Film Review A I Artificial Intelligence

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2001 - spoiler alerts This is a good film ruined by a lousy extra ending which will spark debate on not only the story but on how much is Kubrick and how much is Spielberg. The plot actually changes style and pace several times, from straightforward Twilight Zone style android boy meets human family to blade-runner-esque rights of robots to fairy tale allegory to Olaf Stapledon vision of the distant post-human future. It is not a happy film, it is surprisingly depressing. The film starts slowly with a robotics expert euogising on whether it is possible to make a robot capable of love, with one female robot in the audience being opened up to show the astonishing inner look of her cybernetic head, (very nicely visualised), 20 years on, the project is complete and child-robot David is adopted by his carefully selected new parents in a future ravaged by greenhouse effects, where Venice, Amsterdam and New York have disappeared under the rising seas, and pregnancy is only allowed for those who win the lottery. David (the AI unit) is adopted by parents who have had a son, but lost him to a coma in a terrible accident, and David looks just like him ) The boy is given on a trial period after which his parents must decide whether to encode him with an imprinting programme which will mean his programming can never be erased and he will be forever theirs, and after which they can only deactivate him by sending him in for Destruction. David's initial inquisitiveness to watch his mum's every move initially freaks her out, he even burst in on her while she's on the loo, and at one point she locks him in a cupboard, (social services call anyone) but slowly she warms to him, and uses the imprinting circuits, she reads him Pinocchio which enthrals him, especially the metaphor of the blue fairy and becoming a real boy. She also gives him a teddy bear, which is a robot one, and actually looks great, a sort of Ewok Jimminy Cricket, but used sparsely, as it waddles so slowly and ineffectively after David, and proves mostly useless, but it kind of grows on you. Soon after her real son recovers from his coma and is sent home, clearly intensely jealous of David, the new/old son makes him break things and even steal a lock of his mother's hair, David tries to eat food and has to be operated on to repair his damaged insides, and the human son eventually fights him and pushes him into a swimming pool, falling in with him, David falls like a stone to the bottom of the pool, and everyone dives in desperately trying to free his human doppelganger from his grip, and he hears them on the surface resuscitating the boy while he is left down there, a stark reminder that he is seen as an it rather than a person. His Mother eventually takes David in a car (the futuristic cars look terrific, effects are used sparsely rather than extreme fashion, a rare thing for Speilberg) and dumps him in the woods, with the teddy bear, leading to the film's most powerful scene, the scrap yard, where bits of broken robot are dumped, and a host of various crippled and busted robots appear scavenging for eyes, hands and limbs that fit, David joins the misfits, but is captured with them and taken to a circus show where the crowd delights to see robots killed and blown apart in various extreme stunts, i.e., robot shot from cannon into cages containing other robots. David convinces a young girl from the audience that he is a human boy and she calls on the owners to let him out of the cage before he is hurt, but they use intense x-rays to see his inner workings and decide to use him in the entertainments, but the crowd finds the sight of a boy (even though robotoid) being hurt for their fun too much and as the ring-master asks who will throw the first stone, they throw them at him instead, David escapes with Jude Law who plays a poetry spouting bohemian robot programmed as a gigolo (he doesn't really have much to do but the cameo is good) and they set off on David's quest for the Blue Fairy, Law suggests they call on Doctor Know (groan) who 'knows everything' Dr Know turns out to be a Geppetto lookalike Internet programme obviously modelled on Ask Jeeves,but where Internet information is an expensive commodity, (here done in superb 3D animation around the heroes) allows seven questions for a price, and they waste questions phrasing them wrongly, but Dr. Know shows David that there is a Blue Fairy in Manhattan, so David takes a helicopter capable of submarine work too, to Manhattan Island where the crumbling ruins of skyscrapers stick barely out of the water, and the torch of the drowned statue of liberty is also barely visible, and goes down to the depths to seek the statue of the Blue Fairy. Seeing it, (the Statue of Liberty) David is mesmerised and simply pleads with it over and over, with tears in his eyes to make him a real boy. A large piece of debris crumbles trapping his submarine there, and the mournful request is repeated as the voice over says for 200 years, as we see the Earth covered in a new ice age, The film ought to end there but Spielberg ruin it with extra cene that are totally unconvincing. David is thawed out by Extraordinary aliens, tall thin, metallic, benevolent, a grown version of the ones in Close Encounters, their outsides as polished as reflective glass, they see David as the one surviving unit of all human history, and tap into his programming for archive footage, and for a reward, they use the lock of hair taken off his Mum, to activate her DNA and make her anew, which makes it all look on course for a happy ending, ...... But she can only live for one day, David gets his dream, of one happy day with his mum, without distractions, and as she finally dies, he lies beside her and deactivates his programming, as the teddy bear sits in eternal vigil watching over them, lights in the house fade, credits roll.. As a Kubrick film, it work well, as weird and surreal and fantastic as 2001, and at times just as perplexing, the circus scenes look like an Archaois event and show some touches of Clockwork Orange, there are characteristic long tracking shots, the boy staring at people reminiscent of the Shining, there remains a great deal of the senior director here, the whole down beat tone of the thing is very different for Spielberg, who has clearly learned much from the master, Sadly there are lots of Spielbergiansisms too, lots of alien hand meet human hand touches a la ET, Moon shots likewise, the scoop that dredges up the robots in the scrap yard is his most Close Encounters Moment, definitely a bright thoughtful film, that for Speiilly ruins with hi oddly Freudian ending. Arthur Chappell