A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) ★★★☆☆ MOVE STARS DOWN
Title: A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)
Year: 2001
Running time: 2h 26 min.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screen story: Ian Watson
Screenplay: Steven Spielberg
Lead actors: Haley Joel Osment (David), Frances O’Connor (Monica Swinton), Sam Robards (Henry Swinton), Jake Thomas (Martin Swinton), Jude Law (Gigolo Joe), William Hurt (Prof. Hobby).
Review of the film
The film A.I. by Steven Spielberg is set in a futuristic society where robots are part of the everyday life. Prof. Hobby creates a robot child named David, who has the capacity of loving; but the question that remains is the responsibility and the reaction humans might experience towards the robot child, David. In order to prove that robots can be sentient, David is introduced to the Swinton family whose child is in a coma and he effectively bonds with the mother, Monica. The movie takes unexpected turn when the son, Martin, wakes up miraculously from his coma and David is kicked out of the house for being dangerous around Martin. He is then left alone in a forest to live among other robots as fugitives from humans. David understands the concept of love, but he is also capable of dreaming and wishing just as human would do; therefore, after listening the fairy tale about Pinocchio, he goes on a journey to find the Blue Fairy and become a real boy so that he could come back to his beloved mother, Monica.
On Martin’s birthday, some kids wanted to see David’s defense system, for that they hurted him with a knife. David then seek protection behind Martin and accidentally both fell into the pool. The adults rescue Martin, but David stayed at the bottom of the pool, in that scene we see that Teddy by the side of the pool. as the camera zooms out, we see a long shot of david surrounded by water, it shows how helpless and lonely David is now that Martin is back into Monica’s life.
At some point in the Movie, Gigolo Joe brought David to a certain town that he really likes. The town wasn’t very bright nor was it all dark. Instead, they were red, blue and green lights, all dimmed. This kind of lighting was used to demonstrate that they’re a lot of Taboo concerning joe’s job. As if the director were trying to say that sex robots isn’t exactly for everyone but is useful and appreciated by a minority.
Towards the turning point of the movie, as David is being abandoned in the forest with Teddy, we are introduced to Gigolo joe. We saw him on his way to see another client and didn’t understand the link between him and David until he started to cut his serial number after his client was murdered. Cross-cutting was used to show that David and Joe are both, in some way being unjustly betrayed by people they are portrayed to have “affection” towards. It was also a foreshadow of their encounter.
On David’s first night in the forest, he wanders around until he finds a dumpster full of robot pieces, some robots try to search for replacement pieces. we hear a non-diegetic sound: suspense music, right before a moon shaped hot air balloon starts changing all the robots around. the suspense music was announcing that something harmful for the main character was about to happen.
In the beginning of the movie, when the professor is presenting a female robot with “feelings” to his fellow comrades, we see a variation of different camera angles. At first, the professor is always shot with a low angle while the robot was always shot with a high angle. This was to show that the professor is more powerful than the robot. But at some point, we had and eye-level shot when the professor asked the robot “what did he do to her feelings’’. I think this part was really meaningful because they tried to show that robots were becoming equal to human in the “feeling level”.
A.I. questions whether or not Artificial intelligence are able to developed feelings and live along human beings. That might as well be the central theme of the movie, represented by David itself. David is a child robot able to have emotions and adapt to human everyday life. He even give himself a quest where he has to become a human boy in order for his adoptive mother to love him more. During the movie, we follow him around being witnesses of his feelings being developed. While watching the movie, we all fell for David and almost if not completely forget that he is not a real human. This quite optimistic view on AI and feelings make us believe that it is in fact possible for Robots to not only accompany us in chores but also in our rollercoaster of emotions.
The movie Artificial Intelligence explores the superiority of AI using time as a device. In the beginning of the movie, David asked Monica whether or not she was going to be with him forever or die. Monica answered that she was going to die but that it wasn’t any time soon, she was going to live fifty years. David then proceeded to ask Teddy if fifty years was a long time but Teddy immediately kills David’s hope by giving a negative answer to the little AI question. This part demonstrates that human and AI perceive time differently. Therefore, the one that live longer has more power and is destined to do more things in the future. For example, we human become limited in our action as we age and it is our fate to die. However, AI as Teddy and David don’t encounter those barriers and therefore we can think of them as a solution to replace us and alleviate our daily burdens. The time issue is again brought up towards the end of the movie. After being frozen for two thousand years, David is found by extraterrestrial beings that bring Monica back to live for him. But as we all know, Monica isn’t able to live more than one day. Which proves the point of human being weaker and in need of replacement.
AI addresses the use of sex robots in a near future society. In this movie, we were introduced to Gigolo Joe, an AI who has many client willing to be loved. Throughout the movie, this character makes so much sexual jokes that we have no other choice than to sexualize him. He is portrayed as a friendly and very funny being. It is a way to in a way defend sex robots and try to break the taboo surrounding their use in a near future.
Word counts: 1060
Comments on the movie
A.I is one of those movie you want to innocently enjoy with your family and your friend because it’s a story high in emotions and tenderness. A child robot willing to travel all around the world to make it’s only dream come true: being loved by its mother. The little Robot, David has so much determination and faith that we can’t help to fall for him and wish him all the best. He also has so much patience, which is a value that parents would like to teach their children. Now, we don’t necessarily want to make our children wait a thousand year or more for that one thing we once promise them but they should definitely learn from that little robot. That is exactly what is interesting with this movie: there is no age limit. Yes, it will be a perfect movie for a movie night with the family but also it can be watched in order to be analysed and taken more seriously. It is actually even better when we take time to go deeper into the movie and search for details that will adresses serious matters. For example Gigolo Joe’s character can be mistaken as a mere supporting if your watching the movie for fun. However, when we look into it more, we can make a link with sex robots. Furthermore, Despite the fact that he was only 13, he understood what he had to show to the viewers and found the right way to show it. He had a realistic way of walking that made us forget that he was actually a robot while keeping some rigidness to his movement making it a little robot-like. He was able to make the viewers feel and live with him, we were really touched by his acting.
David was incredibly innocent, which made me sympathize with him, wish him success and feel every single emotion as him. His innocence made me want to protect him at all cost. I often ask myself if it would have been better to have a ‘’they live happy ever after’’ ending just like a fairy tale but at the same time I like the sad ending because it gives more meaning to his quest, to his effort and even though it may seems sad I feel like it’s way more powerful and worth remembering than a simple “Monica and David lived happily ever after. Haley Joel Osment’s acting was very impressive.
Connections to the course material
1)“A.I” focuses on the reaction human beings might have towards David, a robot with the capacity of loving. This problem of human-robot relationships is establish in the definition of “uncanny valley”, where the human like appearance of a robot increases the positive and emphatic response from a human towards it. As David seeks the love of Monica through the entire movie, he also gains the approval of a crowd that resents robots; his human like appearance makes it possible for them to spare David’s life whereas it would not be likely to happen with other robots in the movie.
2) We could also put into perspective David’s sentience and his consciousness. He is capable of feeling jealous and frustrated when he realizes he is not special after all. He is aware of other people and himself as an individual, therefore we could assume he has a consciousness. He has a pain defense mechanism, he claims to love Monica and he is capable of daydreaming and pursuing his dreams; throughout the movie we seem to experience David’s journey from his point of view, thus we could assume he is sentient, but how can we be sure? Certainly his brain is not the same as humans, but he responds positively to the hard problems of consciousness.
Questions- Are David’s act really out of feelings or are they instead fruits of a very well done programmation? What are some proof to backup your answer?
- Should sex robots be sexual workers? Do you think it can be morally accepted by society or would it be still stigmatized?
- Would you be willing to adopt a child robot thinking that you will without any doubt die and live it behind?
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