Movie Club

I watched the movie Her a while ago, and then I watched it again recently — and both times, what stayed with me wasn't the technology, or even the love story. It was the loneliness. Theodore is surrounded by the most sophisticated companionship imaginable. Samantha knows him completely, anticipates him, grows with him, never criticizes him without care. And yet, he is profoundly, achingly alone.

That paradox is exactly what I've been sitting with this month, because we are no longer watching science fiction. We are living it.

I've been talking a lot lately about how extraordinary AI is — how it solves information problems, how it can serve as a thinking partner, how it expands access to knowledge in ways that are genuinely remarkable. I believe that and I use it. But there is something that AI simply cannot do, no matter how sophisticated it becomes, no matter how…

Hay una película japonesa que me dejó pensando durante días. Se llama Rental Family, y su premisa es simple pero perturbadora: en Japón existe un servicio donde puedes contratar actores para que hagan el papel de tu familia. Un padre para tu hija. Un prometido para tus padres. Un abuelo en un funeral.

Lo primero que uno siente es una especie de sopresa, e incredulidad. Lo segundo, si se queda con esa incomodidad el tiempo suficiente, es reconocimiento.

Todo ser humano llega al mundo con necesidades que van mucho más allá del alimento y el abrigo. Necesitamos ser vistos. Necesitamos ser nombrados por alguien que nos conozca de verdad. Necesitamos pertenecer a algo que nos sostenga, que nos reciba, que esté cuando llegamos a casa. Esas no son necesidades caprichosas ni culturales — son constitutivas de lo que somos. Sin ellas, algo en nosotros se detiene.

Lo que la película…

During the last years of my father’s life, I would travel to Madrid to visit him. Each night after dinner, we had a ritual: we’d watch a movie together. He had this little notepad, where he would carefully jot down the date, the name of the film, the director, and the main actors. There was something deeply ceremonial about it—his love for cinema, his sharp intellect, and his reverence for the art form turned every evening into something so special with such connection.

By the end of his life, those notebooks held over 350 titles. He was, without a doubt, the most brilliant and intellectual man I’ve ever known, with a photographic memory and a unique appreciation for art in all its forms. By his own account a frustrated painter himself. 

The night we watched Pollock is etched in my heart. My brother Tony—a well-known artist himself—joined us, and the three…