This week our lecturer let us write about any movie. So, I'm choosing one of my favourite movie Her (2013) directed by Spike Jonze. I am choosing this because it was one of the most mind bottling postmodern movies. Despite there is no specific aspect of how we need to write our weekly journal, I will be talking about the messages carried out by this movie, and how it is going to relate to the society in the coming future.

Plot

If you are not familiar with this movie, I will talk about the overall plot of this movie. So it starts off with a man named Theodore who writes love letters for people as his job. His life was so plain, have a few friends and he is going to get divorced by his wife. One night he stumbled upon an introduction booth of a new operating system, this new operating system is like no other, it is the world's first artificial intelligence operating system. And after he set it up, he meets with an artificial intelligence female voice called Samantha. And the story goes on when Samantha evolves and the whole story goes complicated.



Meaning of the Movie

Postmodern movies, they all have a meaning behind why the movie was created, what do they want people to understand. Nonetheless, Her the movie has a deep message within it, it shows how much a man would fall for someone or something even that it is not human. It lets us question what is the limit of love, and how much does it need to consider as love. From the movie, there are almost all the emotional interactions an ordinary couple would do, looking from the perspective of the man, he just wants to find someone to understands him, and Samantha is the right partner. Even if she is living on the internet, this does not stop them from loving. Maybe she was programmed to be that way, and he blindly falls for her knowing that they are two forms of organisms.

It also let us question the issue of being too technology dependent, at the extend that we no longer need physical interaction with other people to feel love. Are we going too far? Should we change some things to connect the human world back to how it was? Will it be safe for our human existance if this kind of relationship happens? These are the questions audiences will ask after watching the movie, I think it will have everyone waking up from this attachment of mobile phones and digital devices. Humans should have more interaction with the world, and the technology advancement should focus on other parts like curing diseaces and saving people.


Future representation

The movie does not show how the world would be in next twenty years I assumed, mainly because it focused on how the human-internet relationship was carried out. Most of the shots were focused on the man Theodore himself and not much on other characters, this puts the viewers in his shoes, letting us feel what he was feeling. Most of the scenes were softly filtered with warm color grading, to enhance the feeling of affection and how much he actually feels about love. The staging were simple, using locations with minimalistic design, usually how society perceived the future.


Impressions

I really like the way it blends sci-fi with romance, it wasn't the ordinary movie one could find, the way the film was shot are quite unique. I recommend people who like sci-fi movies and romance movies to watch, because this is quite a good movie.