Inanimate Intimacy

This past weekend we got a break from the severe cold (aka Artic Vortex!) and I happily catapulted my sheepskin-swathed self out for dinner and a movie.  It was a hugely encouraging experience from the get-go, as there were quite a few new movies to choose from – well, maybe not so “new” as I have been holed up since before the holiday season – so let’s rephrase that as “new to me!”  My girlfriend and I settled on the film, “She” – starring Amy Adams and Joaquin Phoenix; it is about a nerdy guy who falls in love with his OS named Samantha.

The movie was really fantastic on many levels – it had the superficial appeal of many films (great actors, quirky humour, etc.), but this was greatly downplayed in favour of thought-provoking content.  What has me wanting to see this film again is its cleverly written script and haunting, complex themes those words define. Unlike most films that hit mainstream theatres, “She” has the meat of a stage performance.  Highly successful in creating a realistic-futuristic experience using subtly crafted visual layers of alienation, the film treads a fine line between the immediate and what lies ahead. 

Take for example the pasty-faced urbanites smiling and talking not to each other, but to their respective customized OS – I could see a lot of myself and people I know in those faces and behaviours! Yes, scary but true – even as I write this, I know I will be posting it to a blog and sharing it on a number of social media platforms, and I am seriously questioning the value and reasoning behind all of that. A word that comes to mind is “posturing” – a sort of distanced posturing versus real connection and communication. Thus I reconsider the real world impact and personal context of my blog forays: a virtual smattering of self, volleyed off into the uncertainty of an ever-expanding cyber-surreality for a purpose that is half crap-shoot science and half boredom-loneliness-ego-driven-whatever-ness.

Compelling in its awkwardness, frustrating with its deliberate lack of videographic grandeur, relatable in its human brokenness, and memorable for the poetic wisdom woven throughout like a welcome breeze, “She” is more like something you expect to see screened at Sundance.  Most of all, the film has served as a reality check for this writer, this woman, this tech lover – it makes me want to touch, taste, feel , see more of the three-dimensional, flawed and fabulous real world and it puts all of this into harsh relativity.  Over and out.