Leon Lopez | Hey Google / 2020

the human voice

by Douglas Messerli

 

Leon Lopez (screenwriter and director) Hey Google / 2020 [10 minutes]

 

British director Leon Lopez’s film begins, not as you might expect it to in the morning, but rather in the evening as Nader (Sareed Farhat) trims up his hair just above his neck, enjoys a cup of coffee, brushes his teeth and commands his Goggle home hub system to wake him up at 8:00 a.m.

    When Google does awake him, he is not in his bed but laying on the living room couch. Apparently, he couldn’t sleep—at least not in his bed. And we sense almost immediately that something is wrong with this rather well-organized and physically-conscious individual. 

     The TV tells us of at least part of his problems. Infection rates have returned to nearly normal, and schools may reopen. So we gather Nader has been living in lock-down alone, segregated from others for weeks or perhaps even months—since the lockdowns in different countries and even regions greatly varied—from the COVID-19 world-wide pandemic.

    When the announcer (Terry George) begins to speak of the death toll, Nader immediately asks Google to turn the TV off. Perhaps he is just sensitive, as many of us were, to the startling daily reports of national and international deaths; but we also suspect that perhaps something else has made him not wish to listen to that data.

     He looks out the window, but still asks Google what the weather will be like, which, when she reports, he mutters maybe I should get my shorts and go swimming, the female Google voice responding in a friendly manner, “Maybe I’ll go with you.” Nader smiles. In a lockdown, it’s good to have a friend, even if its intelligence is merely artificial. At least it brings broad smile to his face.

     But soon after, when the radio begins to play a song, he demands that Google again stop. He asks “her” instead to play bird songs, and when she addresses him as “Nader,” he tells her how much appreciates it, she responding that she shall do it more often. But while he speaks to the “cheeky” disembodied voice he stares down at a picture with him and another young man his age, obviously his lover, not there for him in this long and painful crisis. He asks Google whether he can ever get over loving somebody, she answers that she’s not sure that she’s the right person to answer that question, perhaps he should consult Wikipedia? He smiles and answers, “No.” Clearly there are limits to the artificial intelligence of Goggle home hub thankfully.

     The fact that he has even asked that question, however, hints that whoever it was in that picture, they are no longer a couple. As he returns to bed, presumably that evening, he again picks up the digital photos and stares at them, putting them aside with frustration. Once again, he asks to Goggle to turn off the lights, but he responds to question about the alarm that he doesn’t need it tonight. Instead of remaining in bed, he moves to the building’s rooftop, drink in hand.

      And again, he wakes on the couch. As he begins his workout, Google reminds him that he has one calendar event for the day: “Sam’s funeral. Would you like to repeat this?”

      He slowly sits up and asks Google to call Sam. And we realize in that command what will likely happen. We hear Sam’s voice beginning with a pre-recorded message that he can’t get to the phone right now, and then Nader’s message: “Hey baby, I really miss you. I miss you so fuckin’ much,” tears welling in his eyes. I can’t even go to your funeral. No one can. I don’t think I can do this without you. I feel so lonely. Why didn’t this fuckin’ virus take the both of us?”

      He goes to his own voicemail to listen, one last time, to Sam’s last words (read by the director Lopez). Heavily coughing, Sam tells him that meeting him was the best thing that happened to him. It’s the only thing that makes this, he proclaims, referring evidently to his COVID illness, as bearable. He asks that Nader tries to stay strong, and he begs him to do all the things that they, as a couple, had planned to do. He even gives his lover the permission to find new love before the beep interrupts, the machine by which Nader now survives cutting off the final message from his  now dead loved one.

     This film might almost be described as new perspective on the famed Jean Cocteau play of 1930 The Human Voice, in which a woman spills out her love, anger, and sorrow to her departing lover.

     Of the 7 films I discuss in this essay about films made during and concerning the terrible pandemic of 2020-21, Lopez’s “Hey Google” is clearly the most emotional and complex simply in its recognition of how much we all truly rely not only on the comfort of other human bodies but each other’s voices and language in general in order to survive.

 

Los Angeles, May 27, 2023

Reprinted in World Cinema Review (May 2023).