it wasn't part of the fulfilment they received from each other. What was once wistful fantasy to me became reality and to share this movie with Kyle, once while trying to understand our feelings and now having been married for just over a year, is indescribably romantic and profound to me. Its funny, in 2013 I watched Theo's memories and with great melancholic longing I thought to myself how wonderful it must be to have memories like those, and now I have them. Likewise, just as Theo writes in one of his patented personalised letters, I too am caught in awe some days at the simple miracle of being in my childhood home with Kyle, how generations of everything come together and it seems like we are part of something so much bigger than we could ever imagine, while all those insecurities of the past melt away with ease.
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| Younger me in 2013 |
Despite it being one of the more liberating times of my life I felt more frightened and insecure than ever. I hadn't yet come out and everywhere I looked was evidence that I shouldn't be this way and that my feelings for Kyle presented an awful reality- either I find a way to fix what is wrong with me, or I will live with this regretful silence for the rest of my life. I am not exaggerating when I say that "Her" is likely the most validating film I have ever seen for my experience not just of my sexuality, but of loneliness, empathy, and most importantly intimacy.
Everything in this film evokes a specific feeling. The music, the distinctly soft aesthetic, JoaquinPhoenix's incredibly open and vulnerable performance, Scarlet Johansson's voice, the impossibly naturalistic city skyline, and and even the lighting all takes the viewer to this place where they are given every opportunity to feel cozy and comfortable. That comfortable feeling is continually contradicted with the heaviness of the isolation Theodore feels and the longing, the confusion, the troubling difficulties of relationships in the film. "Her" continues to show us characters who are looking for ways to examine and understand intimacy. We see this in Theodore's relationship with Samantha, Amy's film and thesis of her mother sleeping, and Samantha's regretful longing to have a body.
Theo's life hits me just as hard seeing it now as it did then. But despite this, and despite the bittersweet ending, "Her" is a uniquely optimistic movie. While some characters question the validity of Theodore's relationship with Sam and the couple's insecurities are examined with unflinching honesty, the majority of people in Theodore's life accept what he has with Sam as love just like any other. Even when the film is at its climax and Theodore is forced to consider that they were doomed from the start, Amy responds to his question of his relationship's validity with "I don't know. I wasn't in it". Amy can't know if Theo and Sam's relationship was comparable to others, but Sam's not having a body and Theo ultimately not being able to evolve with Sam doesn't change that. In the wake of Theo's divorce and comments throughout the film about our past just being a romantic story we tell ourselves, this accepting sentiment is especially meaningful. I am no stranger to people reacting to my own relationship with pity and scorn. Theo's ex-wife believes he is settling and is only choosing to be with Sam out of loneliness, and I know people think the same of my husband. People have told me, in what they believe to be flattering praise of him, that he must be such a noble man to stay with someone like me and marry me.
It is ok if you do not understand Theo or my husband, and it is ok if you feel sympathetic to Sam and I's regretful longing for a body that romantic relationships usually call for. However, nobody can deny our experiences. This film validates the experience of a non-sexual relationship and the love, connection, and intimacy that grows between people in that vulnerable space.
Sam's worry that she is unable able to offer a necessary physicality to her relationship with Theo is a very specific insecurity I've been familiar with before. I think it's very interesting that after Sam has evolved and is erased along with the other OS's we see that Theo had the same insecurity, something universally human and non-human, it appears- Theo also feared that he wasn't good enough. When Sam is evolving and Theo is unable to keep up, Theo is faced with the fear that the person he loves, just like all those before him, is going to "out-grow" him or grow tired of him. This self-defeating insecurity is seen in both characters who don't realise that they were never "not enough" for the other. Sam never leaves Theo, she just starts having other relationships with "people" like her. She explicitly says that she is still in love with him and their relationship is different, but just the idea of not being able to present the entirety of human emotion and relationships to Sam sends Theo in to despair. On the other hand we have Sam, who laments not having a body to love Theo the way she believes he deserves, and the way she so desperately wants to love him. Sam worries that Theo will eventually move on with another woman, like Amy, because they do have bodies. Yet, Theo assures her time and time again that he loves Sam and their relationship just as it is. In fact, when Sam employs the surrogate so she can have sex with Theo, Theo convinces her that they are happier without the surrogate and that he doesn't think they should "pretend you are something you aren't". Theo doesn't need Sam to have a body. Sam doesn't need Theo to be Alan Watts. Their relationship is valid and loved by both for what it is and the intimacy they share is profound and meaningful. Naturally, this entire narrative speaks to me. It wasn't long after seeing this movie, in 2014, that I was having these same worries and conversations.
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