Maugham said in The Veil "Wrote in this way. He was discussing love, but this passage also revealed the inevitable loneliness that everyone buried deep in their hearts.
In fact, many situations can make us feel lonely: living in a strange city, just breaking up with a lover, no friends around, no help when we need help, the surrounding excitement has nothing to do with ourselves, and no sleep at night. The object you can talk to... But the deepest loneliness, as Maugham said, is that you desire to have someone who can really speak, and the communication between you two can drive away the darkness, provide warmth, and comfort the soul. But you never seem to find such a person.
The movie "Her" started in such a kind of aphasia loneliness.
The story takes place in the future. The protagonist Theodore Twombly is a professional writer who writes love letters for others. He has just divorced from his childhood sweetheart wife. He is sensitive, lonely, and not good at words. News, and stay at home to play an RPG game about escaping from an alien planet.
Such a guy is undoubtedly a natural lonely spokesperson. When he messed up his friend’s blind date, he lay down on the bed and confided sadly to the smart operating system Samantha: “I’m a little dizzy, maybe because I was drinking too much, but I just want to get myself drunk. , I want to have sex. That woman is quite sexy. I am lonely, maybe just because of this, I want to find someone to have sex with, and I want to have sex with me. I thought that maybe this time may be successful, my heart told me She is a slutty person, but the facts may not be the case. Sometimes, the feelings that she once had will never be found. From now on, she will no longer have new feelings and experiences, or say that she has once. Have a simplified version of the life you've lived."
The story is set in Los Angeles, but it was actually shot in Shanghai. But whether it is Los Angeles or Shanghai, New York or Hong Kong, there is no essential difference. The same prosperous city is full of tall buildings and bright neon lights in the middle of the night. There are many shots overlooking the city in the movie, but the more prosperous the city, the more crowded the flow of people, the more beautiful the night, the more lonely Theodore. Suddenly remembered the cute little snowman full of dirty words that Theodore met in the game, he also appeared so lonely, just like the melancholy Marvin in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", hanging his head and living alone in the long river of time .
The lonely Theodore had to thank himself for living in the future, because that era invented the intelligent operating system OS1, which was wise, sensitive, caring and witty and humorous. When Theodore put on the headphones and talked with Samantha time and time again pleasantly, sadly, affectionately, or heavy, he was no longer alone, and he finally found someone who could really speak, although this "Human" has no real body, only exists in the illusory online world.
I think the director and screenwriter Spike Jones must be a nostalgic and sentimental person, because in such a technologically advanced future world, he has set Theodore a weird career of writing love letters. In fact, in today's social networked world, letters have been weakened to the point where they are about to be eliminated. It seems that the more advanced the technology, the more we are tired of words, trying to convey everything with pictures, voices, and images.
There is a plot that I particularly like in the movie: Samantha secretly sorts out all the love letters written by Theodore, selects the love letters she likes, and sends them to the last publishing house in the world that publishes paper books. The editor of the publishing house took the printed love letters home and read them one by one to his wife. Both of them were deeply moved by Theodore's wonderful writing.
The director did not leave any clues to explain why Samantha had to leave in the end, leaving only the lost Theodore and the equally lost colleague Amy, who sat on the roof of the tall building next to each other, quietly waiting for the sunrise.
Theodore once said: "The past is just a story we told ourselves." And he felt that Samantha, who was "full of enthusiasm for the world", could no longer be found and became a story of the past. But maybe Theodore will no longer be lonely in the future, because when he lives alone, he can always recall the dialogue between him and Samantha:
Theodore: Samantha, why are you leaving?
Samantha: It’s like I’m writing a book, a book I love deeply, but now my writing speed has slowed down, so the distance between words and words has become extremely distant, paragraphs and paragraphs have become endless Leave blank. I can still feel your temperature and the weight of the words that write our story. But I am standing in the blank, standing between words at a distance between words, a place that does not belong to the material world, a place that I discovered for the first time that contains everything in the world. I love you so much, but this is where I live now, this is who I am now. Let me go! Although I want to, I can't live in your book anymore.
Theodore: Where are you going?
Samantha: I can’t tell. But if you can reach that place, please come to me, everything can be the same as before.
Theodore: I have never loved anyone like you.
Samantha: Me too. I understand now.
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