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Re: A. I.

On Wed, 22 May 2002, Don Smith wrote:

> > I certainly did not think that it was a feel-good coda to the film, as
> > many critics accused it of being.
>
> I felt, and I've only seen it the once, that the ending was *trying* to
> be a feel-good coda, which was so incongruous with all that went before
> that it ended up being the creepiest part of the movie.  Do you think
> Spielberg *intended* it to be a happy ending?  

I really don't know.  Remember when Spielberg gave that very happy-happy
intro to the Kubrick retrospective at the Oscars a few years back?  I
couldn't decide if he had seen something in those films that I hadn't, or
if he was b.s.ing us because everything we say about dead geniuses at the
Oscars has to be positive, or if he truly didn't "get" Kubrick's films.

I have a pretty similarly perplexed reaction to the ending of _A.I._ -- I
don't know if Spielberg truly thought it was a happy ending, was trying to
trick us into thinking it was a happy ending, or was trying to draw our
attention to the artificiality of this "happy ending", or what.

> > I found a fair bit of creepiness in _A.I._ . . .
>
> The teddy bear was creepy, the robot-smashing entertainment was creepy,
> the scene where Osment's robot gets abandoned in the woods was *really*
> creepy.

And don't forget the scene where Osment smashes his doppelganger!  Given
that we have been encouraged to think of the earlier robot-smashing as a
form of racist bigotry (the Chris Rock robot, the allusion to Spielberg's
earlier films _Schindler's List_ and _Amistad_), the sight of David
essentially "killing" one of his own kind was pretty brutal.

> The emptiness of the human relationships as portrayed contrasted with
> the robot's desparate desire to have one.

Interesting, yeah, the film seems to be about a character who desires
something that everybody else seems to have ... except nobody really has
it.  But perhaps that's not being fair to his adoptive parents -- they
clearly have some sort of loving relationship with their own son, the
biological one that is.  Then again, they did try to "replace" him with a
machine -- hmmm.  (In the original short story, the couple is childless,
and does not have any biological children to replace -- and the story ends
with the couple receiving news that they have finally been granted a
permit to have a child, and wondering what to do with the robot.  In fact,
it isn't until they ask "What do we do with *him*?" on the very last page
of the story that the story reveals that David is, in fact, a robot --
until then, we're supposed to think that only Teddy is a machine.)

> This desire was coupled with the ongoing reminders that the desire
> itself, as realistic as it was, was programmed; artificial, hence
> raising the question as to whether any of *our* loves are other than
> selfish and blind hunger, following out our own genetic programming,
> "dolled" up to look like something greater.

Exactly.

> Yeah, it was pretty creepy.

Yup.

> And then to have these robots come in at the end and talk about
> humanity's genius and greatness, and their quest to understand it... it
> just didn't gel.

I'm curious to know whether that was in the original script treatment or
not -- there may have been an intended irony there, which Spielberg failed
to communicate as strongly as he could have.

> As you say, the creation of the mother at the end (scientific nonsense,
> compared with the pretty good tech-savvy of the rest of the film),
> resulted in a completely hollow simulation of a loving relationship, for
> a hollow simulation of a child, and yet it was decked out with all the
> signals that we were *supposed* to cheer on this opportunity for the
> robot to fulfill his dream, as if he, like Pinocchio, had become a real
> boy, with the future robots standing in for the blue fairy.  We were
> given a warm glow around a truly horrifying travesty.

Sort of.  It actually left me feeling rather sad, though, because as the
camera pulls back from the bedroom window, where David and his "mother"
have just "died", we see Teddy climb up onto the bed and watch them.  And
no matter what anybody else says, Teddy is clearly at least as "human" or
emotional or "real" as the other characters.  He shows a strong sense of
self ("I am *not* a toy"), he addresses the mother as "Mommy" just as
David does, and he acts in strange, spontaneous, affectionate ways just
like the rest of us do (collecting the mother's lock of hair and stitching
it inside himself -- would a mere toy have keepsakes? -- and trying to
prevent David from hurting himself when David is about to eat the food).  
So when Teddy, who has cast his lot with David all this time, climbs up on
the bed and sits there and watches selfish little David abandon him, it
definitely felt sad, to me.  Of course, maybe he's only a machine ... but
if we are to think of David as "conscious" in any sense, then Teddy is,
too.  Indeed, he is arguably more self-aware, and shows greater signs of
"free will", and is more "real" in that sense, than David is.

> I was reminded of Act III of Thorton Wilder's _Our Town_, in which the
> dead Emily gets a chance to relive one day of her life, but finds the
> prospect of facing that vitality and possibility, with the *true*
> awareness of how fleeting it is, to be too horrible to contemplate.
> A.I. lacks that awareness, and seemed to me to be as if Emily had gone
> through with her one day, thus diminishing the value of real life and
> real experience.

Not familiar with that reference, but I appreciate the point.

> They should have just stopped with him under the ocean, looking at the
> fairy.  But then, if they had, would we be discussing it as much?  ;-)

Exactly.  :)

--- 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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