Let’s talk a little about Stanley Kubrick. He was one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived (he was also kind of a giant asshole, but that’s not relevant). He thrived on pushing cinematic boundaries, arguably more so than any Hollywood director of the twentieth century, from Lolita to Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, to The Shining, and of course his most influential work 2001: A Space Odyssey. An auteur filmmaker, he exercised an enormous amount of control over most aspects of his films, and didn’t really seem to care if an audience accepted them or not. Thematically many of his films are known for their contemplative pessimism and dark realism, supported by his uniquely moody art direction, cinematography, and editing. So it seems unusual that he would have much in common with Steven Spielberg, a director who idolized him, but whose work was more often than not, fantastical, sentimental, crowd-pleasing, and life affirming. However the two managed to strike up a friendship over a mutual admiration of each others’ work.
Kubrick had been developing a movie about artificial intelligence since the early 1980s based on a rather grim short story by Brian Aldiss called “Supertoys Last All Summer Long”. But technological inadequacies and other endeavours kept the project in development hell until the 90’s when Kubrick suggested in the wake of Jurassic Park that Spielberg be the one to direct it, while he produced -the story being a little more in the younger directors’ comfort zone. Spielberg insisted Kubrick make the movie himself …and then Kubrick died in 1999. And so Spielberg made the movie after all, writing a new draft of the script (his first since Close Encounters), albeit one that stuck closely to Ian Watson’s final treatment for Kubrick. Indeed Spielberg set out to make the movie not for himself, but for Kubrick’s memory.
In part because of this, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is perhaps the single most fascinating movie Spielberg has directed. It’s a movie that bears a number of his trademarks, yet has a mysterious almost dreamlike atmosphere that’s unlike anything else he’s ever made. Mesmerizing and challenging, it doesn’t quite live up to its potential, but it’s far from bad either. And it’s simultaneously quintessential Kubrick while a far cry from his usual fare. It’s an anomaly of a movie for sure, a melding of creative visions, the ultimate result of which simply must be scrutinized.
Set in a future ravaged by climate change and depopulation, an A.I. “Mecha” designed to resemble a child called David (Haley Joel Osment) is taken in by a young couple whose son has been placed in stasis until a cure can be found for his terminal disease. Programmed to feel and display love, David grows especially close to his “mother” Monica (Frances O’Connor), which becomes complicated once the real son comes home. Eventually, bitter circumstances propel David on a journey, inspired by the story of Pinocchio, to find the Blue Fairy and become a real boy, which he believes will earn Monica’s love.
This movie is a fairy tale. In fact it’s very close to a direct translation of Pinocchio. The artificial boy who longs to be real encountering the dangers of the world, first being exploited by a Stromboli-like entertainer, then visiting a “pleasure island” of vice and irresponsibility, and ultimately completing his journey entrapped beneath the sea. This was definitely part of Kubrick’s original intent given he apparently referred to the project simply as Pinocchio. And so there’s a heightened sense of virtue and metaphor, and less a preoccupation with realism -worth noting given Spielberg’s clear move towards realism in the previous decade. It’s not too dissimilar from the fairy tale context more recently on display in The Shape of Water, only set against the future rather than the past. This element really goes a long ways to making the movie feel like a true work of speculative fiction, like something by Asimov, Ellison, or Dick (more on him next week). And like the work of those authors, it uses the artificial life-form to comment on human nature. A.I. is almost an extension of Blade Runner, the Mechas a slightly more primitive version of that universe’s Replicants. But while Blade Runner asks the question what constitutes life, A.I. asks what constitutes love? If David is as Professor Hobby (William Hurt) explains, programmed to love, how authentic does that make his feelings for and dedication to Monica? He certainly goes to extreme enough lengths for her affection. He’s desperate for it, and there’s clearly an Oedipal subtext at work. It’s no coincidence how Monica’s husband Henry (Sam Robards), who brought David home, comes to resent and grow suspicious of him more quickly than Monica, who does genuinely care for him.
Like many a great sci-fi story, the film doesn’t definitively answer that question of a robot’s love, however it does seem to lean a little more heavily towards Davids’ feelings being real, an impression facilitated by Haley Joel Osment’s performance. He may have been overexposed as Hollywood’s child superstar after his Oscar-nominated turn in The Sixth Sense (to the point he was considered at one time for the title role in the first Harry Potter film), but he was really quite a good actor. And this movie shows it in how he gradually evolves his performance from being rather simple and innocent to the determined bravery of an emotional boy driven by faith. Of the cast around him, O’Connor especially stands out for her real emotional resonance, and Jude Law really captures the eccentric vivacity of David’s Mecha male prostitute companion Gigolo Joe. If Spielberg cut out anything of Watson and Kubrick’s draft it had to have been details and scenes surrounding this character. And that does come across slightly. Joe isn’t in the movie terribly long and his relationship with David feels a little underdeveloped. There’s a lot that could be touched on in how both he and David are designed essentially to be love machines, albeit of very different kinds, and their contrasting outlooks on real people and the world would have been worth exploring. I don’t blame Spielberg cutting out sex scenes and the like, but he could have fleshed out the character dynamics more in their place. Jack Angel voices David’s Jiminy Cricket robotic toy Teddy –concerned and assuring, if unintentionally cryptic. That’s Lizzie McGuire’s Jake Thomas as Monica and Henry’s asshole son Martin, and the great Brendan Gleeson in an excellent cameo as the purveyor of the barbaric “Flesh Fair”. And William Hurt is perfectly believably monotonous as the robots’ creator. I’ve never been much a fan of Hurt’s acting but he’s not in this movie long and he isn’t awful.
When A.I. came out one thing that was almost universally acknowledged, whether it be critical or complimentary was that the film was a mix of two directors’ styles. That it was Spielberg making a Kubrick film, and many of the films’ detractors pointed to that as the core reason it didn’t work. They would look at the cinematography or the masterful levels of eeriness in the Rockefeller sequences and attribute it to Kubrick, while seeing the maudlin beats, and whimsy in the family scenes as clearly Spielberg’s influence on what must have originally been a tougher, bleaker movie -something more like the short story. However this thinking underestimates both directors, and in fact the contributions were actually quite the opposite. In 2002, Spielberg said as much in an interview: “People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don’t know either of us. …All the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley’s were mine. And all the parts that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley’s.” The family bonding scenes in the beginning, Teddy and his role in the story, the sweetness of David’s wishing at the underwater statue for a millennia, all came from Kubrick, while the darker stuff in the second act Spielberg takes credit for. As for whether these styles come into conflict, I don’t think they do entirely. For the most part I think the movie has just the right tone of an old fairy tale. The comic relief stuff is probably the only real mood killer of the film: the light humour of the early family scenes, the Robin Williams Einstein search engine, the occasional jokes that have a very Spielberg kind of lameness to them. But I think even one scene is enough to make up for them; that heartbreaking abandonment at the side of the road is both dark and sentimental, and it’s performed, shot, and directed beautifully.
Watson himself confirmed that the much-criticized twenty-minute epilogue too, though seemingly the epoch of Spielberg sappiness, was in fact Kubrick’s exact ending. And it’s not a great ending. Even I can’t defend it much. On its own, it’s very curious, especially the portrait of a post-human Earth and the astounding Giacometti silicon Mechas (evolved and highly advanced in perfect synch with Kubrick’s admiration for technology), but it definitely doesn’t feel organic. I think under different circumstances Spielberg would think so too -it was his dedication to Kubrick’s vision that kept it in. The first ending at the Blue Fairy seemed much more appropriate, the second is too saccharin and neat. However I am glad it’s there. Because it’s comforting to think that for all the cynicism, darkness, even downright nihilism expressed in his films over five decades, ultimately Stanley Kubrick wanted his fairy tale to have a happy ending.
For all intents and purposes, A.I. was a Kubrick movie made from beyond the grave. But that's not to dismiss Spielberg's efforts, personal touch, and essential contributions in realizing it. He may have been mimicking Kubrick more than a little, but in so doing, he managed to make a movie truly evocative of the likes of Tarkovsky's Solaris, or indeed 2001, the movie he heralded as the "Big Bang" of his generation. Without placing A.I. on quite that high a pedestal, it is one of the most contemplative movies Spielberg has made, and the one, if any of his entire filmography that deserves a second chance.
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment