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Welcome to Tuesday. Here’s the line-up. Today, I’ll do some reviewing that seems to have slipped through the cracks. Tomorrow, no Hot Button, but in honor of the values of independence, there will be a special Civilian Voices on A.I. Thursday… back to normal.
Before I get to business, some business. July 4 was the date that I frequently mentioned as the “you’ll have it by” date for Hot Button merchandise. The mugs are in my possession and would have gone out late last week, except the wrong boxes were sent and if we shipped them like that, you would be getting $20 worth of broken pottery. The T-shirts and hats are due to be here before the end of the week. I just want to thank you all again for your patience and to apologize for the slowness of the process. Now you know why I write about movies and am not in the retail novelty business.
That written, on with the show…
I returned to A.I. on Monday. Honestly, I was hoping that I would like the film better and see some of what has inspired so many on the “I loved it” side of the argument over the film. As with most big scale films, the second trip was smoother. Some of the things that seemed really important the first time, like the celebrity vocal cameos, became less significant. I had a truly Kubrickian feeling when Spielberg went to black with David in the forest and came up on Gigolo Joe… signaling the act break simply and cleanly. But all things considered… not much of an improvement.
You may want to move on now if you are spoiler sensitive….
After some time away from the film, some things I consider mistakes are even more glaring. Some have rationalized that the intention was for David to bond with mommy and not “daddy,” who is never called “daddy” by Junior Roboto. Insanity! The film presents the question, “If a machine can love, can a human love it back?” Well… not if you set it up for absolute failure. Parental relationships are difficult enough without setting up the father to remain aloof – ironic, given that Sam Robards’ character is set up to be a sweetheart. But by the end of the first act, “daddy” seems to really dislike David… not that we see him show any affection for his birth child either.
Mommy’s behavior is even more despicable the second time around. She leaves the child alone in the woods, while she is fully aware of the dangers he will face. She rationalizes to herself that it’s okay because taking him back to the manufacturer is sure death, while leaving him pretty much defenseless to suffer is kind. This is not a very responsible parent. And in my mind’s eye, all she is really doing is avoiding her own responsibility for her grief. What she doesn’t know is less painful. Her fear is real, but her love is not. She had other options and took the easiest one… for her.
Then there are the small acts of violence. Remember the look on her face when her son brings her Pinocchio to read? Does she make another choice? No. Does she read to her “sons” as equals, one on each side? No. And what really gets her off about David in the first place? Unconditional, blind, single-focus, simple, absolute love. And when the going gets tough, her “son” is treated more callously than she treated her sick son’s play toy, Teddy.
How about that second act? When we meet Gigolo Joe, he is with a woman who has apparently been beaten by her last lover. Think about that… beaten by her last lover. And do we get to deal with the weight of that… the idea of a woman, in her pain and fear, turning to a Mecha… and perhaps finding real and reasonable comfort? No. Because this version of A.I. has a sex robot that really doesn’t get sexual, except to throw out some of the most obvious clichés in the history of singles bars. And when he plays music, the songs are old-fashioned romantic songs… is that what every woman wants? Personally, I love those songs… but does every woman want that as their background? The guy changes accents and hair color, why not music?
The dumping ground sequence is perhaps the best in the film. The idea of a race of people who scours the garbage to reassemble themselves and to survive is a very powerful one. However it, too, is incomplete. Is the dumping a coincidence or is it bait, set out by the Flesh Fair team? Is there a robot underground? Is there anyone who wants to help the robots survive? What is the political significance of unlicensed robots? Why is David unlicensed? He never removed whatever tags he had… or are we assuming that he had no markings at all? (By the way… the kids at the pool wonder and so should we… does David have a penis? What would it mean if he did… or didn’t?)
At the Flesh air itself, Adorable Little Girl leads Hip Young Dad to David, thinking he’s real. HYD wants to save David, but why? Does he just want to exploit him more effectively or does he believe that David is important? And what kind of jackass has his little daughter at a sideshow event which is primarily focused on the destruction of near-sentient life? Doe she take her to watch animals get destroyed at the pound on the weekend?
Sex City looks a lot like Universal City Walk here in L.A… just a little raunchier, though I’ve seen some scary stuff on weekend nights over there. But even if I don’t jump all over Dr. Know… and I am a lot less bothered by that sequence than most who don’t really like the film seem to be… what is the subtext of Dr. Know. Here you have a sex robot who believes in this mechanical device – quite sophisticated when you think about it… he’s a big data bank – almost as a religious icon. And indeed, when push comes to shove, Dr. Know kicks out information that seems to be coming from a place that is beyond his norms. A fascinating idea… Dr. Know IS the Wizard of Oz for robots. Humans come to him and ask their silly questions. But when robots come, he gives them the real stuff! Nahhhh… why bother making the stew too thick?
Don’t even get me started on how sick the William Hurt character is to recreate his dead son as a replacement robot for all the world. But what about that powerful moment when David kills his doppelganger, who seems to be a manufacturing a generation more sophisticated than David? David’s passion to be singular in powerful. But does his easy entry into being a murderer mean that Mommy was right to get rid of him? Would her natural son been his first kill? “Daddy?”
And David’s suicide attempt doesn’t exactly generate faith in the concept of a child who loves either. Is the realization that we are not all completely unique to the universe responded to best by trying to kill ourselves? No one would make it through high school.
The finale… well, what can I say? The glory of love is that it exists in a complex world. It’s easy to love in a pre-apple Garden of Eden. The mark of a great parental love is the parent’s ability to give that comfort and security to a child in the midst of the chaos that life is. Would any real child be so comforted by one perfect day with mommy in light of the fact that she would be gone forever the next day? Or would any child prefer more time with their imperfect parents whose love is real? As an adult who hasn’t had my back scratched by mommy in a decade or so, I guess there is some sweet notion of having one of those great days again. But I am an adult now. Perfection has become defined by the strength of consistency from the people I love. Anyone can fling. The test comes with time.
And so it shall for A.I. Maybe time will treat A.I. well, like a Kubrick movie. Maybe not. I still say that I would have preferred a true Kubrick movie or a true Spielberg movie. Don’t tease me with Brendan Gleeson’s racist rage against the machines and never pay it off? A Flesh Fair with a daring escape… that’s Spielberg. Gleeson with a sex robot in the trailer, coming out into the center ring and flicking on the robots pain sensors so he’ll feel everything and then railing against the dangers of machines in our lives… that’s Spielberg. In the Spielberg movie, Gigolo Joe dances in shadows. In the Kubrick movie, Gigolo Joe’s “brain” figures out what the woman he is with would most like and then he does it so smoothly and expertly that she really will think twice about going back to human men. In a Spielberg, there is family conflict around the new robot kid. In a Kubrick, David goes to a woman who has lost her son and husband and who needs his love as much as he needs hers (by programming), but who can’t deal with the guilt of replacing them with a machine, so she sends him away.
Of course, I don’t really know exactly how Kubrick influenced Spielberg or what Kubrick might have done. I’m sure that S.K. (no G) would have surprised the hell out of me. But the film that exists… never really got me… either time. I wish it had.
