From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Sat Jun 30 2001 - 22:02:22 MDT
'A.I.': Do Androids Long for Mom?
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/29/arts/29ARTI.html
By A. O. SCOTT
Steven Spielberg's career as a director has been one of almost profligate
variety: from mechanical sharks to the Normandy invasion, from Indiana Jones
to the Krakow ghetto, not to mention the slave ships, the angry dinosaurs and
the second worst Pearl Harbor movie ever made. But every so often he comes
back to the figure of a lonely boy facing the incomprehension and cruelty of
the adult world, and when he does - most notably in "E.T." and "Empire of the
Sun" - it is with a feeling of coming home to emotions that lie beyond the
reach of the ruthless sentimentality that has been his greatest weakness.
The vulnerability of children is of course a subject that invites maudlin
excess. But Mr. Spielberg's needy lost boys dwell in a psychological limbo
that elicits not only pity and protectiveness but also recognition. There is
something irreducibly real about the sensitivity and curiosity of Eliot in
"E.T." and young Jim in "Empire," and also about the primal resentment that
troubles their smooth, eager faces. A central and nearly universal experience
of childhood is to feel abandoned and betrayed by one's parents. The need to
compensate for this loss is what forces us to grow up and what sends our
fairy-tale alter egos off on their adventures.
"A.I." is the best fairy tale - the most disturbing, complex and
intellectually challenging boy's adventure story - Mr. Spielberg has made.
Once again he asks us to identify with a young boy, exiled from the only home
he knows and forced to find his way in a strange and unsympathetic world. Our
bond with David (Haley Joel Osment) is complicated, however: he is not real at
all but a sentient robot designed by a company called Cybertronics for the
comfort and convenience of childless adults.
At the beginning, as an image of the ocean (a symbol of maternity) fills the
screen, the soothing voice of Ben Kingsley explains that an ecological
catastrophe has left many of the earth's great cities underwater and that in
the midst of widespread famine some places (like New Jersey, where the movie
takes place) have sustained material prosperity by placing heavy restrictions
on childbearing. David is the brainchild of a scientist named Allen Hobby
(William Hurt), who theorizes that robots, once programmed with the capacity
to love, will begin to develop an "inner life of metaphor and dreams" that
will represent a qualitative advance beyond the outwardly lifelike robots
called mechas that circulate among their human counterparts performing various
services.
The wider dimensions of this future world become clear only later. The first
third of "A.I.," once some necessary exposition has been taken care of,
introduces David into the home of Henry and Monica Swinton (Sam Robards and
Frances O'Connor), whose only son, Martin (Jake Thomas), lies frozen and
comatose in a hospital ward decorated with scenes from classic children's
stories. At first Monica is repelled by David. Mr. Osment uses his wide blue
eyes and ingratiating smile to suggest the uncanny creepiness of a living
doll, and the film plays cleverly with the monstrous implications of its
conceit. The fantasy that humans' replicas of themselves will come to life is
more often than not - in the medieval legend of the golem, in Mary Shelley's
"Frankenstein" and in countless horror films - a source of terror and anxiety.
Fear is the underside of enchantment, and the spell of wonder "A.I." casts is
tinged with dread.
The mood of disquiet only deepens when Monica activates David's imprinting
function, in effect flipping the one-way switch that will make him love her
unconditionally and eternally. His absolute and unwavering adoration - the way
Mr. Osment utters the word mommy is both heart-rending and chilling - demands
reciprocation.
Real children, it turns out, are more difficult to love. Martin, when he
returns home, is sneaky and disobedient, sarcastic and manipulative. He urges
Monica to read "Pinocchio" aloud at bedtime. "David will love it," he says
with a knowing smirk. That Carlo Collodi story of a wooden puppet who turns
into a real boy becomes a kind of scripture for David, and a rich source of
images and allusions for "A.I." (The version of the story most familiar to
movie audiences, the Disney animated feature, seems not to have survived the
great flood. This dream of the future has been brought to you, after all, by
Warner Brothers and DreamWorks, whose crescent-moon logo appears to decorate
the bed where David and Martin sleep.)
Our startled discovery that we may prefer David to his quasi-brother - he's
perfect, after all - is an indication of how tangled and ambiguous the movie's
themes are. If we fall for David, and if, later, we side with his mechanical
brethren against their human oppressors, are we affirming our humanity or have
we been irrevocably alienated from it?
Tangled and ambiguous are not words one normally associates with Mr.
Spielberg, who often pleases audiences by inviting them to be pleased with
themselves. He tells you how to feel, and while you are usually powerless to
resist his manipulations, you can always object to his moral bossiness.
But the experience of "A.I." is different. The project was originally
conceived by Stanley Kubrick, to whom the film is dedicated. Moments of homage
are scattered through the movie: sly references to "A Clockwork Orange," "The
Shining" and predominantly "2001: A Space Odyssey." But on a deeper level Mr.
Spielberg seems to be attempting the improbable feat of melding Kubrick's
chilly, analytical style with his own warmer, needier sensibility. He tells
the story slowly and films it with lucid, mesmerizing objectivity, creating a
mood as layered, dissonant and strange as John Williams's unusually
restrained, modernist score.
The mood shifts abruptly - and the picture becomes dreamier, funnier and
intellectually riskier - when David is abandoned, along with his cybernetic
teddy bear (with the voice of Jack Angel), in a dark forest. With exemplary
childlike reasoning that bears out his creator's hunches, David conflates his
own story with Pinocchio's and sets out to find the blue fairy who will
transform him into a real boy. Joining him on his quest is a sex-slave mecha
called Gigolo Joe, played with saucy, oily charm by Jude Law.
Once expelled from the cocoon of Henry and Monica's house - a scrupulously
imagined retro-futuristic suburban palace, as if the Jetsons had shopped at
Restoration Hardware - David plunges into the dystopian underside of this
disconcertingly familiar future. He and Joe are captured by bounty hunters and
herded into cages at a Flesh Fair, a combination revival meeting and
monster-truck rally at which people express their hatred of mechas by blowing
them up and dousing them with acid.
=====================
Stay hungry,
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism
Everything that can happen has already happened, not just once,
but an infinite number of times, and will continue to do so forever.
(Everything that can happen = more than anyone can imagine.)
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