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czerwonykasztelanic · 1 year

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A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001): a review

"A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" is a science-fiction movie directed by Steven Spielberg. Although not as much of a cult classic as some of his other films, it's still a fairly well-known production and overall has gathered positive critical reception.

And here's my own three cents:

One of the first things I noticed was the fact that the movie is divided into three visually and thematically distinct parts. In full honesty, I'm not sure whether this was intentional, or a result of inconsistent storytelling. Giving Spielberg's directorship the benefit of the doubt, I'm going to go ahead and assume it was the former.

The first part is the one I was expecting, having read the description and cover art provided on the DVD. Subtly heart-wrenching, subdued, focusing more on psychology and internal conflict. We are invited into a conventional, tame future world: sea levels have risen, technology has developed enough for people to ride three-wheeled cars (for whatever reason). Subsequently, we are briefed about the origin of the Mecha-child and introduced to the main cast of characters.

Everything is grey, beige and upper-middle-class. I found it very hard to sympathise with Monica Swinton and her family. We witness a mother's misplaced grief drive her to accepting the offer of an artificial child (the robotic David). Haley Osment does a great job portraying an android child in an ugly duckling situation. There are hurdles from the very beginning, but after a while, things start looking up for the David and we are led to believe that maybe, just maybe, this could work out. Our robot protagonist even gains an adorable sidekick - Teddy the Supertoy, and learns the story of Pinocchio. (This heavy-handed metaphor will come in handy later.) However, David is soon challenged by the no-longer-comatose Martin - Monica's "true", biological son. A near-fatal accident at Martin's birthday party upsets his parents enough to backtrack on any further decisions and give David back to Cybernetics - the generic-named company that made him.

The problem is, once a Mecha-child has imprinted on its mother, it cannot be brought back to its blank-slate state and has to be destroyed. Monica has enough heart to not wish death upon her not-quite-son and, in true medieval fashion, abandons him in the woods instead.

David, of course, wants to stay by his mother's side and cannot fathom the thought of her tossing him aside. He wishes, more than anything, to become a "real boy" - surely, if he was one, Monica would take him back. (He is driven by the vision of the Blue Fairy, who granted Pinocchio's wish to achieve the same.)

This is where part two comes in.

Part two might be my favorite, mostly because of the one-eighty change in atmosphere. We are thrust from the sterile, white-picket-fence environment into a completely different world. In the woods, a terrified and confused David witnesses a grotesque manhunt - or rather, robot-hunt. Partially dysfunctional Mechas are chased down for sport and entertainment as part of what we soon learn is called a "Flesh Fair".

David, alongside a handful of other robots, is captured and transported to the bizarre festival. One of his fellow captives is a "lover robot" (or mechanical prostitute) named Gigolo Joe. I found Joe's eccentric mannerisms and body language endearing - kudos to Jude Law.

The "Flesh Fair" festival is a sort of modern gladiator arena where humans (or "Orga", short for "organic" and not "orgasm") crown themselves the pinnacle of creation by virtue of ripping malfunctioning Mecha to shreds. An announcer calls this "a celebration of life" - the irony might be a bit too much, but looking at human history, it's by no means an exaggeration.

It's also the first element that seems very inconsistent with prior worldbuilding. Up until that moment, we don't hear anything about anti-robot sentiments, not to mention Ancient Rome 2: Electric Boogaloo.

(That being said, it was also my favorite element in the movie's universe and I wish it had been explored/dealt with more.)

During the Flesh Fair, David, undamaged and disarmingly childlike, manages to soften the heart of the crowd enough to score himself and Joe a timely escape. He tells Joe about his wish to find the Blue Fairy and is promptly informed that, since the Blue Fairy is a woman, she can be found in Rogue City.

Having coerced a group of horny young dudes into driving them there, David and his theatrical companion find themselves in a neon-lit paradise.

Rogue City is, essentially, a retrofuturistic Sodom and Gomorrah. Imagine something whose goal is to violate every rule of the Hayes Code, and then imagine the sort of thing it would consider obscene. It's only by dint of clever euphemisms that the movie is rated PG-13.

Joe leads David to the headquarters of Dr. Know, an Einstein-lookalike computer program built to answer questions for the low, low price of money. After a couple of failed attempts to get the information he desires, David finally hears a sort of rhymed prophecy that insinuates that the Blue Fairy is in fact real and lives "at the end of the world where lions weep".

After narrowly escaping arrest (Joe has been framed for the murder of an unnamed client), David hijacks an amphibicopter and sets off for the lost city at the end of the world: Man-hattan.

This, in turn, marks the beginning of the third and final part of the film: the slightly psychedelic fairytale.

David flies past a row of lion statues and lands the stolen aircraft in the partially-submerged office building that houses Cybernetics. The prophecy was a ruse: instead of encountering a benevolent supernatural being, David finds himself face-to-face with a carbon copy of himself. In a surprisingly human act of selfishness, he destroys his lookalike with an office lamp. This seems to be a test that he passes, because Allen Hobby, the owner of the company, comes out of his office and and tells him that David is the first - but not only - of his kind. The whole series of robotic children is heavily implied to be based on Hobby's own dead son.

Hobby also says that the ability to pursue a dream is something never before seen in artificial intelligence.

At the same time, Gigolo Joe is captured and - we can presume - destroyed. This is so sudden that, while I did like him as a character, his death/departure didn't even register as sad. Still, his willingness to take care of David - a task that goes way beyond his base competences as a sex worker - is quite moving.

David himself doesn't give up in his dream to find the Blue Fairy. Accompanied by the ever-faithful Teddy, he dives into the waters of what used to be NYC and reaches a submerged amusement park. As you might have guessed, one of the areas of the park is themed around Pinocchio. The movie reaches its climax: David sees a statue of the fairy, smiling at him like a cheap knock-off of the Virgin Mary.

The amphibicopter knocks down the Ferris wheel, which falls on the vehicle and traps it next to the statue. David stares into its eyes and repeats his wish: "I want to be a real boy".

At this point, I was expecting the movie to go like this: law enforcement (or Allen Hobby) would reach the amphibicopter, retrieve David and make him realise that it's impossible for him to gain a human body - but also that a human body is not what makes you human. Cue tearful "it's not you, it's them" scene, credits roll.

The actual direction the movie took was drastically different. The narrator informs us that two whole millenia pass, with David (whose batteries must be the actual pinnacle of technology) eternally staring at the statue of the fairy. An ice-age comes, the ocean freezes, humanity dies out completely, but still he looks right at the overgrown souvenir, unaware of everything else.

Aliens come to Earth and find the submerged vehicle with David and Teddy still inside. The two robots are the only living (or at any rate, surviving) remnants of the human civilisation.

It's not really accented much, but the fact that the magnum opus and last trace of humanity are not humans themselves is really quite thought-provoking.

The aliens manage to revive David's long-dead mother, using a lock of hair that he'd taken from her some two thousand years prior. The catch is, the resurrected Monica will only survive a day before she fades away forever. David gets to spend a final twenty four hours with his mom - a version of her that doesn't treat him any worse because of the fact that he's a robot, a version of her that's not much more than a mayfly.

A series of bittersweet familial shots and the day is over. Monica falls asleep forever, David decides to do the same, leaving Teddy guarding the bed like a dog.

It's all over.

The message of the majority of the movie, at least to me, is that being human and humane are separate ideas - and so are "inhuman" and "inhumane". The final couple of scenes also seem to say that the most human thing a person can want is to be one.

The acting was very good, the music alright but not spectacular, the shots of the cyber-goths playing electric guitar excellent. I really enjoyed the robot designs. A couple elements - for example, Martin initially being comatose and later waking up, catalyzing both arcs of the David situation - seemed a bit cliche, but did their job in driving the plot forward. The ending, as mentioned before, took me off guard, but didn't really undermine the whole movie.

That aside, I have no idea why they put aliens in there, or why they merged "white suburban family drama", "Cyberpunk on steroids" and "Brothers Grim after too many edibles" into one movie. I really liked Teddy though.

#spoilers?#Mutuals: Your thoughts are valued immensely.#I wanted to write something more serious about a piece of media so: woe. Whole essay be upon ye.#output

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