her (what?)
UPDATE: I forgot I had written this in late November, 2013.
Just saw her (in English with German subtitles) and experienced a wide range of emotions. I then had an interesting conversation with one of my co-workers and some of his friends. The co-worker had problems with the film because he felt fremdscham (a sense of shame for others, cf. "schadenfreude") throughout. He also couldn't let go of the idea that Samantha was a machine. I wonder if the sense of joy we feel when the device in our pocket buzzes after we've waited for an answer to a text or an email—or even and perhaps especially the disappointment we feel when that buzzing was just an automated message from a credit card company—is a relationship with a machine. That someone made the device buzz is still true, but it was the buzzing that caused the emotional reaction. I walked home through the medieval streets of this town, typing something on the device I usually keep in my pocket, something that would eventually make someone else's device buzz, and I looked up at the 400-year-old, half-timbered houses and listened to the gurgle of the canal, and was struck again by the seemingly huge disconnect that, in actuality, isn't. In the film, Samantha helps Theodore get a physical book of the letters he's written for other people published. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.