Other Reviews in this Series: Duel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Empire of the Sun, Amistad, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds, Munich, Lincoln
Other Spielberg Reviews: Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Bridge of Spies
(If you haven't already, check out my new archive in the corner ---->)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Steven Spielberg, Ian Watson
Cast: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, William Hurt, Sam Robards, Jake Thomas
Runtime: 146 mins.
2001
In the 70's legendary director Stanley Kubrick began developing a story about a childlike artificial intelligence who was programmed to display genuine affection. This project remained on the perpetual backburner, as Kubrick purportedly believed the main character would need to be created by special effects, and effects had not yet reached the necessary level of quality.* Decades passed, writers and producers came and went, and in the 90's Kubrick finally decided to hand the movie over to his friend and collaborator, Steven Spielberg. He simply decided that the film's content fit Spielberg's sensibilities better than his own. Years later Spielberg began work in earnest on the project, but Kubrick died in 1999 and was not able to see the fruits of his passionate labor.
*It turns out all Kubrick needed was a certifiable genius child actor, and Haley Joel Osment 100% fits that bill. His work as David contains an incredible amount of nuance.
Artificial Intelligence follows a young robotic boy named David through his entire existence. This means that the film is packed with content, from David's origin as one scientist's revolutionary idea, to his life with the mother that he loves, to an odyssean journey home, to an existential final fate. As the film travels with David through the epochs of his life, it hits several jarring tonal shifts. This has incited scads of speculation regarding which of the two geniuses at the heart of the film originated which of the film's segments. The movie does become rather humpty bumpty as it progresses, and certain arcs carry far more weight than others. Folks claim that such and such sequence belongs to Spielberg, such and such belongs to Kubrick.
I would like to tell you three things in quick succession that are all contradictory. The first is that those people are wrong. They tend to identify three arcs for the movie: the domestic beginning, the darker middle, and the saccharine ending. They attribute parts 1 and 3 to Spielberg and part 2 to Kubrick. Spielberg, as well as other writers who have worked on the project, have outright said that the opposite is true: the bookends were more Kubrick's, and the middle was more Spielberg's.
The second is that none of the speculation matters. Kubrick may have conceived the project, but he did not himself work on any of the finished product. Spielberg gets sole directing and screenwriting credit, so we have to see this and judge this as a Spielberg movie through and through.
The third is that, all things considered, even if it isn't fair to the movie, we can't forget about Kubrick. The unique status of A.I. as a quasi-collaboration between two of the most visionary directors ever to live makes it a great opportunity to speculate about the usefulness of auteur theory. Encyclopedia Britannica defines "auteur theory" as follows: "The auteur theory... holds that the director, who oversees all audio and visual elements of the motion picture, is more to be considered the 'author' of the movie than is the writer of the screenplay." This is a crucial claim. Academics are able to point to the singular author of a novel, not to discover the intention of the work, but to contextualize it. Even in theatre we can point to a single playwright, then give the director credit for their "interpretation." It's more difficult in film because a movie is such a massively collaborative effort, and there is almost without exception only one finished product per screenplay written, so we don't get to see different directors' different "interpretations." Auteur theory puts the onus of responsibility/credit on the director's shoulders.
This is made simple by writer/directors, who we generally call auteurs, like the Coen brothers or Quentin Tarantino. They have clear ownership over their finished product. But this is problematized by the films churned out by the Marvel machine, a studio that makes producer-driven rather than director-driven films.
So we return to A.I. and its clunky insightfulness. Rarely in the history of filmmaking have we had a collaboration between two such influential minds whose filmmaking styles couldn't be more antithetical to one another, and whose contributions to the film could be so openly and historically tracked. Combined with the truly astounding philosophical commentary of the film itself, this has to be one of the most flatout interesting cinematic artifacts that has been created in recent memory.
If we are to step back like responsible critics and divorce the film from all of that, it's got a lot of problems. The tightest and most flawlessly executed sequence of the movie is the stretch of time during which David is living with his surrogate family. Spielberg has proven time and time again that domestic drama is his bread and butter, and here he walks the line that only he can walk so well between cliche, lighthearted humor, and utter tragedy. David's slow incorporation into the family unit is told with a breathtaking sequence that involves reflection after reflection in its mise en scene. I've been talking about Spielberg's propensity for using reflective surfaces to open up a shot since my review of Duel, and this sequence might be the culmination of that skill. These six shots all take place within about a minute of each other.
In each of these shots, the reflections perform a very specific function within the scene. The first shot deliberately superimposes the face of surrogate David over that of the lost human son. The second shot emphasizes how the mother feels overwhelmed and surrounded by the situation, both its strangeness and its inevitability. The third shot shows David's obsession with filial love and parental figures (the shot pulls focus to reveal a mobile of a mother and child, with a heart-shaped hole in the mother's chest). And so on. Beyond all that, though, the onslaught of reflections brings home some wider themes and feelings. They position David as an alien creature invading the home space (especially shots four and six). They emphasize the crippling self-awareness of a mother who wants to love again, but simply cannot forget that her new love object is inhuman. They constantly confront us with the question of identity: What does this robot see when he looks in a mirror? If he sees a person, is that enough to make him one?
If I had to rate this arc alone it would probably be a 9.5 approaching a 10. It's eerie and complex without being overstated. The score, cinematography, acting, and production design are all just about as good as it gets. Unfortunately, the movie must necessarily shift gears.
We are suddenly deposited in the chic boots of Gigolo Joe, a sex robot played by Jude Law. Joe is not a very interesting character. It's through no fault of Law's, he does alright. It's just that Joe is programmed to want one thing: to pleasure women. The movie tries to complicate his role by teaming him up with David, but compared to David's complexity Joe never compels us. He's more of a novelty (like the sex robots themselves).
This is the arc in which the world opens up, which is neat, and we do get plenty of brilliant moments like the beautiful moonrise that turns into an instrument of terror.
The larger world never engages us as much as the much smaller world of the first arc, though. I do blame Spielberg for this. Gigolo Joe's world is seedy and depraved. Spielberg has always shied away from sex and lust as a filmmaker, and it hurts him here. Spielberg may have had more to do with this middle arc than Kubrick, but that doesn't mean Kubrick couldn't have done it better. His films were superior at keeping the audience at a remove while compelling them at the same time. Instead, we get a sex robot who just talks about sex all the time rather than one whose degradation is tangible to us.
Then we transition to the final sequence, a sort of fairy tale ending-turned-grand sci-fi conceit. Pacewise this sequence feels a bit rambling and unfocused, maybe owing to its fairy tale influences. It's certainly dreamier.
The way things play out has been the source of much controversy in the years since A.I.'s release. Never have I encountered a movie with an ending that has created two such oppositional camps. Half of the people who watch A.I. believe that the ending is an unearned saccharine load of sentimentalism, and that it should have gone way darker. The other half of the people who watch A.I. cannot understand how anyone could read it as a happy ending, because they find the implications to be tragic on a level higher than most tragedies aspire to. I tend towards the latter camp, and the minutiae of that argument are something to tackle at another time, but I do believe the existence of the debate is owing to the results of two very different filmmakers trying to be on the same page. The ending is simply confusing, on a logical and an emotional level, although that isn't always a bad thing.
I can't call A.I. one of Spielberg's best movies, but I can surely call it one of his most interesting. Which is better in the long run? A.I. has next level special effects, a fascinating structure, and incredible craftsmanship. I certainly plan on revisiting it regularly and trying to unravel the mysteries and metamysteries within.
3.5 / 5 BLOBS
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