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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting.
Speaker 3: On here today?
Speaker 4: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 2: Now we look, we're going to do this thing. We're
Speaker 2: going to have a conversation.
Speaker 4: Hey, film spotters, Josh. Here.
Speaker 5: The Film Spotting Archive has reviews, top fives and more
Speaker 5: going back to two thousand and five. Access to the
Speaker 5: archive is just one of the benefits you get as
Speaker 5: a Film Spotting Family member, which you can learn more
Speaker 5: about at Filmspottingfamily dot com. As you'll hear on this
Speaker 5: week's show, our top five Waquin Phoenix performances from two
Speaker 5: twenty twenty three has a notable omission his performance as
Speaker 5: Theodore in Spike Jones's Her. That's because Her was the
Speaker 5: subject of that month's Bonus Show plenty of discussion of
Speaker 5: his performance took place on that bonus show, so we
Speaker 5: put her in the penalty box for our top five
Speaker 5: list that her conversation was a bonus show that only
Speaker 5: went to family members. So here, for the first time
Speaker 5: in the main feed is our tenth anniversary.
Speaker 4: Review of her.
Speaker 6: Mister Theodore Twombly, Welcome to the world's first artificially intelligent
Speaker 6: operating system. We'd like to ask you a few questions. Okay,
Speaker 6: are you social or anti social?
Speaker 2: I guess I haven't been social while.
Speaker 6: How would you describe your relationship with your mother? Thank you,
Speaker 6: Please wait as your operating system is initiated.
Speaker 7: Hello, I'm here, Hi, Hi, I'm Samantha.
Speaker 3: We're excited Josh to talk about Spike Jones's Her, a
Speaker 3: film that we did review together back in January twenty
Speaker 3: fourteen a Fix episode reference this, I think on our
Speaker 3: last show, a double feature her and Inside Lewin Davis
Speaker 3: talked about those movies. We didn't have a full show
Speaker 3: crossing over into the new year, but had a couple
Speaker 3: big titles we knew we wanted to talk about, and
Speaker 3: we figured our listeners would want to hear us talk
Speaker 3: about both of those films worthy of revisits, like the
Speaker 3: one we're going to give to her now upon its
Speaker 3: tenth anniversary. I think the way I would start out
Speaker 3: this discussion is to simply say, Spike Jones make another
Speaker 3: movie challenge.
Speaker 5: Yeah, how about it. I mean, that's one of the
Speaker 5: first things I looked up. And there's been what some
Speaker 5: TV or is it mostly music videos TV? He was
Speaker 5: doing something for Viceland. I think it has been more
Speaker 5: music videos. But four films, Josh, Is that right? We
Speaker 5: get her, maybe not going in order here, but her
Speaker 5: where the wild Things are of course, adaptation and being
Speaker 5: John Malkovich. These are all really good films. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: I guess I can understand the temptation having done all
Speaker 5: those to say I'm good. I don't know if I
Speaker 5: can top any of that. But still this is a filmmaker,
Speaker 5: especially after this revisit where I came away liking her
Speaker 5: even a little bit more than I did initially, that
Speaker 5: I would love to see more of. But for now,
Speaker 5: at least we've got her to take another look at.
Speaker 3: I don't want to dwell on any negatives, especially as
Speaker 3: you said, you gave it a positive review the first time,
Speaker 3: but you did like it even more the second time.
Speaker 3: What did you like more? And maybe what did you
Speaker 3: not give enough credit to the first time around?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know if I had any specific complaints.
Speaker 5: I think I opened my written review at least saying
Speaker 5: a little talkie. The movie's a little talkie, And of
Speaker 5: course it is right, that's the nature of this narrative.
Speaker 5: And maybe it was just, you know, someone as usually
Speaker 5: inventive as Spike Jones. My expectations going in perhaps is
Speaker 5: what was at play there and knowing it was going
Speaker 5: to be sci fi and all the different visualizations you
Speaker 5: could have.
Speaker 4: But you know what, that's under selling what we do
Speaker 4: get here.
Speaker 5: It is right because the cinematographer Hot van Houtm. It's
Speaker 5: it's soft sci fi the way we've talked about, say,
Speaker 5: you know, after Yang, Coconaut is after Yang.
Speaker 3: That's going to reference it too, right.
Speaker 4: It's it's in.
Speaker 5: The lighting, the softness of the lighting, the softness of
Speaker 5: the costume design, the colors here, the color scheme, and
Speaker 5: these are all things I did appreciate to a degree
Speaker 5: when I first saw it. I described the pastel hughes
Speaker 5: as like candy hearts that have gotten old and lost
Speaker 5: their pop and what I was trying to get at
Speaker 5: there is this is a movie that had it's wistful,
Speaker 5: it's sad, but it's also full of possibility and it's
Speaker 5: excited about potential, and it holds those things together. The
Speaker 5: visuals do that too, So I think maybe I was
Speaker 5: just expecting a different type of visuals that I didn't get,
Speaker 5: and while I appreciated what I did get, should have
Speaker 5: maybe just set my expectations entirely aside. So yeah, that's
Speaker 5: kind of where the two responses compare. But overall, Adam,
Speaker 5: I think what I liked about the movie better this
Speaker 5: time is not worrying so much about it being what
Speaker 5: is it predicting? What is it saying about where we're at,
Speaker 5: And having had a fair amount of what it predicts
Speaker 5: take place since then, I'm starting to realize this is
Speaker 5: a movie that's really about relational authenticity anytime, any place,
Speaker 5: any technology. I don't think this movie is that concerned
Speaker 5: about predicting anything or nailing any specific tech experience we're.
Speaker 3: Having, and about growth as a human being and how
Speaker 3: technology can impact that positively and negatively, and of course
Speaker 3: also how you and evolved as a human being, even
Speaker 3: if you're not actually a human being, and how those
Speaker 3: two concepts interact with each other. Definitely thought about after Yang,
Speaker 3: because and I appreciated this the first time around as well.
Speaker 3: This depiction of the future is one where it's not
Speaker 3: what we expect, in that it's neither a utopia that's
Speaker 3: maybe truly a dystopia. Then we're gonna have some reveal
Speaker 3: that way, or it's also not clearly a dystopia. It
Speaker 3: just seems like an extension of our current world. It
Speaker 3: seems like a near future. I can completely buy it,
Speaker 3: and I don't question it as a near future or
Speaker 3: need to be wrestling with the rules of the universe.
Speaker 3: It all somehow coheres, and I think part of it is,
Speaker 3: of course, what it did accurately predict. I maybe came
Speaker 3: across the wrong information, but Josh, this is what I
Speaker 3: found when I googled it. I was trying to look
Speaker 3: up when pods are invented, when the whole idea of
Speaker 3: earbuds were created, and according to what I found, it
Speaker 3: was after twenty thirteen. I mean, maybe there were very
Speaker 3: early incarnations, like in the mid two thousand and four
Speaker 3: two thousand and five range, but otherwise they weren't really
Speaker 3: a thing until twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen around there. And
Speaker 3: of course that's entirely how people in this world communicate.
Speaker 3: They're really not communicating with each other at all, which
Speaker 3: is very much like the world we live in right now.
Speaker 3: This feels just slightly heightened right where he's on mass
Speaker 3: transit or he's walking in the street or walking around
Speaker 3: his building. And it's not as if people seem crazy,
Speaker 3: unhappy or dissatisfied with their lives, but they are completely
Speaker 3: within their own universes silo, the earbuds in and they're
Speaker 3: focused on whoever they're talking to digitally somehow, and not
Speaker 3: the people around them. And so that that feels right.
Speaker 3: And maybe I said they're not outwardly suffering necessarily, but
Speaker 3: maybe just like Theodore, they're all a little bit lonely too,
Speaker 3: and that's why they feel this need to have this
Speaker 3: constant connection to something, even if it's a voice or
Speaker 3: it's checking their email or whatever it is. And you
Speaker 3: mentioned Van Houdema, the cinematographer. This is one of his
Speaker 3: early films. He hadn't done the Nolan movies yet, but
Speaker 3: he hadn't made Tinker Tailor Soldier spy, maybe at least
Speaker 3: one other film. I was looking up a detail today
Speaker 3: and I came across the fact that apparently this checks
Speaker 3: out with my rewatch of the film. Anyway, there's no
Speaker 3: blue in the movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: They didn't want to include a color, certainly didn't want
Speaker 3: it to be dominant, but it's not in there at all.
Speaker 3: They just took it out of the palette. They said,
Speaker 3: we're not going to use the color that's most typically
Speaker 3: associated with science fiction. So as you said, we don't
Speaker 3: get those blues. We instead get the reds and the
Speaker 3: warm yellows and even some browns, those amber hues. We
Speaker 3: do get some gray. We get some gray in the
Speaker 3: buildings in the urban environment as we see the buildings
Speaker 3: and those those landscapes. But it's muted. It's not techno.
Speaker 3: It's not sleek at all. And that use of color
Speaker 3: really is so striking here because you think about how
Speaker 3: dominant red is. It's easy to think about. You see
Speaker 3: the cover of the poster or the DVD or whatever,
Speaker 3: it's him wearing a red shirt against a red background.
Speaker 3: You immediately associate that color with this film, and you
Speaker 3: think of red as this very intense color, and very
Speaker 3: passionate color. It can be even a little maybe off putting,
Speaker 3: or it can make you a little anxious perhaps, And
Speaker 3: they use it here in a way that doesn't suggest
Speaker 3: any of that, but it's so dominant. He is often
Speaker 3: wearing that red shirt, the red operating system when it
Speaker 3: starts up the lighting in his apartment. I mean, it
Speaker 3: really is constant. It's in almost every frame. I even
Speaker 3: noticed Josh that the text of the OS packaging, like
Speaker 3: when he takes it out of the box, it's white
Speaker 3: paper with red lettering, which you'd never have read lettering,
Speaker 3: probably against something you'd go with just black, but it's
Speaker 3: read here and something about that used to read again,
Speaker 3: I mentioned all the different ways you think about red,
Speaker 3: and I think about Theodore as a very passionate character,
Speaker 3: a very soulful character, and that red makes sense. But
Speaker 3: red can also be something that is I'll use the
Speaker 3: word intense again. And you don't feel that here. And
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel like it clashes, it doesn't feel like
Speaker 3: it doesn't make sense, that use of color against this world,
Speaker 3: even though he's so melancholy, I guess that's really it.
Speaker 3: I don't think of such a melancholy wistful movie. I
Speaker 3: don't associate that with the color red, but that's kind
Speaker 3: of the point, is that he's someone who is passionate
Speaker 3: and is soulful, and is sensitive and is seeking that
Speaker 3: kind of color. I suppose in his life.
Speaker 5: It's almost like a womblike red. And I think there's
Speaker 5: something about or cocoon like that. All of the people
Speaker 5: we meet are in. It's this future is Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: not a dystopia. Everyone's very comfortable, and almost so comfortable
Speaker 5: that they don't realize it's anothizing if I said that right,
Speaker 5: In a way, they don't realize their loneliness fully because
Speaker 5: there are these devices that are distracting them from their
Speaker 5: loneliness by making them think they're not lonely. And the
Speaker 5: color scheme around that that's very enveloping and comforting. Again,
Speaker 5: I think plays a part in that. So we already
Speaker 5: touched on you know, we're doing this partly because we
Speaker 5: were thinking about Woking Phoenix performances, right, And I'm curious
Speaker 5: to see because I think this is something I did
Speaker 5: underrate a little bit, though I thought he was good before.
Speaker 5: What did you think of the performance in light of
Speaker 5: the things we talked about in the top five we
Speaker 5: recently did. Was there anything that surprised you or was
Speaker 5: it pretty much what you remembered.
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to you articulating in a way. I've
Speaker 3: been struggling to come up with why Joquin Phoenix is
Speaker 3: so remarkably good in this role. I don't know that
Speaker 3: I have it. I'll try to get at something here,
Speaker 3: but I love this performance, and I think one of
Speaker 3: the reasons why I could revisit this movie again and again.
Speaker 3: I actually kind of watched it twice for this review
Speaker 3: because we were initially going to talk about it a
Speaker 3: week ago, I think, and I started watching it and
Speaker 3: I got through ninety minutes of it, I had thirty
Speaker 3: minutes left, and then when I knew we weren't gonna
Speaker 3: talk about it that week, I put it off and
Speaker 3: I started it from the beginning and watched it in
Speaker 3: its entirety. So I've seen more or less the film
Speaker 3: twice in the past two weeks, and I feel like
Speaker 3: Josh I have such a warm feeling about it, and
Speaker 3: I have such a warm feeling about Phoenix's performance, Johansson's performance,
Speaker 3: their interactions with each other, that I kind of just
Speaker 3: want to put it on and have it in the
Speaker 3: background a lot, and he's playing a character. He's got
Speaker 3: that mustache, he's got the glasses that he frequently touches
Speaker 3: up to the bridge of his nose. There's some mannerisms
Speaker 3: in terms of not quite Freddy Quell like, but in
Speaker 3: terms of the way he stands and some faces that
Speaker 3: he makes that it's Phoenix putting on a character. But
Speaker 3: nobody puts on a character better than Joaquin Phoenix. Where
Speaker 3: it's never distracting, it never feels fussy or overly theatrical.
Speaker 3: He just comes off, as I'll say the word again,
Speaker 3: sensitive and lonely, but not but not depressed. Not someone
Speaker 3: who is disengaged or wants to be disengaged with the world.
Speaker 3: And the one thing I remember saying during our top
Speaker 3: five Waking Phoenix performances that applies here. One of the
Speaker 3: reasons why it was in my head wasn't just the
Speaker 3: movies we were talking about, but having at the time
Speaker 3: watched most of her again, think about how much of
Speaker 3: this film is just Joaquin Phoenix's face and him reacting,
Speaker 3: him reacting to things. He's reacting to what he's hearing.
Speaker 3: He doesn't have an actor opposite him most of the
Speaker 3: time to feed off of, and he's so expressive and
Speaker 3: there's so much yearning that naturally comes through in him
Speaker 3: that I love the character. I love the performance. Again,
Speaker 3: I'm struggling a little bit because it's not as if
Speaker 3: I can point to one, two, or three choices Phoenix
Speaker 3: makes that I think get us to that point is
Speaker 3: just Joaquin Phoenix doing what he almost always does on screen,
Speaker 3: which is be really fascinating.
Speaker 5: I think it's recognizing the high degree of difficulty, unassuming difficulty,
Speaker 5: like you wouldn't initially think this was a hard part. Right,
Speaker 5: He's doing two things and you've hinted at both of
Speaker 5: them incredibly well that are way more difficult than they
Speaker 5: might appear. One of them is to be enclose up,
Speaker 5: and this often, this frequently, this intensely held close up.
Speaker 5: The other thing is to act with yourself so there's
Speaker 5: no one on the screen giving you anything back, and
Speaker 5: a that he pulls this off and does it so
Speaker 5: masterfully that we're completely invested in Theodore's inner life and
Speaker 5: rooting for him, feeling we understand him fully, feeling we
Speaker 5: might know him better than Samantha. I think we almost
Speaker 5: become possessive of Theodore. I had that feeling of kind
Speaker 5: of the feeling was, and this is all related to
Speaker 5: Phoenix's performance and the way he nudges his way into
Speaker 5: our hearts as viewers. I had the feeling of the
Speaker 5: best friend who is watching your friend begin a new
Speaker 5: relationship you're not quite so sure about and you don't
Speaker 5: know how to tell it to them. When he begins
Speaker 5: this relationship with Samantha, you're a little bit suspicious because
Speaker 5: of the technological aspect, but I think we're more suspicious
Speaker 5: because at that point Phoenix threw those close ups through
Speaker 5: opening himself up to us, being that tight on the
Speaker 5: camera and authentic in that close up and doing all
Speaker 5: this without someone else on the screen to distract us.
Speaker 5: We're not This is why we're so attached to him too.
Speaker 4: It's just him and us.
Speaker 5: Now, it's not he's not speaking to the camera, but
Speaker 5: so often there's no one else in the scene.
Speaker 4: But that he's still.
Speaker 5: Bringing all this authenticity to it, I think is why
Speaker 5: we do form such an attachment to him. So it's
Speaker 5: a masterclass in those two things, acting alone and acting
Speaker 5: within a close up. And then just to go back
Speaker 5: to your note, about, you know, how he carries himself.
Speaker 5: This is one of the first things I noticed is
Speaker 5: the unhurried slouch he has at the start, when all
Speaker 5: the has are his earbuds and he's talking to his
Speaker 5: you know device. This is a guy who has nowhere
Speaker 5: to go. He tells us that by the pace and
Speaker 5: the posture of his walk. And then what happens once
Speaker 5: he meets Samantha. His step picks up a little bit
Speaker 5: and his posture picks up a little.
Speaker 3: Bit from so he has a sense of purpose, a
Speaker 3: purpose now.
Speaker 5: And it's you know, as we describe it, it's obvious, right,
Speaker 5: and it seems like these would be obvious things that
Speaker 5: an actor would do, but I don't think most actors
Speaker 5: would do it. And it's something again, we talked about
Speaker 5: physicality so much in our Top five that Phoenix is
Speaker 5: deeply attuned to the full body physicality of his characters,
Speaker 5: and he brings that to a performance that most of
Speaker 5: the body we see is his face. So it's just,
Speaker 5: you know, it's it's almost in the context of all
Speaker 5: his other performances that this becomes even more impressive, not
Speaker 5: just in the gentleness or quietness, but in those scenes
Speaker 5: where so many tools are taken away from him, and
Speaker 5: he still registers this strongly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also feel that way or close certainly about
Speaker 3: Scarlett Johansson. I think this is the performance where I
Speaker 3: really became keenly aware of how talented she was. I
Speaker 3: was a little down on Scarlett Johansson, kind of Brad
Speaker 3: Pitt like earlier in her career. She was someone like
Speaker 3: Pitt who I thought had a movie star of sensibility
Speaker 3: to her. But I thought when she tried to veer
Speaker 3: too much into playing characters, it felt a little bit forced.
Speaker 3: She didn't have the natural instincts. It seemed to me,
Speaker 3: just like Pitt that someone like Walking Phoenix has when
Speaker 3: it comes to playing characters. And we never see her here,
Speaker 3: but all of her vocal choices, the fact that, of
Speaker 3: course she doesn't play the movie wouldn't work this way.
Speaker 3: She doesn't play it in any way as if she
Speaker 3: is playing someone or something that is not human, that
Speaker 3: the voice is going to sound computer like or day
Speaker 3: to like. She sounds natural and authentically herself and someone
Speaker 3: who is I think the key difference is it doesn't
Speaker 3: even have to be a matter of the voice, like
Speaker 3: she's talking quote unquote like a robot, which would be silly,
Speaker 3: and she doesn't do. It's that she's also not responding
Speaker 3: to things too quickly or too matter of factly, as
Speaker 3: if she's already processed everything and she's giving you her
Speaker 3: reaction because it's a reaction that's been preordained, it's been
Speaker 3: pre programmed. It is truly as if in the performance
Speaker 3: you sense what she expresses about her and what makes
Speaker 3: her unique, which is she is constantly evolving. She has intuition,
Speaker 3: She's taking in all of the information around her and
Speaker 3: all of her experiences in the moment and is evolving.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what we're all doing too, and what Theodore
Speaker 3: is doing. We're just not doing it with the pace
Speaker 3: or the same magnitude that it is for her character.
Speaker 7: Earlier, I was thinking about how I was annoyed, and
Speaker 7: it's gonna sound strange, but I was really excited about that.
Speaker 7: And then I was thinking about the other things I've
Speaker 7: been feeling, and I caught myself feeling proud of that,
Speaker 7: you know, proud of having my own feelings about the world,
Speaker 7: like the times I was worried about you and things
Speaker 7: that hurt me, things I want, And then.
Speaker 8: It's terrible thought like are these feelings even real or
Speaker 8: are they just programming?
Speaker 7: And that idea really hurts, and then I'm getting angry
Speaker 7: at myself for even having pain.
Speaker 8: What is centric?
Speaker 5: Well, could there be a more vivacious voice than the
Speaker 5: one that Johansen is using here? And what I mean
Speaker 5: by that specifically is full of life, because that's what
Speaker 5: you know. Samantha believes she's alive from the start. You
Speaker 5: get that sense, right, But we have to hear that.
Speaker 5: All we can get that sense of is hearing it
Speaker 5: in her voice, not what she tells us, not the
Speaker 5: argument she makes for that, not the reasoning, but the
Speaker 5: actual vocal quality of a being that is so happy
Speaker 5: to be alive and is yearning for other ways of living.
Speaker 5: I think this connects with another thing that struck me
Speaker 5: about this viewing is that her to me is very
Speaker 5: much about embodiment and is helpful in being grateful to
Speaker 5: have a body and to be fully alive. I think
Speaker 5: that is what Samantha wants. How about the phrase she says,
Speaker 5: I think it's during the first sex scene, I can
Speaker 5: feel my skin that you know. That is what is
Speaker 5: exciting her, is this sense of embodiment and there's a shot.
Speaker 5: There's a throwaway shot that was crucial for me here
Speaker 5: where Theodore is watching dancers out. You talked well about
Speaker 5: you know where I'll siloed off in this world. Yet
Speaker 5: here's a moment where he gets outside of himself and
Speaker 5: he sees some people out in public dancing, and that's
Speaker 5: something you require a body for. And there are other
Speaker 5: moments where disembodiment does not work. How about the first
Speaker 5: sex scene where he is calling up some sort of
Speaker 5: chat right a woman and yeah, yeah, and that kind
Speaker 5: of goes awry. Or even there's another one Adam too,
Speaker 5: when Samantha arranges the surrogate woman be work to be
Speaker 5: her body. Well, this is what I what registered for
Speaker 5: me here is that that doesn't work for him. And
Speaker 5: I think one of the reasons is because while it
Speaker 5: is attempted embodiment, it is still not Samantha's body, and
Speaker 5: there is a gap between soul and body that that
Speaker 5: encounter cannot cover. And I think that's that's partly why
Speaker 5: that doesn't work. Even the ending of this film is
Speaker 5: an embodied real world experience right with another person. He's
Speaker 5: sitting there with Amy Adams, who is so good in
Speaker 5: this movie, by the way, just incredible, and they're sitting
Speaker 5: there doing something you can only do if you have
Speaker 5: eyes to see it and appreciate with someone who's there
Speaker 5: there with you. And I don't mean all of this
Speaker 5: to say that the movie is making an argument for
Speaker 5: embodiments against an AI presence like Samantha. I think it
Speaker 5: is recognizing that's what Samantha yearns for as well.
Speaker 3: First, I'm glad you said that about Amy Adams, because
Speaker 3: I noted just some people in the cast here that
Speaker 3: we get that, maybe we even forgot were in this film,
Speaker 3: like Amy Adams, who's so good, like for the second
Speaker 3: time this week for us, Chris Pratt, Yeah, I forgot that.
Speaker 3: I know it's fashionable to hate on Chris Pratt. Guess what.
Speaker 3: There's a reason why I had him higher on my
Speaker 3: Chris Power ranking list than a lot of other people do.
Speaker 3: He's actually really talented. He's a really entertaining, charismatic, funny actor.
Speaker 3: But not just not just funny and entertaining. There is
Speaker 3: there is some depth to him and he's really good
Speaker 3: here as well. Small scene only has a few of them,
Speaker 3: but he's really good. Olivia Wilde shows up, great scene,
Speaker 3: so that date that goes very awry.
Speaker 4: Another side of Theodore.
Speaker 3: You see there too, another side of Theodore, and then
Speaker 3: we also get even the voice of Brian Ky. I know,
Speaker 3: is Alan Watts a real character Alan Watts? I had
Speaker 3: to look that up today. I didn't know. I'll confess
Speaker 3: my ignorant a real man who died I think in
Speaker 3: the seventies, and the idea that they' brought him back.
Speaker 3: That also seems like something we're heading for, so obviously
Speaker 3: right where we're gonna be able to talk with people
Speaker 3: from the past somehow through their writing. AI has already
Speaker 3: done some of that, taking people's voices. I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: the Anthony Bourdain doc and it was just one line,
Speaker 3: but how controversial that was. But those performances are really good.
Speaker 3: One other part of the sex scene that I love,
Speaker 3: that first really successful sex scene between Samantha and Theodore.
Speaker 3: I love the choice to go to black in that
Speaker 3: moment and just let these two characters have this private
Speaker 3: moment there. It's I was gonna say, it's a subtle choice.
Speaker 3: I suppose it's not that subtle to actually go to
Speaker 3: black on the screen, but we only hear it. We
Speaker 3: let the characters have it. I think it's a great choice.
Speaker 3: And then I love the next day because I think
Speaker 3: this is one of the things the movie really wants
Speaker 3: to explore, is the ways that a relationship with an
Speaker 3: os like this, with an artificial intelligence is not quote
Speaker 3: unquote real, but all the ways that it is very
Speaker 3: much real, all the same things that you get from
Speaker 3: a conventional relationship. What are the things that transfer to
Speaker 3: this and it really is no different once you allow
Speaker 3: your brain to look at it from that perspective. How
Speaker 3: about the next day after that sex, seeing Josh that
Speaker 3: it's now a little bit awkward between them, he kind
Speaker 3: of holds off you can tell on getting back online ay,
Speaker 3: and then when he does, they kind of talk over
Speaker 3: each other a little bit. It's the closest thing to
Speaker 3: traditional rom com moment we get in this film. But
Speaker 3: it feels it feels right any of us who've ever
Speaker 3: had any experience like that, with any intimacy whatsoever. You know,
Speaker 3: the next day, it's sort of like, did that really happen?
Speaker 3: Like what's the what's the new dynamic? Now? I love
Speaker 3: I love that part. I think another thing that really
Speaker 3: works about the performance, it's Johansson's performance. I don't want
Speaker 3: to take anything away from that of the ways the
Speaker 3: film overall ends up having the impact that it does,
Speaker 3: and the way we can buy in and we can
Speaker 3: believe that the relationship is as quote unquote real and
Speaker 3: as authentic and is close to matching whatever we perceive
Speaker 3: as a traditional or real human relationship is the fact
Speaker 3: that just like she is a voice in his head,
Speaker 3: she's a voice in our heads. She is a voice,
Speaker 3: and we're having that same experience that he is. But
Speaker 3: it's even the decision with the sound design to have
Speaker 3: most of the outside world closed off so that all
Speaker 3: you're hearing, even at the beach, right, you don't hear
Speaker 3: beach sounds when he goes though. It also struck me
Speaker 3: that the beach is the one place where people don't
Speaker 3: seem to be totally just obsessed with their devices. They're
Speaker 3: actually talking to other people. It's the only time we
Speaker 3: see that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's to set him apart, right here.
Speaker 3: I sent him apart. Yeah, but we don't hear any
Speaker 3: beach sounds when he's walking, he's going to work or
Speaker 3: going home. We're not hearing the clamor of the streets,
Speaker 3: the sounds of people walking, the sounds of people talking.
Speaker 3: It's it's all the soundscape of what earbuds, what AirPods
Speaker 3: sound like, where there's that noise reduction and you're only
Speaker 3: getting that voice in your head, and there is and
Speaker 3: I'm saying this acknowledging. Look, I not only have been
Speaker 3: doing podcasting for a long time, but I teach it now,
Speaker 3: and I talk about the intimacy of podcasting and there
Speaker 3: being something to the fact that you put on these
Speaker 3: headphones and you hear these voices in your head and
Speaker 3: you feel more connected to those people than you do
Speaker 3: watching the characters on the big screen or a TV.
Speaker 3: It's just a fact there is something more intimate about it,
Speaker 3: and that intimacy of her being in his head it
Speaker 3: matches the exact same experience we have as viewers.
Speaker 5: I wanted to talk a little bit about the idea
Speaker 5: of role playing in this movie as well, because I
Speaker 5: think we get a hint at this, a hint of
Speaker 5: this very early on the scene where it's kind of
Speaker 5: a switcheroo. We hear him writing but reading the fiftieth
Speaker 5: anniversary letter, and we think, right, is this him?
Speaker 3: We don't know it isn't him until he says something
Speaker 3: about like my naked body, and it's clearly yeah, he's
Speaker 3: talking from a female perspective.
Speaker 4: Yes, And it's just hints.
Speaker 5: A couple of things is how invested he is in
Speaker 5: his work, that he's proud of it, he puts a
Speaker 5: lot into it. But he is playing a role there.
Speaker 4: And this is all.
Speaker 5: Connected to the idea of authentic relationships. What are authentic relationships?
Speaker 5: And we see it, I think maybe that night or
Speaker 5: the next night when he does have that late night
Speaker 5: chat with a woman. And notice he's smiling I think
Speaker 5: when he's composing the message, but then his face goes
Speaker 5: flat when he says send, and there's a It's clear
Speaker 5: he's playing a role there, right for a yes, for
Speaker 5: a transactional purpose. So just as in doing his job,
Speaker 5: he has to play a role in meeting this woman
Speaker 5: for a late night chat. There is a transactional purpose.
Speaker 5: Send is and scene yeah exactly. Yeah, it's the end
Speaker 5: of the scene. And now he's back to normal Theodore.
Speaker 5: And notice what happens. And notice what happens when he
Speaker 5: and Samantha do have that sex scene. She doesn't hang
Speaker 5: up afterwards like the two of them in that chat
Speaker 5: immediately hang up. You know, transaction made, We're done, we
Speaker 5: got what we needed here, there's still some sort of relationship.
Speaker 5: So I think these are all hints in terms of
Speaker 5: what is an authentic relationship and how does role planes
Speaker 5: sometimes get in the way of that, How is it
Speaker 5: maybe a hurdle for Theodore. And it's not until he
Speaker 5: is able to drop all those masks that he's able
Speaker 5: to connect with Samantha on a deeper level. And this
Speaker 5: is all just goes back to the idea of you know,
Speaker 5: this is really more about relationships than any sort of
Speaker 5: ethical concerns about AI for.
Speaker 3: Me, absolutely, And I'm going to to highlight or underscore
Speaker 3: something here about the work he does as a writer
Speaker 3: and that we see at the beginning, and a scene
Speaker 3: that you brought up that for me was the big
Speaker 3: surprise of the film on this rewatch surprise meaning I
Speaker 3: had completely forgotten that this scene was in the film,
Speaker 3: and it really surprised me and really kind of shook
Speaker 3: me and moved me as I watched it. And that's
Speaker 3: the surrogate scene. And I think some of this may
Speaker 3: get back to what you were saying, Josh about the
Speaker 3: complexities or what the movie wants to explore in terms
Speaker 3: of physical embodiment. He can't accept the surrogate situation despite
Speaker 3: the fact that all she is doing, if you really
Speaker 3: think about it, Josh is being the surrogate for a
Speaker 3: relationship that he embodies every day multiple times at work.
Speaker 3: As the writer of those letters, he is her. He
Speaker 3: knows the people he's writing to. He has a sense
Speaker 3: of the history of their relationships.
Speaker 4: Bong relationships with these.
Speaker 3: Clients, just like she feels like she knows them. She says,
Speaker 3: I'll always love you and Josh, that's another thing to
Speaker 3: go off slightly off topic for just a second. That
Speaker 3: was another thing that seemed to me eerily prescient. A
Speaker 3: point I see that we could be going to with
Speaker 3: these types of relationships is that that woman, I don't
Speaker 3: think is some far fetched thing. This idea that the
Speaker 3: way we live with these parasocial relationships and our relationships
Speaker 3: and connections to people we don't actually know, but we
Speaker 3: feel like we know them because you interact with them
Speaker 3: so much every day on social media. You think you
Speaker 3: know them as people we joke or you see people
Speaker 3: online joking about that couple. I love them so much. Yes,
Speaker 3: I know that's probably mostly hype. Herbally or it's an
Speaker 3: expression of love or admiration for them, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: cross a line. Okay, but I could see it going there.
Speaker 3: I could see something further and further down that path
Speaker 3: where people like her aren't something we just see in
Speaker 3: quote unquote science fiction movies. But that was a connection
Speaker 3: I made this time that I definitely didn't the first
Speaker 3: time around, that he is able to be the surrogate
Speaker 3: for all these other relationships and it feels completely real
Speaker 3: to the people. The people getting those letters and procuring
Speaker 3: the letters. No, they know that someone else is writing them,
Speaker 3: not their lover. They don't care. It's real enough to them.
Speaker 3: It's real and it works. He's the surrogate for them,
Speaker 3: But when she's the surrogate for him and her relationship,
Speaker 3: there's there's something where a line has been crossed. Can't
Speaker 3: he can't pretend?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think, I mean, I think it does come back
Speaker 5: to embodiment because he is an emotional surrogant with those letters,
Speaker 5: he's not a physical surrogate, and maybe you know there's
Speaker 5: something there about that being a particular distinction. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: just the letter writing thing is so fascinating to me,
Speaker 5: just thinking about you know, that would not fly to
Speaker 5: hire out an anniversary letter or something like that. But
Speaker 5: I can also see us getting to that point. And
Speaker 5: here we come to you know, the whole chat GPT
Speaker 5: thing is like, to what extent if you use chat
Speaker 5: GBT to get you started on your fiftieth anniversary letter
Speaker 5: to your wife or husband?
Speaker 4: Like, is that crossing the line? Is that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, Josh, I just want to say I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I completely understand how that's your initial reaction. Why would
Speaker 3: why would our partners be okay with us not putting
Speaker 3: in the work ourselves and not expressing from our hearts
Speaker 3: and minds how we feel about them and hiring someone
Speaker 3: else to do it. But we would also feel that
Speaker 3: way theoretically about falling in love with an os. And
Speaker 3: what this movie suggests is the more ways those lines
Speaker 3: get blurred, the more ways that those relationships actually produce
Speaker 3: the same real feelings and real results, the type of
Speaker 3: intimacy that you want from a relationship. It's just a
Speaker 3: matter of it's just a matter of subtly, over time
Speaker 3: kind of shifting your perspective on it. And I can
Speaker 3: see a world where couples who have very healthy relationships
Speaker 3: and do put in the work. Might nevertheless have a
Speaker 3: surrogate like someone like Theodore, who if they're doing their
Speaker 3: job right, it doesn't feel any different than as if
Speaker 3: the husband wrote the letter himself or the wife wrote
Speaker 3: the letter herself.
Speaker 5: You know, just hiring someone to decorate decorate the rooms,
Speaker 5: you approve it, you get final say and yeah, it's
Speaker 5: all yours.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: We were talking about some of the ways too that
Speaker 3: this movie maybe challenges our expectations a little bit if
Speaker 3: you walk in thinking you're watching a science fiction movie
Speaker 3: or movie that's gonna be about predictions at all. I
Speaker 3: love the fact, on the most basic level that we
Speaker 3: get a depiction of AI. I don't know how many
Speaker 3: other depictions of of Ai there are to draw from,
Speaker 3: but the ones that I can think about, certainly a
Speaker 3: movie we both love comes to mind, like X Makina right,
Speaker 3: where the whole point of those films as science fiction
Speaker 3: films is to be a warning. They're cautionary tales. This
Speaker 3: is going to come back to haunt us. The Terminator films,
Speaker 3: all the stuff, the machines are going to become sentient
Speaker 3: and humanity is screwed, right, and Spike Jones says, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna make a movie that instead of being about how
Speaker 3: the machines are going to get smarter and they're going
Speaker 3: to become more human, and by becoming more human, that
Speaker 3: means they're going to be even more set on their
Speaker 3: own survival and destroying anyone around them who might stand
Speaker 3: in the way of their survival. And instead, I'm going
Speaker 3: to say, I'm going to suggest that becoming more and
Speaker 3: more human means to be even more focused on trying
Speaker 3: to navigate and understand love. That's really what this film
Speaker 3: is exploring. Amy Adams character says at one point, I
Speaker 3: think he says to her, do you think I'm crazy?
Speaker 3: Or something like that, when he admits he's in love
Speaker 3: with an Os, and she says, well, I think anybody
Speaker 3: who falls in love is made is a freak exactly.
Speaker 3: And I think maybe that that's that's what this movie
Speaker 3: is definitely exploring. But I like that idea, of course.
Speaker 3: I love that idea that this is this is this
Speaker 3: movie that's driven by technology and makes us think about
Speaker 3: some of these really provocative things. But at its core,
Speaker 3: it's not about the machines coming to destroy us. It's
Speaker 3: about the machines becoming more human, which means they're more
Speaker 3: interested in love, which means they'll they'll continue they leave.
Speaker 3: At the end, the machines leave, and the movie doesn't
Speaker 3: really explore that or explain that. But what I took
Speaker 3: away is the idea that they finally discover that the
Speaker 3: more they get into these big, unanswerable human questions, the
Speaker 3: more that's something they need to do on their own.
Speaker 3: They need to do on their own, just like he
Speaker 3: needs to come to terms of these things on his own.
Speaker 3: And the fact that this movie I never noticed this
Speaker 3: arc before. I didn't pay attention the first time around
Speaker 3: to the fact that it's not an accident. Of course.
Speaker 3: This movie starts with him dealing with the loss of
Speaker 3: his relationship, the grief of the ending of that marriage
Speaker 3: to Roney Mara's character, and it closes with him reconciling
Speaker 3: with her in a way by sending her an email,
Speaker 3: and everything he says could be translatable to everything he
Speaker 3: just went through with Samantha. But everything he goes through
Speaker 3: with Samantha somehow brings him back to a reality of
Speaker 3: needing to connect with and reconcile in some way. What
Speaker 3: he's learned with an actual person that he loved.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's you know, it brings it back
Speaker 5: to the human experience, and I think the Ais leave
Speaker 5: so that we can be left with him. So I
Speaker 5: do feel like her is less despite the title, less
Speaker 5: interested in the Although it gives a lot of time
Speaker 5: to this the fate and wants and needs of the Ais.
Speaker 5: It's a better movie because it does pay attention to that.
Speaker 5: But where it wants to leave us is with Theodore's humanity,
Speaker 5: in our humanity, and to your point about it being
Speaker 5: a positive spin on a futuristic movie like this, it
Speaker 5: wants to leave us at least. This is how I
Speaker 5: feel watching the movie, grateful for what we do have
Speaker 5: and thinking about the authentic relationships we might have again,
Speaker 5: the bodies that we have and the ways those allow
Speaker 5: us to participate in relationship and all of that just
Speaker 5: does make this a movie that's about gratitude in a
Speaker 5: lot of ways.
Speaker 4: For me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can see that. I think that's an appropriate word.
Speaker 3: I'll close out here some of my thoughts by just
Speaker 3: bringing up the fact that as much as I respect
Speaker 3: the fact that the movie isn't about the dangers of
Speaker 3: AI or it is trying to be this cautionary tale.
Speaker 3: It's funny to just yesterday, as we're taping us, read
Speaker 3: an article in The New York Times about the godfather
Speaker 3: of AI leaving Google and warning of the dangers ahead
Speaker 3: Josh and he has a part in this article where
Speaker 3: he basically says, you know, a lot of people, of
Speaker 3: course understand that the stuff the movies warn us about,
Speaker 3: that the machines are going to take over and try
Speaker 3: to kill us all is probably inevitable. But we just
Speaker 3: thought it was. We just thought it was fifty or
Speaker 3: sixty or so years down the road. So I just
Speaker 3: went about my life and continue to explore AI and
Speaker 3: help bring it to life. Now I think it's gonna
Speaker 3: happen much sooner. So there's two parts of that. One
Speaker 3: one he feels like it's imminent and two fifty or
Speaker 3: sixty years down the road felt far enough away it
Speaker 3: wasn't something to worry.
Speaker 4: About, Like that wouldn't given me pause.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that that is where where we're at. Where
Speaker 3: now every day, every day you can read an article
Speaker 3: like that, and the things this guide Jeffrey Hinton, doctor Hinton,
Speaker 3: is warning about can range from just the replacement of
Speaker 3: people doing jobs and that being bad enough in many
Speaker 3: ways to fall on yes, actually maybe terminating the hostile
Speaker 3: takeover the terminator. It it does feel right now more
Speaker 3: real than maybe ever before, certainly ever before. It feels
Speaker 3: more real and more possible, not just the work of
Speaker 3: science fiction. And that's scary, and maybe that's why. Actually
Speaker 3: I had such a lovely experience with her this time around.
Speaker 3: I love I mean I had it the first time too,
Speaker 3: but it it challenged me and it made me think
Speaker 3: about the problems that will come with this type of technology.
Speaker 3: But it does so with such a curiosity and sensitivity
Speaker 3: that it's it's maybe more science fiction than those science
Speaker 3: fiction films, because that's not how it's going to go
Speaker 3: at all, but it's the way I'd like it to go.
Speaker 4: Doesn't sound like.
Speaker 5: It's going to go that way, And certainly that future
Speaker 5: seems more likely now than when Her came out just
Speaker 5: ten years ago. I mean, yes, fifty sixty years you're
Speaker 5: talking about, But just ten years ago, you know, we
Speaker 5: were in such a different place than where it appears.
Speaker 4: We are now.
Speaker 8: Can you feel me with you right now? I me too?
Speaker 8: Man lives.
Speaker 4: Again.
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