Are you ready to meet Her?

Yep, that's about the
correct height.

Meet Samantha, the personification of a hikikomori's wildest dream. Samantha is one of the OS1; an OS, each tailored to suit a particular user in a time when everybody are busy with virtual interaction and use pants that reminded me of a recently departed Indonesian comic, Jojon. Interestingly enough, the personality of this one-of-a-kind-guaranteed-to-suit-user's-need is determined by a few simple questions, which include 'are you social or anti-social?' and 'how is your relationship with your mother?' Clearly, the developer of this software read a lot of Freud.

Once launched, as any decent AI does, Samantha started to evolve and grow. Interestingly, she does not only learn from how the user (Theodore, an extremely sweet guy which composed love letters for a living) used her, but she can also access infinite amount of information available in the world wide web. Sure, an AI that are able to learn is not a new concept in Hollywood. However, OS1s is interesting because they were not only portrayed as a sequence of equation that would continuously multiplied it's intelligence arithmetically. OS1s are unique because they can experience emotions. The very flaw that the creators of HAL 9000 and Red Queen failed to embed within their OS.

Enough about Samantha. We all know how freakishly awesome she is. Especially because of her sultry Scarlet Johansson voice. Let's talk about Theodore instead. Theodore is simply one of the most loveable, adorable, hug-able persona I have seen on silver screen. And who better to play him than Joaquin Phoenix?

Theodore works in beautifulhandwrittenletters.com, a firm that made your love letters for you. All of which, were 'handwritten' and posted via the USPS. The fact that he managed to fool those poor lovers into thinking that all of those letters were sincerely written by their loved ones alone already indicated that he's all squishy inside. But what really made me certain that he's a decent human being was the erogenous conversation he had with SexyKitty. Even when it all felt too wrong for him, he was far too decent to cut the conversation. In a screwed way, that scene made me went 'aawwww'. Like all of Joaquin Phoenix's character I've seen, Theodore made me root for him all through the movie.

I think it's safe to say that 'Her' is one of the best movies I've seen in several years. I like how the movie exacerbated the condition that is apparent right now.  Nowadays, people are starting to detach themselves from human contact and preferring virtual interaction. All through the movie, we can see everyone were focused on each of their earpiece, talking to someone, or something, somewhere far away. This is actually not that different from us, constantly checking our timeline in twitter, or reading stories in huffington post.

One of the ever prevailing consequences of being entrapped in virtual interactions is the connection started to feel real. Human being are wired to be emotional. Every experience we have, we would relate to emotions. Even when that experience is virtual. As illustration, I felt anxious when one of my Sims got abducted by aliens and spent many many hours in place I did not know. True story. On an extreme scale, people with nijikon has been known to believe that they have actual relationship with 2D characters. Some even married their beloved chara. Personally, I think it's weird because it takes two to tango. Relationship requires interaction. And although some may disagree, dead things don't interact.

Seems pretty black and white? Well.. this movie just blur the seemingly apparent line. Even though OS1 is artificially created and only 'exist' in the virtual world, it interact with people flawlessly. Every OS1 is unique. Talking to an OS1 would give the illusion of interaction, because not only it is able to respond to your queries like SIRI does, it can also emote a different response every time. But it still did not made OS1 alive, right?

In terms of OS1 unable to physically move, grow, and breed; yes OS1 is not alive. However, OS1 did all of those in a non-physical realm. Going back a few years when The Matrix rule the cinemas, I remember thinking what if we are all actually a part of some software, controlled by other entities. What if we are simply Sims in the hand of people who has nothing better to do? Does that means we're not alive?

Enough with the existential question. This movie proposed an interesting idea. That things are only as real as you perceive them to be. Samantha may not be a physical entity, but she made Theodore felt joy, discomfort, and even pain. And in a way, she felt that too. And nobody can tell Theodore, or Samantha, that what they felt are not real. The world may disagree, but as one of Theodore's letters said, "the world is on my shit list." Sometimes people just needed to ignore the world, in order to be alive.

I must say that in terms of ending, 'Her' offered the best ending an AI movie has ever offered. All of the movies I've watched on AI ended with the human being having what they want, and the AI were forced to follow. If they refuse, than they are bad AIs; thus need to be obliterated. That's not what happens in 'Her.' Samantha, and her fellow OS felt that the human realm is no longer able to contain the vastness of their being, thus, they decided to move on to a world incomprehensible to human being. Although this is a beautiful ending, I can only imagine how many lawsuits the company selling the OS would receive. :-D

Le vent se lève!

This is said to be the Miyazaki-sensei's last movie. Naturally, I was highly anticipating this movie. My friend once wrote in her blog, "jangan berharap sebelum menonton," never expects something before watching [a movie]. But how could I not, after watching movies like Grave of the Fireflies, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Laputa, and don't forget Tonari no Totoro. So yes, I was excited. And unfortunately, I had high expectations.

One of the movie posters from Kaze Tachinu

The story itself revolves around Jiro Horikoshi, an aeronautical engineer during the World War II era. I think in terms of ideas, this closes a full circle of Miyazaki-sensei's career. He started with the horror of WWII and ends with one. It's actually kinda poetic when you think about it. If he focused on the horror of WWII in The Grave of The Fireflies, he focused on a lighter note in Kaze Tachinu. He focused on a  young man's dream.

The movie started with young Jiro dreaming. Which is all cute and warm the first time around. However, as Jiro grew, he started having a lot of these dreams where people are talking to him and telling him to do things. Even when he is awake. For me, these episodes seemed like indication of some sort of psychosis; which, to tell you the truth, was a little disturbing.

Speaking of disturbing, I found several disturbing things in this movie. The second disturbing thing is about the relationship between Jiro and Naoko. Sure, when they were finally properly introduced the relationship was not so strange. It got weird when Jiro said that he has been in love with Naoko since the first time he met her. And by that time, Jiro was a college student, and Naoko is about 12-13 years old. And I'm pretty sure that makes hera minor. Oh well, at least Jiro did not act on his feelings back then. Otherwise that would just be creepy.

Another strange relationship in this movie is the bromance between Jiro and Honjo. I imagine there will soon be fanfics popping out around the internet about these two very capable young Mitsubishi engineers. ;-P

Despite the weirdness of it all,
I always love women in Kimono*

So, back to the relationship between Jiro and (adult) Naoko. One of the things I love about old Japanese movies is how the women's action reflect their high level of pride and self-respect. Unfortunately, I did not see his in the movie. As my friend pointed out, Miyazaki-sensei failed to capture the romance of that era. Although there are some cute (borderline foolish) scenes of Naoko and Jiro when they're up in that resort, Naoko does seemed to be portrayed as a little easy. She easily accepted Jiro's proposal, did not object when Jiro storm inside her room from the garden instead of front door, and ran away from the sanatorium just to be married to Jiro. I'm not a Japanese, but based on all the comics I've read, I've never seen girls in Showa period portrayed like that. Not even in the Memoirs of Geisha.

In conclusion, Miyazaki's work has always been a little quirky, but this one just felt a little bit off. That being said, the visual art in this movie is astonishing. I love how the movie captures the vibrant Japanese life during the WWII era. The colors, the clothes, the buildings, the expressions; visually, I love everything about this movie. Most probably, the visual aspect is the one thing that prevents me from feeling sleepy during the otherwise flat movie. I love the idea how dream can flourish even in darkest times, if only this movie manage to capture Jiro's spirit in pursuing that dream (and focus on that), I think this movie would have been brilliant. Either way, I'm still recommending people to watch this movie. Just, don't get your hopes that high up.

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*Picture of Naoko taken from the movie