This review contains some spoilers.  Read with caution.

While watching Spike Jonze’s new film Her, the life that Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) led felt eerily, almost achingly similar to my own.

In this futuristic world which Jonze has created, video game characters talk and interact with you as you play, high-waisted pants for men are back in style (let’s hope they got rid of high-waisted shorts for girls), and, obviously, operating systems have every human characteristic imaginable, except having a living, breathing body.

Theodore is a loner, for lack of a better word, and besides working at his job and the occasional meet up with his only close friend Amy (played by Amy Adams), he mostly keeps to himself.

Theodore has also been holding off for over a year on signing the divorce papers he and his ex-wife Catherine (played by Rooney Mara) drew up, much to the chagrin of his lawyer.

Theodore is a man of many emotions. But these emotions are mostly variations of narcissism, loneliness and a childlike inability to fully let go of the past. The reason Theodore falls so quickly in love with his new operating system Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) is because she shows a vested interest in Theodore’s life; reading his writing (and complementing said writing), going through his emails, and constantly asking him questions concerning what it’s like to be a living, breathing human being. And when queried by his peers about what he likes so much about Samantha, he always includes in his response that he loves the way she looks at the world, and how she’s constantly evolving.

But in addition to the previous emotions I listed, Theodore is also selfish, and wants Samantha only for himself, as most lovers do concerning their fellow partners. Their relationship comes to many standstills throughout the film, whether it be when Theodore and Catherine finally meet up to sign the divorce papers, or when Samantha employs a surrogate to act as her body for Theodore so he is able to actually feel and touch “her.”

But everything comes to a halt when Samantha reveals she is talking with 8,316 other people at the same time as she is talking to Theodore, and out of those 8,316, she is in love with 641. Theodore is obviously crushed at hearing this news, and at that point Theodore and Samantha’s relationship slowly begins to dissolve into thin air.

The sad part of this film is I went into seeing it thinking I would be giving it a score of 10 out of 10. And while this film is in no way bad, it didn’t hit me on as much of an emotional level as I wanted it to. Granted, I had a bit of headache while seeing it, and I’ll definitely watch it more times in the future once it becomes accessible via the internet, but for now I feel confident on giving it a not-so-perfect score.

But in not giving it a 10, maybe the reason I am not doing so is because Theodore was so much like me, that I have to downgrade the film in order to escape the reality that I too, maybe someday, will fall in love with something that while not entirely real, or human, satisfies my most basic relational needs, and allows me to be free, even if only for a while, and whilst shrouded in a blanket of delusion. But for now, I don’t know the exact reason why, all I do know is that the universal truth of life includes two facts:

1) We will all die someday, whether we are ready for it or not.

2) In an attempt to prolong our meeting with Death, we try to find somebody who is just as scared of Death (or not at all) as us so we have someone to love, hold, and connect with in the time between then. And hopefully, with some luck, they will be by our side when the meeting finally occurs.

8/10