A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: A very short story is expanded into a longish but powerful film about time, durability, and purpose of existence by the combined efforts of the late Stanley Kubrick and of Steven Spielberg. There are some very nice sequences in this film, but overall it is stylistically uneven. The story of the robot that wanted to be human is getting a little hackneyed for this film to really work throughout. Though some of the views of the future are very powerful. Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to +4)
Permanence is a major theme of A.I. I am told a glass bottle takes a million years to biodegrade. The purpose of that existence may end after a month--essentially its first moments of life, but the bottle goes on. Its whole reason for existence is just the barest beginning of its journey. This is bad for the environment, but not really for the bottle because it has no feelings. But what if a machine could be given feelings and told to love one person? What happens to a machine that has emotions, but also longevity far greater than that of its reason for existence? And can a machine really have feelings? If not, why not since an accumulation of biological cells, what a human is, can have feelings? These questions are the heart of A.I.
A.I. was a project developed by Stanley Kubrick going back to the early 1990s. It used as a springboard the 1969 short story "Super-toys Last All Summer Long," by Brian W. Aldiss. (A copy of the story can currently be found at http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0068.html.) I am not sure I understand why Kubrick saw so much potential in this particular story. It seems to me to be a variation on an episode on "The Lateness of the Hour," an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. (The story in the film seems to lean more toward a different episode, "I Sing the Body Electric.") However, Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel" would also seem an unpromising source and it made one of the classics of cinema 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
Much as he had previously done with Clarke for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Kubrick wanted to partner with Brian Aldiss on the project of adapting his story. Together they looked at a lot of variations on the narrative, none of which where suitable to Kubrick. Kubrick then called in Clarke as his partner, but they could not agree where the story should go. Kubrick tried science fiction author Bob Shaw, but Kubrick did not have a film until he brought in Ian Watson. Allegedly when Kubrick thought the time was right he arranged a two-film deal, one film on the subject of sex, one returning to the science fiction field where he had enjoyed working in the past. Those films were, of course, EYES WIDE SHUT and A.I. Unfortunately, Kubrick lived only long enough to complete the former and to get the project moving on the latter. Enter Steven Spielberg to inherit the A.I. project and bring it to completion. Now, of course, it is unclear what is Kubrick's contribution and what is Spielberg's, but the resulting film is very different from either director's previous work.
Whatever the truth is on who contributed what, the film is wildly uneven in style like a landscape painted by a committee. That is not necessarily a bad thing, it just makes the future world seem a bit schizophrenic. It uses a variation on the Aldiss story as a core, but abruptly goes off in other directions. There is even some feeling that the story was being held back by spending too much time on the Aldiss themes.
One might speculate that Kubrick filmed the first and last sections of the film and Spielberg did only the middle section. Certainly acting styles seem that way. In the first part of the film people appear pensive and insular in their own shells. Not unlike the characters in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, people just do not seem to be connecting with each other. The middle section of the film is set in a frenetic world like from TOTAL RECALL OF BLADERUNNER BEYOND THUNDERDOME. The viewer should be warned that this is a film of about two and a half hours. Parts of the film, particularly toward the end when the pace slows, seem drawn out as it is. If the viewer is expecting the film to wrap up, the final reel may seem interminable.
The story follows David (played by Haley Joel Osment), the first and only robot who has been given a capacity to love. David is built for a couple, Monica and Henry Swinton (Francis O'Connor and Sam Robards), whose own son Martin is in a frozen state. At first Monica wants no part of an artificial surrogate son, but that resolve starts to crumble. The story takes off from there. This is a lot like the plot of BICENTENNIAL MAN or Ray Bradbury's "I Sing the Body Electric," but the story goes places that those stories do not. It would be a spoiler to say how, but eventually we are introduced a friend for David, a Gigolobot named Gigolo Joe, programmed to dance through life as he performs his Gigolo function. That programming cannot be dropped even when he is on the run for his life. Like David's, his programming outlives its purpose.
Spielberg (or whoever) did a fairly good job of setting the story in some indeterminate future. For once an automobile looks like it might have come from a future world. In the first part the whole world seems subdued. We go from one scene shot with a filter to give a hazy image, then we go to another scene with a lot of fractured pieces coming together. A crisper image is used for the middle section of the film and toward the end the camera returns to a soft focus. David, the main character, has a special makeup that makes his skin look glossy like smooth plastic. Most of the film is shot in cold lifeless colors, though there are some reds and earth tones in the middle section of the film. The middle section also has a faster pace with images suddenly coming very fast at the viewer. It is like going from sensory deprivation to sensory overload. The final part of the film is again slow and introspective. Most Dreamworks films work an image of the moon into the story someplace, more or less as their trademark. A.I. goes a little overboard in giving us a moon image that is hard to miss. Several celebrity voices are used in the film, though frequently they are only subliminally noticeable. I recognized Robin Williams as the voice of a futuristic vending machine, but reading the end-credits I realized I had missed several of the others. It should make for an interesting game for owners of the future DVD to search out the other voices.
Steven Spielberg was perhaps a very good choice as a replacement for Kubrick. A director of some stature was needed, but also because few directors could handle the poignancy of the final parts of the story. The film has already been criticized for its sentimentality, but the emotion is precisely the point. Spielberg is one of the few directors of mass audience films who are not afraid to put emotion into a film when it is appropriate. The critics who complain about Spielberg's sentimentality would rob cinema of much of its impact. The final dilemma of this film is an emotional one and that is how the story should be told. I rate A.I. a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
_mleeper@excite.com
Copyright 2001 Mark R. Leeper
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