By Augustin Wecxsteen
With Valentine’s Day soon approaching, I thought it’d be appropriate to talk about Love for my first post about films. Three recent films have played with the representation of women as romantic interests in films through the prism of science fiction. This article will discuss Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004), Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015) and Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), including some specific plot points, so beware of spoilers for those three films! If you haven’t seen any of those films, are looking for a recommendation and aren’t too sure which one to watch:
- Watch ESotSM if you’re still not over your breakup and sometimes wish you could forget him/her/them to move on, and if you want to see Jim Carrey as a depressed man rather than a crazy one and Kate Winslet as her usually great self;
- Watch Ex Machina if you are in love with Oscar Isaac or Alicia Vikander and somehow want to be very afraid of them, or if you want to watch a good psychological thriller set in a badass loft;
- Watch Her if you’ve always wanted to see Joaquin Phoenix as a middle aged hipster wearing high-waisted trousers, and if you have doubts whether Scarlett Johansson can make you swoon with just her voice (SPOILER ALERT: oh boy, she can, and she will).
Is it better to have loved and lost than to not remember having loved at all? In ESotSM, Jim Carrey plays Joel, who one day discovers his ex-girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet), has wiped him from her memory via brand new technology. He decides to do the same to finally let go and move on. The film follows the process happening in Joel’s head, where their love story unfolds in reverse, from their breakup till their first meeting. Joel soon realises he would rather not erase her from his memories and works against the machine to remember her. The film cleverly deconstructs the typical love story of boy meets girl and falls in love, and offers instead an unflinching look at how relationships don’t always work and what happens when a boring person meets an impulsive one and they fall in love. Rather than following the familiar narrative of meeting a quirky girl who inspires a boy to do great things and live life to the fullest, Joel and Clementine’s personalities clash and it drains their relationship. Through peripheral stories and Joel’s memories of Clementine, the film seems to come to the conclusion that remembering an ex is better – to avoid repeating the same mistakes or simply to let the good memories outweigh the bad. The film’s clever concept creates an interesting narrative in which a man reflects on his relationship just as he forgets everything about it.
Available on Amazon Prime, VOD, DVD and Blu-Ray.
Ex Machina, while more straightforwardly science fiction than a love story, still offers a reflection on the way women are depicted as defenceless love interests in films. Ava (Alicia Vikander) is an android created by sexy-genius-billionaire Nathan (Oscar Isaac) and has to go through a Turing test (a test determining whether Artificial Intelligence can pass as human or not) executed by Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), one of Nathan’s many employees who was ‘randomly’ selected to do so. Caleb appears to be suffering from a hero/saviour complex and is easily manipulated by Ava who just wants to leave and escape her creator/captor. Caleb projects onto Ava the image of a damsel in distress, because she was designed with the face of an attractive woman, and because she plays along. In doing so, he forgets that she is not a captive woman, but a clever and curious android who’s never seen the outside world, not unlike a toddler wanting to explore and know everything. The film ends up offering three fascinating twists on cinema archetypes:
- The mad scientist, proud of his creation but refusing to consider and accept its force, which ends up dooming him (as seen in The Fly, Spider-Man 1 and 2, Frankenstein, Jurassic Park);
- The damsel in distress who reveals herself to be a femme fatale (as in countless films noirs such as Gilda, The Maltese Falcon, Blue Velvet);
- The hero who thinks he’s doing the right thing but is in way over his head (as seen in Shutter Island, No Country for Old Men).
Available on VOD, DVD and Blu-Ray.
Finally, Her combines elements from the two previous films: the intimate romantic sci-fi drama aspect of ESotSM and the Artificial Intelligence of Ex Machina. In this Spike Jonze film, Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, a lonely and depressed man who befriends, falls in love with and begins a relationship with an Operating System with Artificial Intelligence who calls itself Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). The film is never judgmental towards this relationship and is rather critical of those who are: Theodore’s ex-wife, played by Rooney Mara, doesn’t understand how this inhuman and intangible relationship could be real, and appears close-minded for doing so. Her is a deconstructed love story in that it features a relationship between a man and a bodiless woman, voiced by one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood (and let’s be honest, possibly the most beautiful human being ever), and keeps asking whether love really needs to be physical to be real. In a surprising plot twist, Samantha’s consciousness advances past the human state to become a collective intelligence, able to be in several ‘places’ at once and interact with many different persons all at the same time, which Theodore finds off-putting as it desacralizes what he thought was a one-on-one relationship. Samantha loves Theodore but she has become more than a simple OS, transcending her original state and their original relationship. The film offers a variation on the traditional man/woman romantic relationship and questions what makes it real without ever judging its characters.
Available on VOD, DVD and Blu-Ray.
Have a lovely Valentine’s Day! Or don’t. It’s just a commercial excuse to buy cards and flowers, anyways.
Digital Humanities Student Society 