Back to Basics – AI: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Come away, o human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand…

– W.B. Yeats

That poem, mentioned more than once in Steven Spielberg’s AI: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, cuts to the heart of a cautionary fable that has aged amazingly well. My thoughts on this collaboration – the next film in the 1001 Series -after the jump.

At the time of its release, AI was a much-ballyhooed moment in cinematic history. It was a collaboration between two masters of filmmaking that couldn’t possibly have more different styles. Here we would see a Stanley Kubrick story directed by Steven Spielberg. On the surface, this seemed like an odd pairing. As a co-worker of mine used to put it “Stanley lives in the dark – Steven just likes to play there”.

Sadly this team effort is not without questions, as Kubrick unfortunately passed away before the project went ahead. Thus understanding exactly where Kubrick’s ideas end and Spielberg’s begin is foggy at best, and might even contribute to what doesn’t work with this film (more on that later). That said, it is amazing to see touchstones of two geniuses in the same film. Only in AI can we get silhouettes against the moon and the chin-down-eyes-up glares.

At the turn of the millennium, man’s technological advances seemed to be working faster than our moral compass. We were so busy figuring out whether or not we could, that we never took a moment to figure out whether or not we should. Like Mary Shelley told us a century ago, we might be capable of creating life…but when creators start turning their backs on those they create, it leaves a void of indiscriminate love that no being is wired to handle.

that’s what makes AI hold up so well: its underlying thesis, which is probably best summed up by Jude Law’s character Gigolo Joe:

“She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you David, she cannot love you. You are neither flesh, nor blood…You were designed and built specific, like the rest of us. And you are alone now only because they tired of you, or replaced you with a younger model, or were displeased with something you said, or broke. They made us too smart, too quick, and too many. We are suffering for the mistakes they made because when the end comes, all that will be left is us. That’s why they hate us”

David (Haley Joel Osment) is momentarily able to make his parents very happy, but they have a deep sadness present in them with their human son critically ill. As Yeats tells us, it’s that type of human sadness that we can never understand. What’s worse, is how that sadness can turn to fear…and ultimately hate as we watch in the Flesh Fair sequence.

While people might have a right to feel threatened by machines created to curb over-population, it’s unfortunate they haven’t taken a moment to think about just how human these beings actually are. Through his journey, David becomes capable of feeling panic, sadness, fear, and ultimately depression. That’s pretty damned human for a machine, wouldn’t you say? In some ways it can be said that Monica (Frances O’Connor) understands this, since her heartbreak is palpable when she ultimately sends David away.

For its deep-seeded eeriness and its underlying question of human moral responsibility alone, this movie is a gem.

But then, there’s the ending…or should I say endings…

**If you’ve never seen the movie, at this point you might want to skip down to my conclusion**

This is where that Spielberg/Kubrick divide comes up more than anywhere else. I’ve never seen the original script, but I find it difficult to believe that the ending we’re given is the ending Kubrick had in mind all along. What’s worse is that there are three other points at which the film can end, and any of them would make for a better movie.

The film could have ended with a despondent David pitching himself off the skyscraper, and drowning in the sea below. He’d just learned the harsh human lesson that he wasn’t that unique, and that what he wanted most wasn’t possible. Why not close with the harsh reminder of what happens when we don’t teach and protect our own offspring?

Or, the film could have ended with David sitting in the Helipod staring and praying intently to the Blue Fairy. It would have been an sadly ambiguous masterstroke, and befitting his own determination. Or the film even could have ended with the humanoid mecca (not aliens as they are often criticized to be), sitting David down and telling him how valuable he is. They have a Blue Fairy entity explain to him that he is their only link to humanity, and they want him to be completely happy. Awesome! Pretty sure that’s the first time he feels such importance. Close on the sad note that he can’t be with his mother, but how much he’ll be cared for from now on!

But no – we go one scene too far, and come up with the weakest conclusion of the four. A happily ever after moment that overshadows much of the theology we’ve endured, and drowns out the melancholy coda a concerto like this should end with. Given his track record through the decade, it’s my estimation that this mis-handled ending was Spielberg’s idea, and unfortunately Kubrick wasn’t around to pull him back from the ledge of happily-ever-after.

That’s only my estimation. Over the years, many have rallied to Spielberg’s defence, and underlined that no changes to Kubrick’s script were made, and that Spielberg was only the delivery man. In that case, it would seem strange that such a warm ending came from a man who largely avoided them in his illustrious career.

But Ryan, Is It List-Worthy?… “Essential”, no. “Worth Watching”, yes. “Worth Watching Again”, most certainly. On its release, the film was shredded by mass audiences who either didn’t get it, or were expecting something more. But as often is the case with movies, they might have been too quick to judge. Nearly ten years later, it stands as a surreal and heartbreaking reminder of what humanity is capable of.