Image: Warner Brothers
My favorite film blog, Cinematical, had a list of the ten best sci-fi films of this past decade and number one on the list was Stephen Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence. I had only seen it once in the theaters when it first came out and was curious to see how the film stood up with nearly 9 years since its debut. I also was interested in seeing if certain aspects of the film resonated better now that I am now a parent myself. Unfortunately, my reaction to the film was much as it was the first time I saw it.
A.I. tells the story of a future where ocean levels have risen and the human population reduced significantly due to scarcity of resources including food. As a result, couples are limited in the number of children they can have, if they are allowed to have any at all. We are introduced to a couple, Henry and Monica, whose child is cryogenically frozen until medical science advances enough to treat his illness. The father, works for Cybertronics, a robotics company whose business model is to supply the remains of human civilization with workers, pleasure-bots or anything else that helps fill the human need for personal contact. This leads to a team creating a robot boy, David, who can feel genuine love to be sold as a product to parents who were never licensed to have children.
The parts of the story that worked the best were those that followed David’s interaction with Monica’s real son after he recovers from his illness, Monica’s eventual decision to return David to Cybertronics and David’s journey with Gigolo Joe, a male prostitute robot, from the Flesh Fair to Manhattan. The future world Spielberg created is thoroughly realized and feels ‘lived in.’ Given that the sci-fi film genre has a tendency towards sterility in the environments they inhabit, this is a welcome achievement.
But while the action of the film worked well, what surprised me most, however, was how I failed to identify emotionally with Monica as a parent or David as a child/mecha. The film spends a considerable amount of time attempting to establish a relationship between the two. David certainly acts like a child; inquisitive, playing games and pantomiming the family. Monica’s initial reaction was how weird yet lifelike David is. But she keeps her distance emotionally as she is not yet ready to accept a mecha replacement for her real son.
Image: Warner Brothers
Helping to establish a surrealism to David’s interactions with the family is the musical score by John Williams. During these scenes, the music takes on an eerie quality that accentuated the fact that David was not real. More so, the score seemed to deliberately cast doubt and uncertainty in the situation which bordered on spookiness. This continually prevented me from seeing David through Monica’s eyes - especially after she decides to keep David and engages his imprinting mechanism and thereby activating the robot’s love for her. Without establishing why exactly Monica decided to imprint, the rest of the story of David’s interactions with his ‘mother’ and her initial reciprocal behavior remain disconnected. As such, her reuniting with David at the end of the film - even for a day - fails to resonate with me on an emotional level, and I find myself just waiting for the film to end.
Compounding the problems is how the film feels more like a series of vignettes, rather than a cohesive film. Each section seems to have its own story to tell, whether we’re looking at a mother coping with the loss of their child and how medical science can prolong grief, how humanity rallies against mecha and the grotesqueness of the Flesh Fairs, ideas on how a future society would create a new working class of robots, and one of the more fun concepts of alien archeologists uncovering the lost civilization of humanity.
Looking at A.I.’s core message consider that already in today’s society, people love their pets as much as children and robotic pet toys have demonstrated having therapeutic qualities for elderly individuals. Toyota and Honda each are creating robotic caregiver robots. Should science and manufacturing get to the point where robots like David are a reality, I have no doubt that humans can and will develop a capacity to care for these mechanical companions; some no doubt will even love them.
And while I understand David’s love for his ‘mother’ and the powerful journey he takes to attain an impossible dream, the film fails to convince me that Monica truly feels the same way towards the mecha child. This was the interaction I was hoping to identify with as a parent and it surprised me how much the film discouraged me from relating with Monica. So as a vehicle for exploring this idea above all others, Spielberg’s A.I. fell flat for me. Which is unfortunate, because it’s a film I really want to like.
Visit Cinematical’s list of the top 10 sci-fi movies of this past decade.
