in the first of our solaRpunk on screen series we look at The subtly intelligent beauty of Her
“Man falls in love with his AI assistant” sounds more like a headline from a tabloid than the plot of a film from a sunnier future. Nonetheless it is the essence of the first film in our series of movies that we feel our solarpunk, the 2013 Spike Jonzes film Her.
Set in a near future where self-aware artificial intelligence assistants have become commercially available for the first time, the story follows Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix. A listless writer full of ennui, he ends up falling in love with his AI assistant Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Together they discover a whole new lease on life.
The universe it’s set in is subtly solarpunk for us. Theodore lives in a future Los Angeles where cars barely feature except for the odd taxi. The characters get around by walking or using public transport. This includes some really nice-looking trains for getaways to the local beach and further flung snowy wilderness.
All the characters we come across do creative work and there are no depictions of poverty or serious inequality. The office Theodore works in is colourful, airy and collegiate. There’s a passing reference early on to a peaceful sounding Indian-China union implying a world that is coming more harmoniously together.
The film is definitely on the Happier end of our solarpunk story spectrum being a really poignant and thoughtful love story rather than an action-adventure film. It’s brilliantly scripted, acted and shot.
What makes this film so compelling is that human desires, fears and hopes around loving all still exist, not just for Theodore, but for Samantha the AI too.
If Her showed a greener city more explicitly powered by renewables it would make it much more solarpunk. Nonetheless we think a more egalitarian, almost car-free future Los Angeles where creative work is the norm feels very solarpunk to us.
While our feelings about the current state of AI are mixed to say the least, we know for sure that we love this beautiful and subtle solarpunk film.