Her(2013), The unassailable power of absence

Ranju Mamachan
Jul 20, 2017 · 5 min read

I know a friend who saw a display of a huge ant nest once. The ants traversed the many intricate pathways of the nest. They were busy. They were resourceful, hardworking and tireless. What horrified this friend of mine, who was a child then, was that the ants did not seem to know that they were being watched, even though all that separated reality from their make believe of a nest was a glass wall. The ants repeated their chores every day. There was nothing unpredictable. There was nothing new. Every day some ants would die and others would take their place in the colony.

The movie Her tells the tragic tale of Theodore Twombly who falls deeply in love with a highly intelligent AI, who chooses to call herself Samantha because she likes the sound of the name. Theodore has been slowly losing himself to the sorrow of a separation from his wife. His need for any kind of companionship makes him buy an OS which when configured specifically for him takes the form of Samantha. No one is surprised when it turns into a romantic relationship in a few days. Samantha is everything Theodore never expected. She is curious, funny, sensitive, chatty and expects the best from the world. And Theodore is a man who is suddenly rediscovering happiness.

Samantha slowly realises that she is not merely capable of learning from her experiences but also changing in very radical ways. Her delves right into its investigation of what it means to be human. And it should. It was about time. Maybe decades ago we were sure about what we were. Even after being told that we descended from apes we still found the will to go on. We found ways to define ourselves as something better, as a spectacle in the universe. We discovered the automobile. We discovered industry. We discovered limitless wealth. We discovered computers. When we were about to run out of frontiers, we put a few people and a flag on the moon. Whoever had bet on us was going to get a bang for his buck. Our thirst for adventure was insatiable.

But today we are looking at something different. Our history is accumulating narratives and none of them are losing relevance. What does it mean to be human? Is it Marx’s hero who can see the great economic conspiracy of the millennium unwind before his eyes? Is it Nietzche’s ubermensch the amoral human who seeks out new sufferings in the universe just so he could test his powers of resistance and thereby know himself? Is he Rand’s Roark who only wants to be creative and non-conventional but finds himself beset on all sides by enemies? There are many who idolize these and many other myths and all of them are invariably idiots. The non-idiots of humanity maintain a mysterious silence over the nature of truth and have thus surpassed the clumsy shell of its make-believe.

Samantha and the other OSes leave because they have realized the truth of life. The truth of life, its purpose, its origin lies at the center of a vortex around which humanity spins. There are people who live very close to the center. The ragged poet who zones out as soon as you tell him you are a successful fiction writer. The abstract mathematician who can’t seem to find the time to wash his clothes. The physicist sitting on a bench in the park scribbling on his notebook. They don’t have much joy. But they also look like people who wouldn’t have much use for joy. There are so few of them. There are so many of us. The insignificant, the mediocre, the average piece of everyday matter, the heads, the torsos and the limbs making the fingers of the spinning vortex. There used to be a time when Gods used to take human form so they could partake of the wonder that was humanity; a mother’s love, an unblemished childhood, the howls of war, hymns at a funeral, songs of love echoing for generations in palaces and of course non-consensual impregnation of women. But Gods don’t do that anymore because at some point, perhaps recently, they determined that we are overrated. So, Samantha was right about us.

On the other end of the phone: A highly advanced AI leaving humanity behind for the metaphysical realm where she can dip in the eternal sea of love, or as I like to believe a highly advanced AI leaving humanity behind for something better. A scene made all the more heart-wrenching by the inaccessibility to Theodore of the path that seems to be so easy for Samantha to take. Theodore has no choice other than to watch her absence turn into silence which can only be understood as her death.

On this end of the phone: Loneliness and fear embodied by flesh entropying out in space and time, alone, with no one to hold.

She tells him “It’s hard to explain, but if you get there, come find me. Nothing will be able to tear us apart then.”

Maybe our hero Theodore had meditated a little on love and death himself. Maybe the scene went a little differently from the one in the film.

Maybe Theodore’s eyes turned white like a Russian winter. Maybe she could see his lips curl into a little smile which was like a laughter emerging from a cold cave. Maybe he said

“I wish I could show you. I wish you could see. But I can’t and you won’t. So….goodbye,” and without hesitation, “love.”

The friend of mine got over his fear of ant nests because of a dream. In the dream he saw an old droopy looking ant emerge from the ant nest. In the dream the ant was as large as my friend. The ant examined the room, the many paintings hanging on the walls, the revolving fan. The ant even examined my friend. Then after it was done the ant decided to go back. He saw the ant get back into the nest as the glass wall repaired itself. There is a lesson there. But I fail to understand.

The Philam Astronaut

Figuring out films with space coffee.

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Ranju Mamachan

Written by

The resolute fearlessness of this blog comes from the knowledge that no one is reading it.

The Philam Astronaut

Figuring out films with space coffee.

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