Movie 666

Robots learn their place in AI’s Flesh Fair

There are sections of A.I. Artificial Intelligence when director Steven Spielberg seems to be working hard to transcend the commercial imperatives of his earlier work and create a serious film with a new level of sophistication. Some of these sections are quite indebted to Stanley Kubrick, who spent a decade envisioning the A.I. project before his death in 1999.

A.I. is actually a rather strange movie in this regard. A.I. is trapped somewhere between an homage to Kubrick that explores Kubrickian themes of robot intelligence and the social hierarchy of man versus machine, and the corporate aesthetic of Steven Spielberg with its mainstream panderings and commercial prerogatives.

In A.I., when Henry and Monica Swinton’s child Martin appears irrecoverably lost in a coma, a commercial robot producer provides them with David, a cyborg child with “the ability to love.” Monica’s love for David grows in proportion to the child’s love for her. Monica’s love, in essence, is more about satisfying her own need to be loved than any other factor.

Spielberg plays with this uncomfortable premise at the risk of alienating the mainstream audience that he has so zealously courted over the years. A.I. calls into question not only the meaning and mechanics of parental love and the unwavering love of a child for its mother, but the role of children as a type of material possession that are owned by parents (and perhaps created to serve the emotional needs of parents) in a product driven culture. Likewise, A.I. explores the very nature of human emotion, since the emotions humans display in the film differ little from the electronic imperatives of machines (a theme more fully explored by Stanley Kubrick in his 2001: A Space Odyssey).

The glare: Kubrick’s ACO

Later, Martin makes a surprise recovery from his coma and a jealous rivalry begins between him and David for their mother’s affections. These scenes are some of the strongest in the movie, well-handled by a director with a penchant for child actors. Martin and the neighborhood boys conduct an impromptu pain test on David with a butcher knife. In this creepy scene, Spielberg characterizes humans as both curious and cruel. Again, a glimpse of Kubrick is seen here, especially as the aggressive Martin drops his forehead and lifts his eyes in the familiar animal glare of Alex from A Clockwork Orange and Jack from The Shining.

Later, Spielberg gives us a scene of humans validating their own humanity by disposing of renegade robots in the Flesh Fair, a type of gladiator circus. Although the production values of the Flesh Fair are disappointing to say the least (bearing more resemblance to the Comedy Channel’s Battlebots than model science fiction like Blade Runner) the scene is thematically compelling as humans and machines contend with their physical nature and contingent social status, again, evoking themes from 2001.

Call these scenes Spielberg’s homage to Stanley Kubrick — a cold portrait of humanity trapped in a constellation of animal violence, ego and technological capacity. These episodes are dramatically and thematically interesting and successfully renew some of the questions Kubrick explored in his films, while at the same time lacking the visual intensity and unique visual crafting of such films. To be fair, these scenes are characterized too by patented Spielberg: child curiosity and its propensity for danger; middle class white people and their precocious children; cute animals that talk; relentless music that offers step by step emotional cues to the audience on how to feel; and an actorly style of screams, tears, and gaping jaws.

Unfortunately, the intensity generated by these thematically interesting scenes is short lived. Much of A.I. is haunted by the demons of greater corporate cinema, a genre Spielberg has worked hard to perpetuate and define over the years. A.I. attempts to appeal to every segment of the prospective audience (children, adults, science fiction buffs, action afficionados, Spielberg fans, Kubrick fans, teenyboppers, old folks) while sastisfying no one segment completely. The movie also makes an effort to clear up ambiguities and provide tidy answers to all questions in the film (so that no child is left behind). And ultimately, A.I. concludes in a forced, syrupy, happy way that absolves the audience from guilt, sadness, lingering questions, or any negative or critical implication (effectively protecting the viewer from any “disturbing” experience at the theater and leaving him or her or it ready for another trip to the multiplex the week after).

Really, the only corporate “signature” element truly missing from A.I. is the product plug for some fizzy sugar drink (although one might argue that the glowing moon that surfaces several times in the picture is reference to the Dreamworks SKG logo).

Even some of the thematic questions that make A.I. interesting are dumbed down through limp wristed storytelling that is determined not to challenge the capabilities of the audience. For instance, A.I. begins with a voiceover to let us know that most of the developing world has been destroyed by environmental disaster in the form of overpopulation and rising seas, while the rich nations have adopted mandatory birth control and use robots to improve their quality of life. There are quite a few ideas laden in this premise: the poor world suffers, while the rich play with robots (or destroy them in ultraconsumer Flesh Fairs for amusement); or perhaps, more sinisterly, machines represent a higher form of life than humans, since humans have destroyed their own planet and failed to construct a social order capable of managing their own excess. A.I. , however, never handles these issues in a forceful way — for instance, the way A Clockwork Orange deals with violence and social structures by using actual images and story plotting to illustrate what it describes.

City of Sin or Universal Citywalk?

Ultimately, A.I. is lazy science fiction. Point blank, it has some of the most un-creative production design for a speculative movie in recent memory. Mad Max provided a more compelling worldview using mohawks and motorcycles than A.I. provides with all of its cutting edge digital effects. With the notable exception of New York City submerged in water, set pieces in AI seem to take inspiration from such progressive models as Ikea furnishings (the house), Universal City Walk (the City of Sin), and the World Wrestling Federation (Flesh Fair). Vehicles are boring (the lame-named “amphibicopter” looks like iMac version of Blue Thunder ; tricycle cars are too goofy to be taken seriously), and the aliens are wispy and drippy replete with recycled almond-shaped heads (Whitley Striber should have patented his design).

Part of A.I.’s ultimate failure might be tied to expectations of what the film could have been if its original director Stanley Kubrick made the movie instead of Steven Spielberg. Kubrick, who originally conceived the film and had been working on the screenplay and envisioning the project for at least ten years (including shooting some preliminary test footage), died before creating the film. Given Kubrick’s tendencies towards perfectionism, it is possible that even had he lived another ten years, he might not have ever finished the project. No one can truly say what a Kubrick version of A.I. would have looked like — fans, Spielberg, Kubrick’s family, and maybe even the cryogenically revived Kubrick himself. This won’t stop the debate, however.

What can be safely assumed is that Kubrick’s A.I. would have been much more ambitious than what Spielberg has provided us with. To be fair, it is interesting to see some version of A.I. finally take shape and indeed some of the scenes, images, and questions in A.I. are genuinely interesting despite (or because of) the shadow of Kubrick hanging over the film. On the other hand, one cannot wonder if such a shamelessly commercial director as Spielberg was the worthy heir to the great Hollywood expatriot’s material and if so, whether a more suitable treatment would have been a documentary detailing the ten years of thought Kubrick put into this picture. The documentary might have included interviews with collaborators and those that knew Kubrick, a revelation of test footage, pre-production art and any other pre-visualization that had taken place.

AI: Artificial Intelligence, The Documentary? By Steven Spielberg? A movie not playing on 2500 screens over the extended Fourth of July weekend? It certainly would not attract the audience this film is gathering.

Related posts:

1. Stanley Kubrick and the Death of Cinema
2. Secret War: Will the Public Ever See Kubrick’s Fear and Desire?
3. Beautiful Losers Inspires Others to Be Losers Too
4. Kubrick’s Imaginary Western: One-Eyed Jacks
5. Spielberg’s Lilly Pond

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