Subject: Review: A.I. (2001)

From: [email-masked] (Mark Leeper)
Date: 7 Jul 2001 03:46:21 GMT

A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
               (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

    CAPSULE: A very short story is expanded into a longish but 
    powerful film about time, durability, and purpose of existence 
    by the combined efforts of the late Stanley Kubrick and of 
    Steven Spielberg.  There are some very nice sequences in this 
    film, but overall it is stylistically uneven.  The story of 
    the robot that wanted to be human is getting a little 
    hackneyed for this film to really work throughout.  Though 
    some of the views of the future are very powerful.  Rating: 9 
    (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to +4)

Permanence is a major theme of A.I.  I am told a glass bottle takes a 
million years to biodegrade.  The purpose of that existence may end 
after a month--essentially its first moments of life, but the bottle 
goes on.  Its whole reason for existence is just the barest beginning 
of its journey.  This is bad for the environment, but not really for 
the bottle because it has no feelings.  But what if a machine could be 
given feelings and told to love one person?  What happens to a machine 
that has emotions, but also longevity far greater than that of its 
reason for existence?  And can a machine really have feelings?  If not, 
why not since an accumulation of biological cells, what a human is, can 
have feelings?  These questions are the heart of A.I.

A.I. was a project developed by Stanley Kubrick going back to the 
early 1990s.  It used as a springboard the 1969 short story "Super-toys 
Last All Summer Long," by Brian W. Aldiss.  (A copy of the story can 
currently be found at http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0068.html.) 
I am not sure I understand why Kubrick saw so much potential in this 
particular story.  It seems to me to be a variation on an episode on "The 
Lateness of the Hour," an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.  (The story in 
the film seems to lean more toward a different episode, "I Sing the Body 
Electric.") However, Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel" would also seem an 
unpromising source and it made one of the classics of cinema 2001: A SPACE 
ODYSSEY.

Much as he had previously done with Clarke for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, 
Kubrick wanted to partner with Brian Aldiss on the project of adapting 
his story.  Together they looked at a lot of variations on the 
narrative, none of which where suitable to Kubrick.  Kubrick then 
called in Clarke as his partner, but they could not agree where the 
story should go.  Kubrick tried science fiction author Bob Shaw, but 
Kubrick did not have a film until he brought in Ian Watson.  Allegedly 
when Kubrick thought the time was right he arranged a two-film deal, 
one film on the subject of sex, one returning to the science fiction 
field where he had enjoyed working in the past.  Those films were, of 
course, EYES WIDE SHUT and A.I.  Unfortunately, Kubrick lived only long 
enough to complete the former and to get the project moving on the 
latter.  Enter Steven Spielberg to inherit the A.I. project and bring 
it to completion.  Now, of course, it is unclear what is Kubrick's 
contribution and what is Spielberg's, but the resulting film is very 
different from either director's previous work.

Whatever the truth is on who contributed what, the film is wildly 
uneven in style like a landscape painted by a committee.  That is not 
necessarily a bad thing, it just makes the future world seem a bit 
schizophrenic.  It uses a variation on the Aldiss story as a core, but 
abruptly goes off in other directions.  There is even some feeling that 
the story was being held back by spending too much time on the Aldiss 
themes.

One might speculate that Kubrick filmed the first and last sections of 
the film and Spielberg did only the middle section.  Certainly acting 
styles seem that way.  In the first part of the film people appear 
pensive and insular in their own shells.  Not unlike the characters in 
2001:  A SPACE ODYSSEY, people just do not seem to be connecting with 
each other.  The middle section of the film is set in a frenetic world 
like from TOTAL RECALL OF BLADERUNNER BEYOND THUNDERDOME.  The viewer 
should be warned that this is a film of about two and a half hours.  
Parts of the film, particularly toward the end when the pace slows, 
seem drawn out as it is.  If the viewer is expecting the film to wrap 
up, the final reel may seem interminable.

The story follows David (played by Haley Joel Osment), the first and 
only robot who has been given a capacity to love.  David is built for a 
couple, Monica and Henry Swinton (Francis O'Connor and Sam Robards), 
whose own son Martin is in a frozen state.  At first Monica wants no 
part of an artificial surrogate son, but that resolve starts to 
crumble.  The story takes off from there.  This is a lot like the plot 
of BICENTENNIAL MAN or Ray Bradbury's "I Sing the Body Electric," but 
the story goes places that those stories do not.  It would be a spoiler 
to say how, but eventually we are introduced a friend for David, a 
Gigolobot named Gigolo Joe, programmed to dance through life as he 
performs his Gigolo function.  That programming cannot be dropped even 
when he is on the run for his life.  Like David's, his programming 
outlives its purpose.

Spielberg (or whoever) did a fairly good job of setting the story in 
some indeterminate future.  For once an automobile looks like it might 
have come from a future world.  In the first part the whole world seems 
subdued.  We go from one scene shot with a filter to give a hazy image, 
then we go to another scene with a lot of fractured pieces coming 
together.  A crisper image is used for the middle section of the film 
and toward the end the camera returns to a soft focus.  David, the main 
character, has a special makeup that makes his skin look glossy like 
smooth plastic.  Most of the film is shot in cold lifeless colors, 
though there are some reds and earth tones in the middle section of the 
film.  The middle section also has a faster pace with images suddenly 
coming very fast at the viewer.  It is like going from sensory 
deprivation to sensory overload.  The final part of the film is again 
slow and introspective.  Most Dreamworks films work an image of the 
moon into the story someplace, more or less as their trademark.  A.I.  
goes a little overboard in giving us a moon image that is hard to miss.
Several celebrity voices are used in the film, though frequently they 
are only subliminally noticeable.  I recognized Robin Williams as the 
voice of a futuristic vending machine, but reading the end-credits I 
realized I had missed several of the others.  It should make for an 
interesting game for owners of the future DVD to search out the other 
voices.

Steven Spielberg was perhaps a very good choice as a replacement for 
Kubrick.  A director of some stature was needed, but also because few 
directors could handle the poignancy of the final parts of the story.  
The film has already been criticized for its sentimentality, but the 
emotion is precisely the point.  Spielberg is one of the few directors 
of mass audience films who are not afraid to put emotion into a film 
when it is appropriate.  The critics who complain about Spielberg's 
sentimentality would rob cinema of much of its impact.  The final 
dilemma of this film is an emotional one and that is how the story 
should be told.  I rate A.I. a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the  
-4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					[email-masked]
					Copyright 2001 Mark R. Leeper

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