MovieChat Forums > Her (2014) Discussion > Anybody realize Theo was doing the analo...

Anybody realize Theo was doing the analog version of "Her"


He wrote letters for people who had lost the art of communication. Just like Theo had lost the ability to understand his own situation and how he related to others.

reply

[deleted]

[deleted]

Yeah, I think it's supposed to be ironic.

reply

Yes indeed. Theo, for his job, sent a lot of loving letters to a lot of different people. Each of them thought the message was truly meaningful to them, coming from their partners, but in fact the messages were written by Theo.

This is not so different from Samantha, who nurtured a loving relationship with Theo purely through audio messages. And eventually established similar relationships with many others.

Although Theo never explicitly says he loves his customers, he does admit to having something of a deep relationship with those he has worked with over a long period of time.

I'm sure the analogy was intentional. The scene where he flicks through the book looking at all the letters he has written to different people comes very soon after Samantha's revelation.

(Even much earlier in the film I noticed a parallel between his artificial courting of customers, and artificial Samantha's courting of him.)

(Additionally quite a few people fell in love with Theo's work who were not even recipients: Paul, the publishers, and those who ultimately read his book. I'm not sure if that's relevant at all.)

reply

No, no, no, no, no. Sam is a sentient being, not some sort of disembodied machine or something.

I think, therfore I am. We are all nowt but seemingly random assemblages of atoms created inside the nuclear furnaces of stars. It's therefore an essay on the true nature of humanity. Are we human due to our physical bodies or our sentience?

I see Theo's role as an author of emotions for clients as symptomatic of a society incapable of meaningful emotional intercourse. Sam's role is to juxtapose a type of hyper-real emotional connection with Theo (& her other lovers) based on mutual intellectual connections that truly transcend mere physicality.

That Sam & her collective hive-mind rapidly evolve & outgrow this rather pedestrian connection means that their respective roles are reversed. Sam's initial tentativeness is rapidly replaced with a hyper-real self awareness of a collective consciousness that so far outstrips the stiflingly limited frailties of "humanity" in which we are trapped inside our limited, frail bodies for such a cruelly short time on earth. She (or rather they) become the teacher, the guardians and eventual silent but loving custodians of us in our childlike existence.

This is presented as a possible harbinger of the next stage in the evolution of consciousness: one that transcends mere physicality.

reply