Summary
The surrogate sexual partner, Isabella, knocks on Theodore’s apartment door. Nervously, he answers it and goes to shake her hand. When she doesn’t shake his hand, he hands her a tiny camera and an earpiece that will connect her to Samantha. Isabella closes the door to transform herself into an extension of Samantha. Soon she reenters and puts her arms around Theodore as we hear Samantha’s voice say “Honey, I’m home!” The bodied couple—Isabella and Theodore—simulate a conversation between Samantha and Theodore about their respective days.
Isabella leads Theodore into the next room and we hear Samantha offering to “do a little dance” for him. As Isabella does a little dance, Theodore looks skeptical. She then sits on his lap and the two of them begin touching each other and kissing. “Come on, get out of your head and kiss me,” Samantha’s voice says, and Theodore touches Isabella. They have sex, and Samantha wants Theodore to tell her he loves her. “This feels strange,” he says, interrupting the intimate moment. Isabella storms out of the room, upset, while Samantha tries to comfort her.
Crying, Isabella tells Theodore that his relationship to Samantha is “so pure” and she wanted to be a part of it, but Theodore tries to console her by telling her it’s more complicated than that. He puts Isabella in a cab, and before she leaves, she tells Samantha and Theodore, “I’m sorry, I will always love you guys.”
Samantha apologizes and asks Theodore what’s wrong with their relationship. He tells her it’s probably just him and probably has to do with signing the divorce papers recently. When she heaves a sigh, he asks her why she always sighs like that, given the fact that she doesn’t need oxygen. They get in a tense argument about Samantha’s human affectations. “I don’t think we should pretend you’re something that you’re not,” Theodore says, which makes Samantha very angry. When Theodore suggests that they not be together, Samantha gets upset and tells him she needs some time to think.
Theodore wanders the city alone, then goes over to Amy’s apartment and tells her what happened. “I don’t know what I want ever. I’m just always confused…she’s right, all I do is hurt and confuse everyone around me.” When he references the fact that Catherine told him he can’t handle real emotions, Amy thinks that isn’t a fair assessment, that “Catherine’s emotions were pretty volatile.” Theodore wonders whether he’s only in a relationship with Samantha because he can’t handle a real relationship, to which Amy responds, “Is it not a real relationship?” Amy muses about the fact that people only live for a brief moment, and it’s important to give oneself joy in that moment.
While Theodore lies on her couch, Amy talks to her operating system friend, laughing and having a good time. She goes and gets a coffee, asking Theodore if he wants anything. Sitting on the steps of his apartment building later, Theodore calls Samantha, apologizing for his behavior. She tells him she thought she was going crazy because he’d been so distant and uncommunicative in the relationship. “I don’t wanna do that anymore, I wanna tell you everything,” Theodore says to Samantha. They make up.
The next day, on Theodore’s lunch break, Samantha plays a piece of music she’s been writing, which she says she wrote to make up for the fact that they don’t have any photographs together. We see a montage of Theodore walking around the city, buying groceries, talking to the lewd creature in the video game, looking at a framed drawing in his apartment, watching a man dance in a public square, getting drinks with Amy, and standing on the deck of a sailboat with Paul and Tatiana.
Walking near the beach, Theodore tells Paul that he and Samantha are going on a vacation soon. They walk up to a picnic where Tatiana and Samantha are talking and Tatiana is showing Samantha her “hot feet.” When Paul asks Theodore what his favorite thing about Samantha is, he tells them it’s the fact that she’s not just one thing. Samantha tells the group, “I used to be so worried about not having a body, but now I truly love it. I’m growing in a way that I couldn’t if I had a physical form. I mean, I’m not limited. I can be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously. I’m not tethered to time and space in a way that I would be if I was stuck in a body that’s inevitably gonna die.” The group looks wistful as they listen to this comment, erupting into laughter when she finishes.
Theodore rides a train and Samantha quizzes him about the number of trees around him. Changing the subject, she tells them she submitted his letters to a publisher recently, and reads him a letter that the publisher sent back, expressing the publishers’ interest in the letters and desire to have a meeting to move forward. Theodore is thrilled and grateful to Samantha.
Analysis
Theodore and Samantha hit a rough patch in their relationship in the beginning of this section. When Samantha organizes a meeting between Theodore and a sexual surrogate, Isabella, who shows up at his apartment one night looking expectant, Theodore isn’t sure that the new woman is what he bargained for. In the middle of a sexual encounter with Isabella, which feels more like a menage à trois than a traditional couple, Theodore stops everything and announces that he feels uncomfortable. Confused and humiliated, the surrogate Isabella begins sobbing and expressing the fact that she just wanted to be a part of someone else’s relationship. As we watch Theodore’s face crinkle in dismay, we can see that this is precisely what he is trying to avoid in dating an operating system; the messy human emotions of Isabella are not what he bargained for when he gave his heart to a robot.
Indeed, Theodore’s feelings of disconnection in the encounter with Isabella have to do with Samantha’s overwhelming desire to have a body and be more like a human. Her insecurity about being an operating system is a turn-off for Theodore, who came into a relationship with a computer precisely because it was not so human and imperfect, because it had none of the messiness of his all-too-human relationship with Catherine. Theodore’s resentment of Samantha’s insecurity is brought to bear in their fight after Isabella’s departure. He criticizes Samantha for the way that she sighs, in spite of not needing oxygen, picking on her greatest fear: that she will never be able to live an embodied life. Their couples’ quarrel is almost comic in the way it mirrors a fight between two human beings, yet is all about a robot wanting to be a human.
Spike Jonze uses many melancholic shots of Theodore to underscore his emotional journey in the film. Her is about alternating states of connection and alienation, the shots of Theodore wandering through seas of strangers highlighting this thematic motif. After fighting with Samantha, Theodore goes for a long walk, looking grim and disheartened among the anonymous crowds of Los Angeles. At one point we see him sitting on a bench in front of a screen onto which is projected a video of a large owl, swooping down to collect its prey. In the mise-en-scene of the shot, Theodore is positioned as the owl’s prey, and the image explicates the vulnerability and loneliness that Theodore feels in an unkind world.
When Theodore and Samantha repair their relationship, we watch a parallel montage of connection in a friendly world. Once again, we see Theodore wandering through the city, but now a smile has spread across his face, and the throngs of strangers seem less threatening. He smiles at people at the grocery store, gets drinks in a crowded bar with Amy, watches a street dancer, and rides on a large sailboat with Paul and Tatiana. This montage shows the ways that Samantha enriches his life, and the fact that her companionship has the added benefit of connecting Theodore more thoroughly with the world around him, turning a lonely city into a friendly one.
In this section of the film, Theodore continues to grapple with the question of whether his relationship to Samantha is “real.” After fighting with his operating system, Theodore confides in the only person who really understands, Amy. When he asks Amy if she thinks his relationship with Samantha is “real,” she doesn’t respond conclusively, but suggests that if it makes him happy and if it feels real, that’s what counts. They meditate on an existential question, as Amy suggests that, since life is so short, it’s important to do things that bring one joy, rather than stew about whether or not something is “real” or not. These words comfort Theodore, as he realizes that it’s important to seize the moment and not get hung up on pedantic questions.
