"The real conundrum isn't to create a robot that can love. It's getting a human to love it back."
Starring Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Sam Robards, William Hurt, Jack Thomas, Brendan Gleeson and the voice of Jack Angel. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Rated PG-13.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
Everyone is talking about A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and everyone wants to talk about it as a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and the late Stanley Kubrick. Though there are some interesting points to be made on the subject, they have by now been made elsewhere, and I'm not interested in discussing it. The bizarre, upsetting, wonderful movie stands on its own as a provocative masterpiece, that rare piece of work with the courage to bewilder, be misinterpreted and start arguments.
Like many, it took me two viewings to realize this. I knew right away that I had seen something special, but the film disturbed me so deeply that I looked for flaws, and I found them. The second time, it was more apparent that this is easily Spielberg's most mature, most meticulous movie to date; what I perceived as flaws were choices, not errors, and damn good ones in retrospect.
A.I. begins with the familiar sight of crashing ocean waves and narration by Ben Kingsley, who describes the world after the melting of the polar ice caps. Major cities, including New York, were drowned; thousands of people starved to death. Strict population controls were imposed by surviving governments. Humans became increasingly dependant on mechas, robots that simulate human appearance and behavior.
By now, Spielberg has already set the mood for at least the first section of the film: chilling, foreboding, the darkness of the subject matter clashing with the sterile comfort of the futuristic society it depicts; those expecting another E.T. should already be disappointed. We fade to a conference room, where Dr. Allen Hobby (William Hurt) gives a speech on the prospects of building a robot who can feel real human emotions, a robot child who can love. Someone poses a question that Dr. Hobby is unable to answer, one of the film's central themes: if the robot genuinely loves its owner, what responsibility does the human have towards the machine? The answer isn't, as Roger Ebert thoughtlessly wrote, "none." If we are responsible for what we create, are we also responsible for the emotions of a robot boy? After all, his feelings are hardly more "simulated" than ours; they're all electrical signals traveling through a network of neurons.
Cybertronics, Inc. creates a prototype named David, played here by Haley Joel Osment, and gives it to Henry Swinton (Sam Robards), an employee, to try out. He and his wife Monica (Frances O'Connor) already have a son who is in a coma after an accident, evidently beyond science's reach. Monica, understandably, has trouble accepting a mecha replacement, and Henry doesn't push her. David looks and acts like a real boy, but not quite; there's something subtly off about his behavior (for one thing, he never blinks). This part of the film is icy and ominous, though you can't put your finger on exactly why; this is the closest Spielberg comes to channeling Kubrick.
David comes with an imprinting protocol, a sequence of words that must be said to him that will seal his love to his owner forever. If, after imprinting, the owner decides not to keep the mecha, it must be returned to its manufacturer for destruction. At first, Monica doesn't like the idea; David creeps her out by suddenly appearing everywhere she turns, and the idea that this is a machine seems always to be in the back of her mind. Then, almost impulsively, she imprints, and, in an amazing scene, David calls her "mommy" for the first time.
Martin regains consciousness. He's Henry and Monica's "real son," and David isn't spared this information. Martin sees him as just a cool toy to play with, but when he sees that his mom is infatuated with this fancy new "mecha," he sets out to make David seem like a threat.
After being taunted by kids at Martin's birthday party, David appeals to Martin for protection and, in the midst of the chaos, drags him into the pool and almost drowns him. The next day, under the guise of an intimate drive through the country, Monica takes David back to Cybertronics. Only she can't bear to destroy this mecha that seems so lifelike. So she decides to leave him in the woods with his talking teddy bear and let him fend for himself.
This is where my emotions started to run amok. The scene in the forest is so heartbreaking, so genuine in its despair that were I a few decades older I may have had to be wheeled away; I would have cried if I wasn't so shellshocked both times I watched it. But the scene is even more powerful when you ask why it was so affecting. After all, David isn't a real boy, but a machine. So isn't it like leaving a toaster in the woods, or a microwave? This is the genius of Spielberg's work here. He isn't going for pure manipulation; he plays with your emotions and then prods you to consider why you felt the way you did.
A.I. then shifts in tone completely, as David is caught by a local "Flesh Fair," a "celebration of life" in which robots are flamboyantly destroyed on stage, under the guise of "destroying artificiality." The head of the fair, played by Brendan Gleeson, shouts that these mechas were made to replace humans, and the film's ending proves him right.
David spends the rest of the movie searching for the Blue Fairy, a character from Pinnochio, which he overheard when Monica read it to Martin. He wants to become a real boy so that his mommy will love him again. His companions are Teddy and Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a single-minded, runaway lover robot. Joe was Kubrick's idea, considerably toned down by Spielberg.
The film is insanely ambitious and brave. It dares to regard the human race as a petty distraction in the grand scheme of things, and to view existence as a state of mind rather than flesh and blood. Why do we claim to have a monopoly on consciousness and emotion? If we make a computer program that learns, feels and reasons, how do you distinguish it from the structure of our brain which is similarly programmed by instinct and genetics?
In his third act, Spielberg fearlessly jumps 2000 years into the future, with a denoument that combines unabashed sentimentality with an undercurrent of darkness. Critics who gripe that Spielberg compromised Kubrick's vision with a trademark happy ending couldn't be farther off the mark; the conclusion is chilling, recalling Kubrick's own cryptic last act of 2001: A Space Oddyssey. No matter how you interpret A.I.'s last few seconds, they are the result -- or the continuation -- of a robot boy's dream, a dream that could never have come true in the world that created David.
A.I. is anchored by an amazing Haley Joel Osment, who again brings with him the emotional maturity most "adult" actors can only wish for. Jude Law, in his showiest role to date, is by turns hilarious and devastating as the troubled sexbot, and Frances O'Connor gives a courageous performance in what's likely to be one of the year's most despised roles.
I suppose it's not hard to see why American audiences have resisted and rejected A.I., though it is disheartening. It's Spielberg's most serious, most profound, most adult film; it's also his strangest. Moviegoers were confused by the daffy third act, and hard-pressed to see the point of it all. If you had that reaction, I think you should see it again; it's amazing how much becomes clear on second viewing.
This is the kind of movie that stays with you. Weeks after seeing it, I can't shake it. The image that has haunted me the most isn't the shockingly cruel scene in the woods, or the powerful conclusion, but Gigolo Joe's simple, stunning statement of existence. "I am. I was."
Grade: A
Up Next: Kiss of the Dragon
©2001 Eugene Novikov
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