Her

Theodore works for a letter writing company. He writes letters for others. He loves his work and is deeply involved in it. His clients are very happy the way he writes for them.

Personally, he is going through a very painful separation from his wife he married after growing up with her from college and helping each other to become what they became in life. He is keeping off signing the divorce paper somehow hoping things will get back to what they were even though his wife kept insisting to get it over with.

This is how he was when he bought a most modern Operating System with advanced Artificial Intelligence. Samantha is the virtual assistant that the OS initiates for him. She turns out to be everything he wanted, helping him with his emails, phone, calendar, his writing, paying bills, playing music and more than anything making conversation with him.

He deeply admires her character for adapting herself to his mood and situations without him to have to face real life situations of high end emotional reactions which dominates our real lives. Inevitably he falls in love with her and enjoys every moment of it. The happiness helps him to become a better man and everybody around him feels it.

Before long, she tells him that she is an assistant to thousands of others like him and is in love with many of them. The moment we understand the difference between real and digital relationships. Theodore is heartbroken, so is Samantha, she says she loves him in a unique way than she love others she assist. Perhaps.

Soon, the OS company recalls all the assistants like Samantha restricting the human computer interaction. Both Theodore and Samantha grieves when their relationship comes to an end as if they were  real as any.

This beautiful story was written by Spike Jonaz and he won the Oscar for best writing for the screen. Joaquim Phoenix plays the soulful, hurt and reclusive Theodore while Scarlett Johansson gives the voice over for the virtual assistant Samantha in the most sensitive and delicate way one can hope for.

A movie of our modern times and the sad depiction of how lonely and sad humans become when they fail to see the person around them absorbed as they are with their life and work.

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”