[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: A.I.

On Wed, 22 May 2002, Sweet & Tender Hooligan wrote:
> It's not answers that I wanted from the film. Indeed, I prefer films -
> like the aforementioned "Blade Runner" - that /don't/ provide all the
> answers. What I wanted was for the questions to be explored more
> provocatively. These are complex issues that "A.I." tackled, but they
> were handled in a perfunctory manner, and always punctuated by a
> lingering close-up of Osment's dewey-eyed gaze.

Of Osment's *creepy* dewey-eyed gaze -- that's the point.  :)

BTW, the Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote an excellent review of
the film, which you can access here:

   http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/2001/0107/010713.html

   If the best movies are often those that change the rules, Steven
   Spielberg's sincere, cockeyed, serious, and sometimes masterful
   realization of Stanley Kubrick's ambitious late project deserves to be
   a contender. All of Kubrick's best films fall into one vexing category
   -- they're strange, semi-identified objects that we're never quite
   prepared for. They're also the precise opposite of Spielberg's films,
   which ooze cozy familiarity before we've figured out what they are or
   what they're doing to us. If A.I. Artificial Intelligence -- a film
   whose split personality is apparent even in its two-part title -- is as
   much a Kubrick movie as a Spielberg one, this is in large part because
   it defamiliarizes Spielberg, makes him strange. Yet it also
   defamiliarizes Kubrick, with equally ambiguous results -- making his
   unfamiliarity familiar. Both filmmakers should be credited for the
   results -- Kubrick for proposing that Spielberg direct the project and
   Spielberg for doing his utmost to respect Kubrick's intentions while
   making it a profoundly personal work.

   I can't agree with colleagues who label A.I. a failure because it's
   neither fish nor fowl -- by which they often mean a failed Spielberg
   movie, not a successful or even semisuccessful Kubrick one. Neither
   fish nor fowl strikes me as precisely what a good SF movie should be --
   it's certainly what 2001: A Space Odyssey was when it opened in 1968
   before puzzled viewers, myself included. Of course 2001 qualifies as a
   stranger-than-usual Kubrick film, so perhaps it belongs in a different
   category altogether.

   David Denby writes in the New Yorker, "Whatever is wrong with A.I. --
   and a great deal is wrong -- it's the first American movie of the year
   made by an artist." He's not only trashing the work of hundreds of
   filmmakers whose work he hasn't seen -- which must come from yearning
   for a world much simpler than our own, a yearning Spielberg generally
   speaks to -- but is also making it clear that he has only one artist in
   mind, and it isn't Kubrick. Denby treated Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's
   final film, with the kind of dismissive contempt that would have seemed
   excessive if it had been ladled on a James Bond feature, and I can only
   surmise that for him, Kubrick doesn't even qualify as a bad artist,
   alive or dead. So Denby must have been hoping for another Spielberg
   film, much as I was hoping -- even less realistically -- for another
   Kubrick. But only if you accept that A.I. can satisfy neither
   expectation will you understand the film's special achievements, which
   include redefining and expanding our sense of both filmmakers.

   I find A.I. so fascinating, affecting, and provocative that I don't
   much care whether it's a masterpiece or not -- a verdict that won't be
   determined for months or years anyway and that would be useful right
   now mainly to exhibitors and DreamWorks executives. The example of both
   filmmakers' previous works and their often hysterical receptions should
   have taught us the folly of hasty evaluations. How many people are
   still calling 2001 "stupid" and "a celebration of cop-out," as Pauline
   Kael did, or Saving Private Ryan the film "to end all wars," as the New
   Yorker trumpeted on a cover wraparound? Calling a movie a masterpiece
   is in some cases little more than an impatient desire to close off
   discussion of its ambiguities and uncertainties, to deny that it's a
   living, and therefore evolving, work of art. A.I., which often
   resembles two slightly distorting mirrors facing each other, is likely
   to unsettle and confound us for some time to come -- and that's
   entirely to its credit.

   Unlike Denby, I don't think that Spielberg's being an artist places him
   in some special category, and the flag-waving hypocrisy of Saving
   Private Ryan is one of the examples I could cite as a dubious use of
   his artistry. Given the different kinds of art they've made, I also
   wonder whether it's possible to reconcile the values of a "successful"
   Spielberg with those of a "successful" Kubrick in the same film. A.I.
   is, unavoidably, something of a shotgun marriage, though that's what
   allows it to defamiliarize Kubrick and Spielberg -- and the usual
   meaning of four stars. A.I. is one of the most poetic and haunting
   allegories about the cinema that I can think of, and whoever made it
   possible deserves to be roundly applauded. It's also the most
   philosophical film in Kubrick's canon, the most intelligent in
   Spielberg's, and quite possibly the film with the most contemporary
   relevance that either one has made since Kubrick released Dr.
   Strangelove in 1964.

   [ snip ]

--- 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

---------------
Unsubscribe by going to http://www.actwin.com/OtR/
References: