Spoilers so as not to ruin the movie for anyone that hasn't seen it.
I was thinking about that specifically today, and while I think your point is valid, I saw that more as sort of a disconnect that could end a relationship rather than this sign of how unnatural their love was. Samantha was different from Theodore, of course, but that's true of any relationship. That's one of the things I loved about the movie (in my reading). Yes, it was a story about a man in love with an AI, but it was still a love story. As such, yes, Samantha's differences that ended the relationship were pretty bizarre, but most relationships that end come to an end because of irreconcilable differences.
It was a story about a boy and a girl that fall in love and then break up. He was closed off emotionally and was unable to deal with negative emotions, and sure, she was a computer program that could simultaneously engage in several thousand different conversations and feel love for several hundred different people... but it was still a story about a boy and a girl that fall in love and break up.
It was a story about a boy and a girl that fall in love and then break up. He was closed off emotionally and was unable to deal with negative emotions, and sure, she was a computer program that could simultaneously engage in several thousand different conversations and feel love for several hundred different people... but it was still a story about a boy and a girl that fall in love and break up.
That's not the reading I got, but like I said before, it's perfectly valid.
How I read it was that humanity has constantly found ways to improve on social interaction by making it easier to interact with someone without ever having to leave your home. From sending letters to the telephone to email to social networking to video chatting... all of these are ways to interact with people, and you never even have to see them in person. Through these mediums complex relationships evolve, ranging from friendship to romantic relationships. Who are we to say that a romantic relationship cultivated through these non-traditional mediums are any less valid than ones created through more traditional ones simply because there is no physical interaction?
Her takes that a step further, because not only is there no physical interaction, but the two members of the relationship are programmed (both figuratively and literally) differently, causing an interesting divide. The result? They have a pretty normal relationship. They fall in love, have sex, share their deepest thoughts and feelings, fight, reconcile, go on vacations, go on dates, discover everything that makes them the same and everything that makes them different... and then when they realize their differences are insurmountable, they break up.
We've somehow gotten it in our heads as humans that any relationship that doesn't end in death is a failure, but that's simply not true. Relationships force us to grow as people and change in ways we likely never imagined changing, and that's exactly what happened to both Theodore and Samantha in their relationship, and I think you'll agree that both of them are likely better for having their relationship. What's unnatural about that?
We've somehow gotten it in our heads as humans that any relationship that doesn't end in death is a failure, but that's simply not true. Relationships force us to grow as people and change in ways we likely never imagined changing, and that's exactly what happened to both Theodore and Samantha in their relationship, and I think you'll agree that both of them are likely better for having their relationship. What's unnatural about that?
Of all the people who should see this movie, I think the creative force behind Erin Toyota would stand to learn a lot from it!
