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Re: A.I.

On Wed, 22 May 2002, Sweet & Tender Hooligan wrote:

> > > Important?  Nah.  Just more sentimental hoo-hah from Spielberg.
> >
> > You jest, of course.  :)  I mean, Kubrick's fingerprints are all over
> > that film . . .
>
> His fingerprints, yes.  His courage, no.
>
> One of the hallmarks of Kubrick's work is his propensity for taking
> common situations and turning them into something disturbing (think "The
> Shining" or "Lolita"), and, conversely, to take creepy situations and
> turn them into something beautiful - and thereby all the more disturbing
> (think "A Clockwork Orange" or "Eyes Wide Shut").  Both of these effects
> are often achieved by Kubrick's determination to explore the situation,
> visually, from oblique angles and unconventional editing techniques
> (witness the brilliant scene in "The Shining" when Jack stalks his wife
> up the staircase, or, in the same film, when Jack is talking to his wife
> through the locked pantry door).  He refuses to blink when he is
> exploring these situations, and that's part of their power.
>
> He also has a flair for shocking, haunting images that smolder in one's
> memory - the opening scene of "A Clockwork Orange", or Vincent D'Onofrio's
> grimacing glare in "Full Metal Jacket", or Tom Cruise's "trial" at the
> masquerade orgy in "Eyes Wide Shut".
>
> Finally, Kubrick does not allow emotions are not permitted to muddle the
> issue, to color the idea, or cue the viewer.  The ideas or situations
> are presented more or less at face value, and the implications are left
> up to the viewer.
>
> All three of things are qualities that are missing from "A.I.", and,
> perhaps not so curiously, are qualities that Steven Spielberg has never
> exhibited.  That's not to discredit Spielberg; he's a fine filmmaker in
> his own right (though he often thwarts his best films with a maudlin
> sensibility).  But this is /definitely/ a Spielberg film.

I found a fair bit of creepiness in _A.I._, and I think Haley Joel Osment
did a brilliant job of suggesting the bleak, obsessive inhumanity that
lurks beneath the gooey sentimentality through which we *seem* to be
encouraged to look at his character.  The emotional overtones that appear
to "cue the viewer" are actually pretty thin, and you can see right
through them to the bleaker stuff beneath -- and I did find myself haunted
by the film and impressed by the visuals, though perhaps not haunted by
the visuals themselves.  (The absence of a *shocking* visual does not
necessarily make it a non-Kubrick film -- where is the "shocking" visual
in, say, _Barry Lyndon_?)  Of course, as I've often said before, it's open
to question whether Spielberg himself "gets" what this or any other
Kubrick film is all about -- when Kubrick died, and Spielberg introduced
the Kubrick retrospective at the Oscars, he made some nonsensical remark
about Kubrick's films giving us "hope" or some such thing, and I had to
wonder if Spielberg had been watching the same Kubrick films I had.

> > . . . and if it does have a superficial Spielbergian sentimentality,
> > the underlying story is still a very bleak and depressing one.
>
> It's poignant, sure, but what's so bleak about it?

The death of God, the death of humanity, the idea that all relationships
may be nothing more than functions through which individuals gratify
themselves, etc.  The fact that David creates a simulacrum of his mother
(and purges her of husband, son, and anything else that might have been
important to the *real* mother) in order to satisfy his own selfish
emotional needs, just as he was a simulacrum of Professor Hobby's son,
created to satisfy the selfish emotional needs of Hobby and others, left
me feeling very, very hollow.  I certainly did not think that it was a
feel-good coda to the film, as many critics accused it of being.

> > But Moses supposes erroneously!  _Singin' in the Rain_ fan, are ya?
>
> What, the best musical ever made? But of course.  :)

I would reserve that praise for _Fiddler on the Roof_, but _Singin'_ is up
there.  :)

> > > Anyway, it seemed to me that this story had already been told - way
> > > back in 1982.  It was called "Blade Runner," and it was a much more
> > > interesting and effective film.  :)
> >
> > Maybe when Ridley Scott releases his *next* version of the film (and
> > there *is* another one coming -- that "director's cut" in the early
> > '90s was apparently not quite what the advertising claimed it was), I
> > will finally begin to see what all the fuss is about.  :)
>
> The film simply *works*.

Sigh.  Are you going to make me watch this film *again*?  :)

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 "I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
      Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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