Friday 23 July 2010

A.I. : Love, Self-Love and Self-Hate

The floodwaters of man-made cataclysm raging as A.I. begins speak of creation, whether the primeval soup or the waters of Genesis over which "God's spirit hovered", as much as they do destruction. A.I. is framed as an origin story for the Supermechas and is introduced by the one who leads them.

The icecaps have melted and humanity is struggling on dwindling resources. Pregnancies are licensed. Professor Hobby of Cybertronics therefore proposes that he and his team design, build and sell child robots, robots that can "genuinely love" and that "[do] not consume resources beyond those of their first manufacture". Accepting that love can indeed be synthesised and that there is such a thing as an energy free lunch, the benefits for a threatened populace are evident. The inference is this: Real, 'organic' children, take. Robot children only give.

At this point it is worthwhile to address the nature of Monica's decision to accept David as a substitute for her comatose son Martin. The decision is not only born out of a desire to love something but desires to be loved and to not grieve. In Greek the word 'Monica' means solitary. There is a loneliness and emptiness that needs to be filled, much as the 'formless void' confronting God at the beginning of time.

Why do we create life? To fend off the abyss? To love or to be loved? Do we, truthfully, know? Although it is a fair assumption that love can and does exist in an unrequited and unreciprocated state, I believe A.I. posits a world where the pain of loss and the fear of nothingness have proven corrupting. Monica wants a mirror for her love. She is not selfless. As an example, take the baptismal act of imprinting*. It is a prayer, bathed in sacred light, that ends with an echo:

                                     Monica, David, Monica

It's logical that, once David can no longer act as an effective mirror, he will cease to fully serve his purpose. That is not to say that Monica is heartless, but that her inner tumult and David's relative passivity and disposability enables her more egoistic side to hold greater sway. It enables her to self-love or, to put it more kindly, self-preserve. These creations bring out such an approach. She simply cannot love David as she loves Martin.

It is easy to see why. As much as the audience is reminded that David is "one of a kind" (a splendidly ambiguous phrase), Martin's uniqueness cannot be replicated. There is no escaping David's oddness. It is an oddness that Spielberg repeatedly points up and not merely from Monica's perspective - shot through an halatious light fitting, split by a ridged door, turned into a four-eyed fuzzball, his neck elongated in silhouette.

Of paramount importance to the characters of A.I. is what someone or something can do for them. If you are not giving, then you are not:

                                     I love you. Don't kill me

                                     Don't forget. You killed me first.
 

They have been turned into consumers. Knowledge is sold at 3 Newbucks a question. Sex is openly on offer at Rouge City. Now love is a product too. We are consumers of what Professor Hobby describes as "the key" to refilling the arid channels of the subconscious. Love creates compassion, fear, anger, jealousy. It is of the soul, and Monica can buy it. It is interesting, though David cannot consume, that when he does greedily stuff himself with spinach his face crumples and sags. We are left in no doubt: consumption deforms.

Humans have grown uglier. It could be the impact of what has befallen them.  Maybe they feel the guilt of perpetrators. Possibly it is as simple as the hunger to survive. "The world is more full of weeping than you can understand", says Carlo Collodi in Pinocchio, quoted here. The sight of water gushing from the eyes of lions into the rising ocean suggests a world drowning in tears. The lion weeps, the waters rise, the lion weeps and suffering intensifies. David, hopeless, attempts to take his own life, and falls as a tear reflected upon Joe's face.

 Flooded by Tears

What is valuable is protected from being washed away. frozen and preserved in cryosleep: Martin for Monica, David for his 'offspring' Supermecha.

The humans project their pain on robotic constructs that are built in their image. As Sheila's face splits open, an odious sight in and of itself, a tear drops softly from her lifelike 'human' eye onto her metallic endoskeleton. If love is a uniquely human trait that flourishes into pain then it is seen, paradoxically, as a vector for our virus.

Pain and fear, and a tumorous sense of self make themselves known through exploitation and violation. Oral penetration recurs: Professor Hobby inserting his  finger into Sheila's mouth; the amphibicopter soaring through gaudy red neon lips; bridges that thrust deep into the throats of agape tunnels.

                                                    Oral violation

One feels that they mistreat Robots because they dislike and mistreat themselves. The flesh fair is not a demolition of artificiality but a genocide as mass suicide once removed. Self-preservation may lead to self-hate when the mechanics of raw survival and the battle for family are laid bare as being instinctive and automatic. We hate the thought of being robotic, soulless, cheap.

We cannot afford to these Mecha the same liberties we afford to our own. Monica abandons David when, given the same circumstances, she would never have abandoned Martin. David disconcerts her. Despite his naive sweetness he bothers us. He is the shell of a human, a carnival mirror that reflects that which is rotten inside. We see and imagine the worst in them. They look too much like us.

How do the makers of these robots perceive us humans? Gigolo Joe, the nanny, David, they are all dry and flimsy pastiches of their human analogues. Yes, we built them in our image. Maybe we fear them because they do not have what we have: Sin. Sheila has no shame and will willingly disrobe for a roomful of scientists. They lack suffering too and we must, with ironic futility, punish them for it.


A chinese whisper evolution of robot generations links humans to supermecha, beings that look, uncannily, like the aliens we have long imagined. We are thus detached from ourselves, aliens in our own midst.


                                    *               *               *


Love is a form of worship as illusory as faith. It demands a vulnerability. It cannot be fully understood as it may have more to do with the lover than who is perceived to be loved. It may only be a call echoing off the walls of one's own mind. When David encounters the blue fairy beneath the sea his face melds into hers. One's own dreams. "We wish for things that don't exist", says Gigolo Joe.

                                         Blue Fairy as projection of David's self

This love, or something like it, can be flawed (grasping and thirsty or devotedly meek) but it inspires Monica to accept David and David to recreate Monica. It is a powerful force that transcends time and space. The reversal of the relationship between David and Monica invites thoughts of Monica and other adults as being childlike, exactly like David, feeding off of each other. There is no mature figure that can offer emotional stability.

We can throw away the snake's nest of fibre-optic cable but love is not biodegradable.


Monica, Blue Fairy, Mary, they are all visions, objects of an impure and uncertain affection, who may love in return and may not. They are aspects and visages of the same idealised devoted mother. A peaceful blue surrounds these figures whilst the red of Rouge City stands in vivid contrast, the painted faces and lurid stockings is of lust and danger.

We are dreamers who want this fantasy to be flat fact and for us to be more than just bits and pieces. We want ourselves to be the stuff of dreams (it is this very yearning that turns selflessness into selfishness).

In the end isn't it fitting that we search for truth with Dr.Know who resides in a miniature cinema.


*When she has completed the ritual, David mouth opens and he gasps. Genesis says God "Breathed into" Adams "nostrils the breath of life". A beautiful moment that shows love, however imperfect it is throughout the film, as the essence of life.


14 comments:

  1. Stephen.

    I think this post nicely follows the previous one. I love the way you bring a refined, spiritual perspective to the film in the best of your reviews. I think it is very important. Many reviews nowadays are as cynical and perfunctory as the movies themselves. So it's really heartening to see reviews like this. Doniphon's writing comes to mind too. It's the kind of reviews I would eventually like to write.

    Hope you write such heartwarming reviews of films that are not overtly spiritual as well. And I really need to see A.I again!

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  2. Thank you.

    I always want to see the best in films and bring my better instincts and emotions in return. I'm very happy if that comes across.

    "Hope you write such heartwarming reviews of films that are not overtly spiritual as well."

    I try.

    "And I really need to see A.I again!"

    It is as deep a film as I have seen. I still feel that I'm scratching the surface. I know I didn't say it in this piece, but it's an excellent film.

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  3. Ah, A.I. eh? I'll be back tomorrow to examine this one fully. I am a huge fan of this film!

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  4. Thanks Sam.

    "I am a huge fan of this film!"

    Me too.

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  5. Personally, I don't like this movie so much. I can't help but wish Kubrick had lived to see it through himself, but even if he did choose to hand it down to somebody else, I wish he'd picked somebody better suited to the material than Spielberg. The division of childlike innocence and dark maturity is interesting at times, but they don't mix too well in Spielberg's hands, laid on so thick they become like oil and water. Mostly it's his script, which is structured fine, but rather hackneyed in terms of dialogue, which is fine for some of the robot characters (who can get away with being walking cliches) but not for the humans (I'm surprised he didn't go to one of his well-respected colleagues for a brush-up-- the Stoppard who punched up "Brazil" would've had a field day with this).

    It's odd, because I can see the strength of Spielberg's work here. Reigned in a little, all the excesses would've been fine. It's little things that bug me, that take it too far over the line for me-- the cheap sexbot joke in the beginning (stale as yesterday's toast by 2001), the poorly-written sibling rivalry, the distracting celebrity voices throughout, quite a lot about the Flesh Fair sequence (which I can appreciate in the abstract as a garrish cartoon of lynch-mob mentality, but just becomes kind of offensive in its over-the-top carnival atmosphere, especially with the rather odd Chris Rock robot thrown in; it would've helped to make it a bit simpler, a bit less Rube Goldberg), pretty much everything about the Rogue City sequence (which again, I can appreciate intellectually as an extended homage to Kubrick, but in the end feels more like an extended rip-off of "Blade Runner" and "Brazil"-- though who knows, maybe that's intentional). I will say that the film's ending with the Supertoys was great, but that it fumbled with its ambiguous depiction of advanced mechas (for years I thought they were supposed to be aliens).

    Perhaps live-action wasn't even the right medium at all for this project-- I can see this working as CG, or even anime (enough of it already feels similar to "Astro Boy" as it is). Rintaro & Otomo's take on Tezuka's "Metropolis" feels like it has quite a lot in common with this movie. Hell, maybe even the Disney studio itself should try to tackle a sci-fi story with these kind of fairy-tale sentiments (this is already mostly "Pinnochio", anyway). I don't know. I don't enjoy this movie too much myself, anymore, but I can certainly appreciate its following.

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  6. Bob,

    The dialogue had never struck me as being particularly cliched.

    I do agree with you on the sex joke and Chris Rock's comedy robot (who stuck out like a sore thumb). I do feel that the film could have been more desperate, colder, more pessimistic.

    "...fumbled with its ambiguous depiction of advanced mechas (for years I thought they were supposed to be aliens)."

    Yes. I think I never had the confusion because I'd read that that's what they were before seeing the film.

    "Rintaro & Otomo's take on Tezuka's "Metropolis" feels like it has quite a lot in common with this movie"

    Watching A.I. again recently I was reminded of METROPOLIS too. I think A.I. needed the immediacy of live action. I don't think you could fully put over the creepy otherness of David in animation (at least hand-drawn).

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  7. A beautiful post. I can add nothing more.

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  8. Thank you very much indeed, Dean.

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  9. "Love is a form of worship as illusory as faith. It demands a vulnerability. It cannot be fully understood as it may have more to do with the lover than who is perceived to be loved. It may only be a call echoing off the walls of one's own mind. When David encounters the blue fairy beneath the sea his face melds into hers. One's own dreams. "We wish for things that don't exist", says Gigolo Joe."

    A beautiful and thought-provoking concept, but then again this entire piece is suffused with your very special brand of insight which diasvows conventional interpretation for a far more wide-reaching examination. This is one of the great films of the new millenium, and one that moves on the highest level. Motherhood and eternal life are the most vital themes, though it's clear that each are fleeting.

    The film’s most omnipotent and wrenching scene may well be the aforementioned one where the mother abandons her son to the forest. To save him she had no alternative but to abandon him to survive on his own, as the father had threatened his dismantlement and destruction. The robotic boy’s never-ending search for his mother of course mirrors the plethora of adopted, abandoned, lost and abused children in today’s society who are enlisted in an eternal mission to find love, only to become entangled in harmful vices when it is unconsummated. Then there’s a circus where robots are publicly sacrificed, reflecting a modern-day spectacle that’s all the rage in America, where an ecstatic crowd contemplates gigantic robotic trucks that clash and are eventually destroyed. Gladiator, Kubrick’s Spartacus and Spielberg’s own Schindler’s List are all recalled here.

    Ultimately, as per chronicled in the utterly arresting sequence near the end, the earth becomes mired in a deep freeze, which is brought about by a planetary collapse of climate. The subsequent melting of the Arctic ice sheets and submersion of the coastal cities ends a two-thousand year freeze, which ‘reactivates’ David and his stored memories of a human civilization that has long ago disappeared, but his quest for his mother and human love endures with the advanced computer life forms that have replaced humanity–shapeless, sexless, emotionless, yet with a degree of compassion, as they assist David in realizing his goal. The short passage visualizing this fleeting moment is one of the most beautiful codas in all of American cinema since the advent of the new millennium. The conclusion of A.I. hasn’t pleased a number of critics and moviegoers, but it’s in keeping with the film’s myriad themes, which also includes the nature of existence, the responsibility mankind has to the sentient beings that it creates, and the issues that arise when man’s technical reach extends beyond his moral grasp.

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  10. Stephen, oddly the animated film "AI" reminded me most of was the 1989 American/Japanese anime of "Little Nemo". Just as bright, colorful and imaginative, but just as hampered by issues with the script and child leads (perhaps if Mickey Rooney were somewhere in Spielberg's film, I'd be able to swallow it a bit more). Perhaps I should watch the movie again with more of an eye for its dream logic.

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  11. Sam,

    "Motherhood and eternal life are the most vital themes, though it's clear that each are fleeting."

    Yes. I agree with you there.

    "The robotic boy’s never-ending search for his mother of course mirrors the plethora of adopted, abandoned, lost and abused children in today’s society who are enlisted in an eternal mission to find love, only to become entangled in harmful vices when it is unconsummated."

    Beautifully put and very true.

    The ending is certainly unfairly maligned and it's always pleasing to hear of people who see it as a powerful, beautiful, challenging film.

    Thanks for the kind comments.

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  12. That's interesting Bob.

    I remember seeing moments of LITTLE NEMO but I'd have to see it again.

    Do you have issues with both child actors or one in particular?

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  13. The issues I have with LITTLE NEMO are all centered around the script, probably. The voice of the kid lead is annoying after a while, but if he were given something to do besides yell "yipee!" and "wow!", I probably wouldn't even be bothered (if people thought Jake Lloyd was annoying in TPM, they should watch this to see, or rather hear, what a really insufferable movie-child sounds like). It's too bad. The film's animation and design are jaw droppingly lovely, but Chris Columbus' script is jaw droppingly awful (especially bad, considering the likes of writers who contributed to it before him-- Ray Bradbury, Robert Towne...)

    HJO in "AI" I don't really find too annoying, per se. I just wish he'd been given a little more to do. Granted, that limited range is at least part of the point, I think-- all he's ever allowed to be is a loving son, and nothing more. In that sense, I wonder if he couldn't have been allowed to grow and mature in the end, to move past his truly robotic devotion to his human mother (set into him by programming, not even a natural imprint-bonding process, which develops from learned behavior) and form new emotional attachments of his own.

    The relationships that affected me most in the movie were those that David shared with Teddy and Gigolo Joe, who I would say becomes far more of a legitimate parent figure to him than Monica was. He watches over him, aids his quest, and tries to help him see the value of his mecha heritage. In short, he both protects and nurtures the boy, even at his own personal risk, which is exactly what a good parent should do. That was the saddest thing to me, and something I don't think Spielberg picked up on, or at least developed as much as he could've-- in all his attempts to find his "mother", David never realized who he'd gained as a "father", instead.

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  14. A propos child actors - I think the confidence that a child actor requires to be an (effective) actor wipes out much of the uncomfortable shyness/awkwardness that many children of that age naturally have.

    "I wonder if he couldn't have been allowed to grow and mature in the end, to move past his truly robotic devotion to his human mother"

    I think only in the last scene is there a semblance of maturity (despite his indignant 'selfishness') in his emotions. The way he exhibited his love was not the way children generally do (if they do overtly at all - see Martin). It was grasping. The love opened up many emotions but didn't seem to make him recognisably human.

    "That was the saddest thing to me, and something I don't think Spielberg picked up on, or at least developed as much as he could've-- in all his attempts to find his "mother", David never realized who he'd gained as a "father", instead."

    Good point. I hadn't thought of that but it's true. The question is why does Gigolo Joe act this way? I think Jude Law does a very good job showing this instinct to protect / be protected being wrapped up in a confusion about what it all means.

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