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#659 - A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Steven Spielberg, 2001
In a distant future where artificial beings are commonplace, an experimental android designed to look and behave like an ordinary human boy is given to a family whose own son is seriously ill.
Started by Stanley Kubrick and finished by Steven Spielberg, much has been made of how A.I. Artificial Intelligence comes across as a film torn between the vastly different sensibilities of two legendary directors. The basic premise could certainly have gone either way, taking place in a future of debatable quality - global warming and other disasters have drastically altered the planet (with New York City being almost completely submerged), but other technologies have still progressed considerably. As you can probably tell from the title, the film is primarily concerned with the concept of artificial beings, with many of them being commonplace within the world of the film. Of course, one robot-designing visionary (William Hurt) is interested in improving the design and decides that he wants to create a robot that is capable of feeling love for a human. To this end, he creates a robot (Haley Joel Osment) named David, who he decides to give to an employee (Sam Robards) whose own wife (Frances O'Connor) is distraught over their son being in a coma. Though the parents try to accept David and his earnest desire to give and receive unconditional love, things are complicated when their actual son recovers and only get worse from there, eventually leading to David going on a quixotic quest into the outside world to find the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio so as to become a real boy and therefore earn his human mother's love.
One can easily write off A.I. Artificial Intelligence as another reiteration of Spielberg at his most emotionally banal thanks to its earnest tale of a wide-eyed young boy working against the odds to earn the love of a distant family figure. Such a subject doesn't exactly seem like the ideal fit for the dispassionate perfectionism associated with Kubrick either. The film is arguably compromised as a result, but it's a testament to the material that the the film still ends up being rather solid. It does take a while for the story to kick in as the robots are set up through Hurt speechifying to a rapt audience before watching an extended series of scenes where an unflinchingly cheery David tries to acclimatise to his host family, whose reactions to his presence vary wildly but never quite lapse into unconditional acceptance. There are some predictable moments here and there, such as David having some severe malfunctions that eventually lead to his mother choosing to abandon him in the wilderness (instead of taking him to be flat-out destroyed), but they are still sold fairly well as Osment can move between being sweetly oblivious to his innocent but unsettling behaviours and naturally childlike distress when he is subjected to traumas such as being bullied by human children or being abandoned by an extremely reluctant and sorrowful parent for reasons that he is programmed to be incapable of understanding. While the first act is a bit of a slog, it's paid off by the second act, which sees David enter a world that is far different from his host family's expensive mansion.
If the first act is Spielberg playing to his stereotypes, then the second act definitely feels like the man is channeling Kubrick. Spielberg creates a number of set-pieces that use the late master's visual trademarks to bring the film's vivid dystopia to life. Whether it's neon-drenched red light districts or fiery carnivals, the scenery serves as an appropriately nightmarish backdrop against which David's adventures with his robotic teddy-bear buddy take place. They are populated with a variety of characters that mainly consist of sympathetic robots (the most prominent of which is Jude Law as "Gigolo Joe", a handsome pleasure-model who ends up crossing paths with David and joining him on his quest) and far less sympathetic humans (such as Brendan Gleeson as the man who runs a robot-destroying carnival for fun and profit). Though there is no denying the Kubrickian nature of several scenes (especially the scenes where Joe "works"), there are the odd moments where Spielberg bleeds through, such as one sequence involving an information machine embodied by an Einstein-like cartoon (voiced by Robin Williams, no less). The retro-futurism strikes a tricky balance between science-fiction and fairytale, with the eye-catching art direction is matched by the various effects used to bring the robots and their mechanical innards to life.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence may not be a classic, but it's certainly a lot better than I expected it to be. The first act is pretty dry and the film as a whole does feel like it goes on for a bit too long; it reached a point where it seemed like it was wrapping up but I checked the timer and it still had about twenty or thirty minutes to go. For those of you who've seen it, you should know that I actually kind of liked the ending despite its very left-field development and somewhat awkward sentimentality (though the latter being undercut by the implications at least seems to be by design, I suppose). Though one can't help but wonder how this film might have turned out under Kubrick's sole supervision, Spielberg goes all-out in order to pay homage to his peer and weave together their disparate film-making idiosyncrasies. It doesn't quite work, as the attempts to mesh the styles only serve to magnify the flaws in Spielberg's approach, especially when he deliberately tries to evoke amusement at the robots and their world. Given how inventive the visuals on display tend to be, it's a shame that John Williams provides a very standard-sounding score to go along with them. Time will tell whether it really holds up, but there's certainly enough strength to the writing and technical side of things to earn at least some goodwill.
Steven Spielberg, 2001
In a distant future where artificial beings are commonplace, an experimental android designed to look and behave like an ordinary human boy is given to a family whose own son is seriously ill.
Started by Stanley Kubrick and finished by Steven Spielberg, much has been made of how A.I. Artificial Intelligence comes across as a film torn between the vastly different sensibilities of two legendary directors. The basic premise could certainly have gone either way, taking place in a future of debatable quality - global warming and other disasters have drastically altered the planet (with New York City being almost completely submerged), but other technologies have still progressed considerably. As you can probably tell from the title, the film is primarily concerned with the concept of artificial beings, with many of them being commonplace within the world of the film. Of course, one robot-designing visionary (William Hurt) is interested in improving the design and decides that he wants to create a robot that is capable of feeling love for a human. To this end, he creates a robot (Haley Joel Osment) named David, who he decides to give to an employee (Sam Robards) whose own wife (Frances O'Connor) is distraught over their son being in a coma. Though the parents try to accept David and his earnest desire to give and receive unconditional love, things are complicated when their actual son recovers and only get worse from there, eventually leading to David going on a quixotic quest into the outside world to find the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio so as to become a real boy and therefore earn his human mother's love.
One can easily write off A.I. Artificial Intelligence as another reiteration of Spielberg at his most emotionally banal thanks to its earnest tale of a wide-eyed young boy working against the odds to earn the love of a distant family figure. Such a subject doesn't exactly seem like the ideal fit for the dispassionate perfectionism associated with Kubrick either. The film is arguably compromised as a result, but it's a testament to the material that the the film still ends up being rather solid. It does take a while for the story to kick in as the robots are set up through Hurt speechifying to a rapt audience before watching an extended series of scenes where an unflinchingly cheery David tries to acclimatise to his host family, whose reactions to his presence vary wildly but never quite lapse into unconditional acceptance. There are some predictable moments here and there, such as David having some severe malfunctions that eventually lead to his mother choosing to abandon him in the wilderness (instead of taking him to be flat-out destroyed), but they are still sold fairly well as Osment can move between being sweetly oblivious to his innocent but unsettling behaviours and naturally childlike distress when he is subjected to traumas such as being bullied by human children or being abandoned by an extremely reluctant and sorrowful parent for reasons that he is programmed to be incapable of understanding. While the first act is a bit of a slog, it's paid off by the second act, which sees David enter a world that is far different from his host family's expensive mansion.
If the first act is Spielberg playing to his stereotypes, then the second act definitely feels like the man is channeling Kubrick. Spielberg creates a number of set-pieces that use the late master's visual trademarks to bring the film's vivid dystopia to life. Whether it's neon-drenched red light districts or fiery carnivals, the scenery serves as an appropriately nightmarish backdrop against which David's adventures with his robotic teddy-bear buddy take place. They are populated with a variety of characters that mainly consist of sympathetic robots (the most prominent of which is Jude Law as "Gigolo Joe", a handsome pleasure-model who ends up crossing paths with David and joining him on his quest) and far less sympathetic humans (such as Brendan Gleeson as the man who runs a robot-destroying carnival for fun and profit). Though there is no denying the Kubrickian nature of several scenes (especially the scenes where Joe "works"), there are the odd moments where Spielberg bleeds through, such as one sequence involving an information machine embodied by an Einstein-like cartoon (voiced by Robin Williams, no less). The retro-futurism strikes a tricky balance between science-fiction and fairytale, with the eye-catching art direction is matched by the various effects used to bring the robots and their mechanical innards to life.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence may not be a classic, but it's certainly a lot better than I expected it to be. The first act is pretty dry and the film as a whole does feel like it goes on for a bit too long; it reached a point where it seemed like it was wrapping up but I checked the timer and it still had about twenty or thirty minutes to go. For those of you who've seen it, you should know that I actually kind of liked the ending despite its very left-field development and somewhat awkward sentimentality (though the latter being undercut by the implications at least seems to be by design, I suppose). Though one can't help but wonder how this film might have turned out under Kubrick's sole supervision, Spielberg goes all-out in order to pay homage to his peer and weave together their disparate film-making idiosyncrasies. It doesn't quite work, as the attempts to mesh the styles only serve to magnify the flaws in Spielberg's approach, especially when he deliberately tries to evoke amusement at the robots and their world. Given how inventive the visuals on display tend to be, it's a shame that John Williams provides a very standard-sounding score to go along with them. Time will tell whether it really holds up, but there's certainly enough strength to the writing and technical side of things to earn at least some goodwill.