A.I. Review

I am very much an eternal boy at heart. Very much a person that lost his mommy at the age of 11, and very much wanted her back.

My mom did not die in the dearly departed manner when I was 11, she died in my memory. I watched her for years disintegrate into an alcoholic self abusive monster of the image I once held sacred. And then years later she died in a mysterious fire on a bluff overlooking a lake in North Texas.

When it all fell apart at age 11, I prayed to God to turn her back… make her love Dad again. Make her be who she was again. Make everything right again. But for me, time marched on. After that week… after a few months… I came to know that I had lost the mother I once knew and had something new to handle and cope with.

That is the gift of humanity… adaptation… the ability to move on and let go. The ability to accept our lot in life and make the best of it.

A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) is about an Eleven year old boy frozen in time. He is Eleven. He is artificially intelligent, meaning he learns, but does not grow. He sees things, but was programmed to not understand them. He was not meant for emotional growth or mental maturing. He was built with a singular purpose… To Love That Which He Imprinted Upon. In this case Mommy.

Is this movie an exercise in cruelty?

Yes.

Is it a movie about masochistic devotion?

Yes.

Is it a great movie?

No.

Is it a terrible movie?

No.

Is it mediocre?

No.

What is it?

For me, A.I. is quite simply a very dry very cold fairy tale. It is as if Kubrick or Aldiss or Spielberg or whoever was the Stromboli of this feature, sat down and said, "What if Pinocchio could never be a real boy but believed he could?"

This is very much a fairy tale deconstruction in the same breath as HOOK, although for me, not nearly the failure that that film was. In HOOK, Spielberg’s premise of "What if Peter Pan grew Up?" well that was a premise that completely unhinged the film. It caused the film to lose all magic. It unraveled the fabric of NeverNeverland.

In A.I., the premise was far better explored. Not only could Pinocchio never ever grow up, but he existed in the cynical heartless world that we as a society are headed towards.

On November 11th, 1983… My mom picked me up at school to take me for a ride. I was told that I was going to SHOWBIZ PIZZA, but we went the wrong way. There was a man in the car, not my father. I was taken very far away from my home. I was taken to a place without movie theaters, without friends and without my parents. For my mom was not even that anymore. She had changed. Her accent, the look in her eye, the way she walked and she was entirely different and cruel and wrong. And I very much was a boy with a singular purpose.

Get back home. Get back with Dad. Now I knew there were no Blue Fairies for me. No simple solutions. The first thought was to kill this person claiming to be mom, but I didn’t, in fact I watched her die, and brought her back to life. There was one way to get out of the place I found myself in… Grow Up. Hit 18. Become my own person. This is something that David (Haley Joel Osment) could not do. He was stuck, that powerless 11 year old. He was an 11 year old boy with no life experiences… No knowledge of how the world worked. He was a complete innocent built for one purpose. To love that which he imprinted upon.

Why does he become obsessed with the Blue Fairy? Because he believed the story his mother told him. He connected to the fairy tale, in the same sort of way that an eleven year old boy may imprint on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and decide to grow up to search for lost treasures…. Or that a boy watching STAR WARS may grow up to make science fiction movies. But he can’t grow up, he can’t give up the pretend… it is all that his emotional processors have given him to exist. Hope.

And when he has no more hope, he would end it all. But fate was weird and cruel and strange all at once. Was it contrived? Oh yes, all fairy tales are contrived.

The moment where David discovers his blue fairy and right up until the flash forward. Well, the movie was what I wanted it to be. A cruel and mean fairy tale… the type to scare children. A very Grim Fairy Tale indeed.

But then, well… the end for me was horrendous. Like so many modern Spielberg films, the man simply could not leave David there with his Blue Fairy praying for eternity. It was that moment where I wished that Tim Burton had handled the editing of this film. Because Burton would have left it there. Right there…

That was the perfect ending for this fairy tale. And quite fitting too. Spielberg’s ending very much is his scream for a happily ever after. And this was not that type of fairy tale. That ending was very very artificial.

This was meant to be a very sad fairy tale. That type for adults to learn from. The lesson? Artificial Love like real love is destined for heartbreak. People die, batteries run down and everything decays. Had the film ended with the narration telling us of the end of mankind, the ice age descending upon earth and life as we know it coming to an end. But that there on the bottom of the ocean frozen for all time is an artificial boy praying to be real, to an artificial dream. To be the last sentient being on Earth trapped in denial for all eternity….

That was a fairy tale ending for sure.

But Spielberg (circa 2001) could not do that. Spielberg (circa 1978) could have.

That is the evolution of our greatest pop-director. He could not be cruel and unsympathetic. He couldn’t leave the last boy, real or not, encased in ice and false hope for eternity.

And as I sat in that theater tonight, I knew that I would not see that ending, but for me… it is there.

This past week in Los Angeles I had many discussions about evergreen topics. What is the worst ending to the best movie you’ve seen? Now, while A.I. is not the best movie I’ve seen, it is the best movie with the worst ending I’ve ever seen.

To me, leaving David there on the bottom of the ocean isn’t a cruel thing, for that character… with that brain… that was the best possible ending. ETERNAL UNDYING HOPE. The greatest possible ending you could have. HOPE. Above and beyond any and all else at the end we must have HOPE. Instead, Steven attempted to give us some sort of "and now he can dream" ending which was just terrible.

Perhaps I embraced A.I. because I went in expecting this to be the worst film in creation. Expecting that I would be so mad I couldn’t make spit anymore. No, instead I listened to my Father talk about why he didn’t like the film… wrestling with the intangibles…

I listened to Johnny Wad beginning to hate the film as well. Me?

Maybe I was looking to like it too much…. Maybe I simply associated with the boy who lost his mom… Perhaps Spielberg still has my number.

And this night, when I was expecting the worst, that was a very good thing indeed.

After further thought on the film, I have these additional comments...

There are a couple of key statements made in the film that I find quite compelling. When the one lady at William Hurt's seminar at the beginning asks the question about whether or not a human could love something that it knows to be artificial... well, in a way... for quite a few people leaving the film, that's the key itself. We, as the audience of the film, are asked to love a toy... a complicated toy.... an amazingly complex toy that reacts badly to spinach.... And there are quite a few people on this earth that cannot love a toy. ME? I love toys, from the Green Lantern Lamp on my desk to the seemingly endless supply of toys about this room of mine. Each one with a story and a place in time where I dearly loved what it was that toy represents. But isn't that even an artificial love, I mean, what I really love is the moment that the toy represents, the idea that the toy reminds me of. Do I love the toy itself? Would I cry if it was destroyed, or purchase another?

Things that I love are my friends, my family and my city... Do I love objects? And ultimately, that is what David is... an object, not a real thing. Loving David is like loving a prostitute. There love is not real, no matter what the commercial tells you, because they do not have a choice in the matter. SO... if the artificial being is programmed to love, does that not in fact preclude the notion that it can not indeed love at all because love is not a programmed behavior, but a learned one?

Now then, the additional problem that some people seem to have is that the future is being depicted as Neon and lightcycles and Ministry. Must I point out that this is merely a segment of this world and not the entirety. Rouge City isn't The City Walk, it is a Vegas of the Future... that's why it has all the neon and 'family friendly exteriors. It isn't seedy, because seedy doesn't sell sex, seedy sells disease. And Disease is not marketable. As for the latex and plastic clothes... I may be wrong, but I do believe that only the robot characters had the latex clothing and plasticene clothing... David's owners did not. The scientists did not.

Why does David constantly refer to the Amphibacopter as the Amphibacopter? Because it is an Amphibacopter perhaps? I mean, when I fly to a place and people ask me about the flight, do I not comment about the plane, am I not allowed to call the plane what it is? Must I refer to it each time as something different. Like perhaps:

"The flying cigar landed in Los Angeles on time. The Death Chariot flew across the sky, but there was this cute chick aboard. Upon departing the metal sparrow, she dropped her purse, but right when I left the plane I handed it to her. She forced me into the cockpit of the gravity defying vehicle where we made passionate whoopee"

Now I do agree that the word "Amphibacopter" is an unwieldy word, it is a flying thing that can vertically take off, fly and go underwater.... therefore making it an Amphibacopter.

Also... why mention the Blue Fairy over and over? Well... could it possibly be because that is what David was searching for? Was he supposed to ask where Edith was? What is the Blue Fairy's real name? Meryl? Ms Streep? Well, yes, but we know that by reading the credits, not by reading Pinnochio.

How many times in THE WIZARD OF OZ with Judy Garland does Judy ask about Auntie Em and wanting to get back to Kansas? Are there not times where she is screaming at a red ball, "Auntie Em Auntie Em Auntie Em, oh , Auntie Em, I'm right here, Auntie Em!"

Now in a million years I'm not going to defend the ending, and I'm not saying that Kubrick didn't have anything to do with that hidieous ending. But I do know that that ending... no matter who thought of it.... was hidieous. Terrible. And wrong for me.

Kubrick does not have a history for doing that to me, but Spielberg does. I'm sure that the ending and the whole flash forward ending was in Kubrick's notes... but it could very well of wound up being an idea he would have abandoned upon one single look at it. However, Steven, in his rush to get through with the project and on to his next.... something that Stanley never did.... Well he stuck A.I. with a terrible ending that did not work for me at all.

Do I understand it? Um... given everything in the ending is underlined 4 times.... I'd like to think so.

And those are my additional thoughts

And later still I have more thoughts about it all....

The ending is happy because David is given the opportunity for Closure.... to say goodbye and have one last perfect day. Now sure, we know the mother was programmed for that day by the robot thingees, but David does not, so for his little artificial brain, he can be happy cuz he heard mommy say one last time and for the first time that she loved him, and that made him all warm and cuddily because now he knows that Mommy loved him last! Screw that!

I want the director that would put the Ark in a warehouse controlled by the government for all time. That put our hero in a Spaceship never to be reunited with his family again. That separates a boy and his best friend by way of a galaxy.... But like I said in that piece a couple of weeks back.... Spielberg isn't the same person anymore, nor do we have the right to ask him not to evolve. We may not like his inability to find his endings, and his seemingly unending desire to create films that pander to as many people as possible by having multiple climaxes when he couldn't choose just one.

But I have become so used to Steven screwing up the endings of his movies that while it bothered me, I enjoyed the rest of the film quite a bit.

As for what film would Kubrick of made? It is a useless question. Because we will never know. Fact is Steven made it, and it is his film now. He wrote it, he directed it and he had final say on it. So the ending is his, the film is his... and he had the ability to change anything he needed to change.

While the ending may not be HAPPY HAPPY, it is certainly HAPPIER than had David remained alive at the bottom of the ocean, through the ice ages never ceasing to pray to a false hope to make him real. And that ending is very clear in the film.