From: hal@finney.org
Date: Sat Jun 30 2001 - 15:53:14 MDT
Damien forwards,
> The New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott is pleased to inform us that
>
> (
> http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/29/arts/29ARTI.html?todaysheadlines=&pagewant
> ed=print )
>
> < Refusing to cuddle us or lull us into easy sleep, Mr. Spielberg locates
> the unspoken moral of all our fairy tales. To be real is to be mortal; to
> be human is to love, to dream and to perish. >
I don't agree with reviewer Scott that this is the moral of the film.
I don't want to get more specific given the "non-spoiler" subject line
of this thread, but it was not at all like Bicentennial Man, where the
robot actively sought death in order to be more "human".
I agree that the movie's handling of mortality was gratuitous, somewhat
illogical, and excessively sentimental. But I thought Scott was closer
to the mark when he says that the message was, to be human is to love
and to dream.
I'll post more thoughts in another thread along with spoilers. But I
thought the movie was challenging and thought-provoking. What are our
obligations toward the creatures we create? Was it moral to create a
creature like David, so helpless, so full of love, and so easily hurt?
In one scene they pass by a church, and a robot comments, "those who
made us seek those who made them." In other words, humans seek their own
creator in religion. Will we be like gods to the robots, their creators,
their fathers, even as they become our superiors?
Hal
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