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A.I.

A.I. Overreaches It's Grasp

The first word I got about this movie was hints of a drama about a robot programmed to love. I wouldn't have paid it any attention-after such bowwows as Bicentennial Man, Short Circuit and even Arnold Schwartzeneger's hammed up "I know now why you cry" in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, I figured the theme had been done to death, and the most a filmmaker could hope for nowadays would be to create a realistic depiction of a human-looking robot. "Remember Schwarzenegger putting on sunglasses over his robot eye in Terminator? We can do better than that these days, right?"

But for Spielberg's and Kubrick's name placed together, I still would have held this attitude, even after seeing a few of the previews in which David (Haley Joel Osment) and Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) are chased by toothed motorcycles looking like a mix between Blade Runner and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. These later previews threw out all previous conceptions of the film, and these two legendary filmmakers' names placed together was enough to raise my attention. Never mind Spielberg's somewhat recent less-than-satisfactory delivery with Amistad and The Lost World: Jurassic Park II; a creative marriage as unlikely as this only happens once every millenium.

Here is a film which sets up interesting conflicts that the story simply can’t address in the time frame given. A three hour movie wouldn’t do it. A four hour movie wouldn’t do it. It’s debatable whether a miniseries would or would not do it. It’s a mark of Spielberg’s genius that he is able to even attempt this, and it is a mark of Osment’s acting ability that he is able to carry such ramifications through a mecha-boy’s bland innocence and manufactured pathos, but it does leave you ultimately unsatisfied and faintly edgy, as if you’d just glimpsed something and wanted to see more.

William Hurt gives a rather cardboard performance in the film's opening as Dr. Hobby (the symbolism behind the name is intriguing), who wishes to create a robot who can actually love and not just give off indications of love. The debate that goes on between Hurt and his scientific cohorts is supposed to set the stage for the ethical dilemma of creating human emotion, but all it really does is feed our curiosity about a)
the robots that already exist, and b) the one Hurt is about to create.

Flash forward to the Henry and Monica Swinton family (Sam Robards and Frances O’Connor), who are waiting for their son Martin (Jake Thomas) to emerge from a coma while frozen cryogenically. Henry is offered use of Hurt's new model David and presents it to his wife as a gruesome substitute for their absent son. Monica freaks out, as would any of us, but eventually decides to give David a try. What's particularly interesting about the interplay here is that David cannot be mistaken for anything but artificial at the film's outset. He moves too quietly to keep track of, he smiles a little too fixedly, and does not even pretend to be
like the family he is supposed to live with. "I can never sleep," he tells Monica when being "put to bed," "but I can lie quiet for hours."

Monica finally decides to implant affection towards her into David's circuits, which makes him permanently fixated on her and raises his love towards her exponentially. For all intents and purposes, this works fine
until the son emerges from his hypersleep, on metal legs (offering an interesting comparison with David's outward humanness) but otherwise whole and intact (and a decided brat, to boot). The son engages in several attacks born of sibling rivalry that would be normal in many respects (he has the ingenuity to have Monica read the tale of Pinnochio to David, which fascinates him immediately) if it weren't so one-sided. David is finally deemed dangerous enough to dispose of when a neighborhood boy scares David enough to cause him to pull Martin underwater and almost kill him.

Monica, at this crucial moment in the film, commits a ridiculous kindhearted action reminiscent more of The Fox and the Hound than Pinnochio: rather than see David dismantled, she "sets him free" in the woods with Teddy, her son's childhood mechanical bear. David, of course, cares less about being left alone than he does about being separated from her, and her abandonment of him leaves us despising her and inwardly urging David to move on and find a new mom, or at least some kind of emotional fixation.

David's journey takes him through a world where robots are hated passionately by humans, who perceive them as a coldhearted replacement of their own inherent values and worth. We are treated to a carnival atmosphere as outdated mechas are burned in acid and shot through flaming hoops to the delighted cheers of human spectators. He is befriended by Gigolo Joe (Law) and, in his frenzied efforts to find the Blue Fairy from Pinnochio so that he may be human and that Monica may love him, he makes his way back, slowly but inevitably, towards his creator.

The film makes several left-turns here, none of which can be even hinted at without robbing the film of much of its emotional impact. There is a definite progression from Spielberg to Kubrick, the ending being something of a hybrid between the two. Osment gives a stellar performance, particularly in scenes where his emotional intensity needs to be extreme without seeming exaggerated - he is, after all, a twelve-year-old gushing out platitudes such as "I love you, Mommy," and it would be almost sickeningly cute if it weren't so disquieting. Law's performance is hysterical at points, but never gets much beyond a humorous appeal since he seems to enjoy his existence enough to acknowledge some sort of subservience to humans while attempting to dodge the law at the same time. Other robots whom we see disposed of callously and contemptuously evoke more feeling, mostly because of their fleeting presence on the screen - particularly memorable is the unnamed nanny-mecha's automated affection towards David as part of her nanny programming.

The special effects are incredible, taking form in the robots' makeup, the futuristic vehicles and cityscapes, and the rendition of the drowned coastal cities after the melting of the polar ice caps. But these visual masterpieces do not completely steal the show. Osment can still convince us he's feeling any emotion the directors tell him to, and when he all but breaks down because of the loss of his mother, we believe it and we feel sympathy for him, but we are also frightened of him. It's a shame Spielberg did not explore the ethical ramifications of manufactured emotion and loyalty more fully, but this would have resulted in a three-and-a-half hour film instead. David's struggle is not so much a struggle to fit in, but to fill his insatiable need for love, and it is a well-chronicled and moving story. Regardless of your opinion of the film's rather puzzling end, you will leave the theater with a little something to think about.

-Long