***Official A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Discussion Thread - Page 2

Watch this film as a fairy tale told by the Mechas, and everything falls into place wonderfully.

The problem is that most people will not get this on their first viewing and cling to the idea that the story should have ended when David is on the bottom of the sea, but that negates the entire point of view from whom the story is told from in the first place, and gives even more resonance to the issues raised in this film as the Mechas try to understand who their creators were and what they were all about.

I think some are misreading the tone of the narrator as the ostensible or intended tone of the ending. A closer look - something few are willing to afford a Speilberg film - reveals a much more complex and ultimately unnerving conclusion. We are, after all, talking about a scene not unlike a murder-suicide. And one that includes some startlingly erotic moments between mother and son. This is an ending that takes all the dark mysteries of that relationship and ultimately sends the two principals sailing off into oblivion: artifacts of an extinct race and mythological forebears of man's mecha legacy.

Only the tone of the narrator suggests the simpler reading. And it is precisely this faery tale tone that the entire film riffs upon, as it reveals the darker, grimmer underbelly of all such tales.

For me, it's precisely the view into the taboo corners of human love that sets this film apart. Surely, there is no more selfish love than that between a boy and his mum. Even that complex known as "Electra" has never excited so much psychological confusion, or so sabotaged the social-order.

And this selfishness is at the very heart of the oedipal fixation, which is precisely a rivalry against the father for the mother's love, but also the rivalry among siblings. Though David's near drowning of his brother was caused by a somewhat different urge for self-preservation, their entire relationship is but a flashpoint of sibling rivalry. It's like the bringing home of a new baby - the ultimate obstacle between a former only child and the mother - but here it's a new baby that's both more socially sophisticated and somehow more deserving of the mother's love. "A real boy", and the ultimate threat.

Don't forget: David is "born" on the threshhold of a new world, one where orga offspring and mecha offspring compete for the evolutionary legacy - it is the sibling rivalry writ large. Writ on an evolutionary scale.

This is a film wherein every step in David's evolution is marked by violent gestures, all arising from that first, most potent love - the one thing he shares with the orgas and that which sets him apart from all other mechas that came before him. By "violence", I mean the violence in scenes between David and his father, his brother, his mother, and of course the "other" Davids. I mean the violence implicit in the scene where David quietly creeps to his mother's bedside, slowly bringing the scissor's blades toward her face, if only to cut a lock from her hair. This is a violence and violation implied quite intentionally within the sexual realm of the bedroom, his "parent's" bedroom, a place we will revisit in the climactic scene. But, in that final reality, the violence of the previous act, as well as the fruits of David's violation (his mother's hair), are transformed into an uneasy eroticism... one in which their relationship is finally consummated, and where death is finally realized.

Armond White writes: "There’s been nothing in modern movies more grownup or sensitive than David’s fascination with his sexy young mother. It’s as if Spielberg took that key image from Bergman’s Persona (of the small boy reaching up to the huge opaque image of Woman) and interpreted it from the inside out. Suspended in fascination, Spielberg introduces Monica applying her makeup – a vanity gesture shared with a female robot. Yet, where another filmmaker would stop at obvious irony, Spielberg dissolves/resolves ironies in love. This view nearly shuts out the father – Freud is both acknowledged and crushed by Spielberg’s awe at that first relationship, the most powerful and baffling in everyone’s life."

Or consider the scene in which David is confronted by the other David, and then all the other Davids, each striking at the very heart of his perceived "uniqueness", the very thing which makes him special enough to win a mother's love. After all, if there exists another David, much less thousands of other David's, then how could his love be special? His response, of course, is to destroy them. It is the ultimate defense of self. For what is "self" if we do not perceive ourselves as unique? And if we are not unique, then how could we hope to command our mother's love?

In the end, David does command it... if only in death. And in that act lies the connection between man and his legacy, between orga and mecha, transformed into an allegorical narrative, a faery tale, a sacred text: the Genesis of a New Race.

Dissolve to the Ocean Mother.

Beautifully stated Rich. Ditto! :b

Damn fine write up Rich


Peace Out~

Rich, welcome back! And keep straightening these guys out who are still mislead by the ending of A.I. I did my share already when the film came out last year. What a great film.

~Edwin

Continuing with the Oedipal themes in A.I., notice that when David finds Monica in the toilet, the book she's reading is called "Freud and Women."

I thought the ending was a spielberg manipulation to try and get the audience to shed a tear. Notice how the bright white colors in the background flash in the viewers eyes at that scene.

I don't think it was a happy ending though, it was a depressing ending, but ending it under the ocean would be far more depressing (IMO of course).. Basically David would be begging the blue fairy to be real forever. Obviously the actual ending brings more meaning to the film, but (IMO again), it felt tacked on and out of place.

About the actual ending though.. David sleeps, becoming human. When he wakes up from his dream, he will be a human still though. After a loss, humans eventually get over it. That's not to say they don't love and miss their lost loved ones, but they will not cry about it forever. Am I mis-interperating this ending.. that be becomes human? If he stayed a mecha, he would never get over the loss and be incomplete forever. There's another reason why I think the end isn't as meloncholy as some say.

It also seems to me that they made the mecha's look like alien's on purpose. My take on that is that it was simply to confuse film-goers. Why make them look like aliens if you could make them look like robots? Obviously the robots may change form eventually, but why would Spielberg make them look like aliens that look EXACTLY like the ones in Close Encounters? It would be too convenient to then say everyone didn't 'get' it.

What was with Chris Rock's cameo? How unnecessary was that?

I liked it though. I'd probably rate it .5 / . The acting is amazing. Haley Joel Osment plays his character very well. I think it's Jude Law who had the best performance in the film. Anyone whose seen The Talented Mr. Ripley knows that Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) the film loses something. Same goes for A.I. When Gigalow Joe is taken away, part of the film goes with him too. There are hardly any serious science fiction films anymore, hopefully with A.I., and the upcoming Minority Report, and Solaris there will be more following their footsteps.

"Exactly" like the aliens in Close Encounters?

IMO, they have nothing in common except perhaps elongated "necks", if that's what you want to call them.

The great thing about A.I. is that there are countless interpretations of every aspect of the film. What you get out of the film sometimes depends on what you bring in. This is one film that definitely improves on subsequent viewings, becoming deeper and more profound than what appears on its surface.

My interpretation is that it is a modern masterpiece.

David doesn't go to sleep....he dies/shuts down. It is expressed clearly near the beginning of the film that mechas can't sleep, and the narrator is the one who tells us that David goes to sleep.

Since the narrator of the film is one of the mechas (The Specialist), I would argue that this had to be interpreted from the mechas point of view of what "sleep" is, thus it makes more sense that this means death/shutdown to them. I am sure this is also confirmed somewhere in the extras on the DVD as well.

Whether he dies with a soul, so to speak, or shuts down as a computer would having fulfilled its program is another matter entirely. David's blind acceptance of the artificial Monica's love as "real love" felt more artificial to me, as he cannot tell the difference, and therefore I felt he simply shut down, without realising he hadn't actually got what he wanted. But the comment by the narrator at the end has made me question this.

"and he went to that place where dreams are born" Does this mean he ultimately has a soul, and, in a sense, became human (although not literally).

Every time I watch this film it raises new questions

Guy,

David will not be waking up in the end

Alright, thanks for clearing that up.. I thought it was literal, meaning he went to sleep and became a human.

We are forced to shed a tear about a machine that is shut off. I actually doubt I would cry if my computer was shut down. Isn't it ridiculous to assume that a machine has a soul? This is kind of like the flesh fair when robots were being torn apart and the crowd opposed it when David was next in line. What do you guys think about this.

But David DOES have a soul. The issue of responsibility in playing God is prevalent in A.I. When David was afforded the ability to love he was humanized to an alarming degree because of the many elements that go hand in hand with being capable of love (such as being capable of hate). Emotionally, David's drives aren't much different than they would be if he were human.

Mark

The way that a story is supposed to go is that there is something that starts it, something that hits a peak, and something that ends the story. The thing that I found strang about AI is that there is a point where it hits the crescendo, the peak, the climax, at the scene where Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) This seemed to me like where the movie should have ended, not because of story, length, or anything like that, but the film hit its peak and everything else seemed to be an epilogue. Maybe they could have filmed it differently, used different music, or done something else, but the movie at that point ended for me. I liked everything else that happened, but it just didn't feel right.

Pearl Harbor also did this. It ended before the whole strike back thing, and while that stuff was important, it seemed to be separate from the movie.

A few thoughts:
The question of David having a soul is a very complicated one. They say dreams are from the subconscious,does David have a subconscious? Do dreams come from the soul? Ever watch your dog dream? Yet people are quick to say animals dont have souls.
Its not about self awareness (Which some say is proof of a soul)because David already had that,but more of love and selfworth(IMHO)Actually I just had a thought - how AI is the exact opposite of 2001. 2001 is about Mans ultimate potential, while AI is about a robots.As Prof Hobby said,David exceeded his programming.His search was done out of love which DOES make him real.I dont think David REALLY aquires a soul or dreams at the end,but in his eyes having his Mother say I love you makes him a real boy.This is thought provoking,touching stuff really.

Anyway,I finally broke down and bought AI

The ending didnt bother me as much as when I saw it in the theater,but the Mechas and the whole"imprint in time and space and we can only resurect her for a day" thing still burns my ass.
I dont object to David being able to spend his last day with his mother, I agree its a fitting ending.But rather the scenes between the Ocean Floor and before his mother returns.I dont think it works.

within the framework of ai, as explained partially by the prof at the start, love -> sub-conscious -> dreams. it is this ability to dream that distinguishes man from machine in ai's world. it's why we see the moon (and also circle) references so many times, they symbolize the sub-conscious, the ability to sleep and dream, and is the key to being human for david. it's why the water theme is so pervasive; it's in the opening shot, swimming pool, drowned world, in that poem, "come away o human child, to the waters of the wild..." etc. it's because the ocean represents that whole sub-conscious motif, "that place where dreams are born".

of course, if one believes that place where dreams are born is a place of...death, then yeah, david dies in the end.


about the one day thing, i think it nicely represents how children normally and rightfully outlive their parents, and also show the perpetual qualities of machines compared to finite humans. having both monica and david live together forever would've been unbearably sentimental, from my point of view.

Yes, John Williams' score was absolutely terrific. I thought the piano theme was particularly effective, and I also enjoyed the electronica music (unusual for Williams).

Actually, I saw the film broken down into three parts: Part One beginning at the start of the film and ending at his "abandonment", Part Two beginning his journey and ending at bottom of the ocean floor, Part Three beginning at the excavation and ending at the end of the film.


I found that scene amusing since it is a role-reversal which book-ends the film. At the start of the film, orga are trying to create the perfect mecha, and at the end of the film, mecha are trying to create the perfect orga. Also notice the role-reversal between "Monica" and David. "Monica" is fascinated as she "learns" the information David is providing her, much the same way David was doing at the beginning of the film.


I agree. Compare David and previous versions of mecha. Not a direct quote, but as Professor Hobby explains to David, all previous mecha are bound by their programs; Everything they do has already been methodically planned in advance with human-inputted programming.

As for David, he is capable to follow his dreams with just a single program (love). He is not bound by algorithims and subroutines to achieve his goal. In a sense, David is the "missing link", not only between past and future mecha, but David is the next evolutionary step of humanity.

Hmmmm.... "Dave" Bowman/Star Child and A.I. "David"/Future Mecha.... coincidence?????


Really? I thought all the moon imagery were references to the "Dream"works logo...

8^B

Man, theres just so much in this film. I think I might watch it again today.

I believe it's called comic relief. I think the movie is perfect the way it is. Ending and all.

Oh man, I can't stand reading cut-and-paste posts, all that point/counterpoint, you say/I say stuff... so let me apologize up front for posting one just like that!


I thought the Flesh Fair scene was both overwrought, on the one hand, and not nearly disturbing enough on the other. For me, it's the one weak point in the film. But Chris Rock's "cameo" was one of the elements I liked, and it's somewhat akin to the Robin Williams cameo. Williams turn as the animated "Dr. Know" is all part of the same riffing on the dark underbelly of our societal narratives - our faery tales. Because of William's acting/voicing history and the style of the animation, the first thing that comes to mind (if only unconsciously): Disney cartoons. And the second: The Wizard of Oz.

These stories are, arguably, our modern fables, our faery tales. They are among our first childhood story memories (for me anyway). And just as there are riffs on many other films in "a.i." (those in the Kubrick ouevre, as well as Spielberg's, but also "Singin In the Rain" and quite obviously "Pinocchio"), the Disney and Wizard tropes are intended to awaken a realization that there are often darker truths underlying these tales, realities that are covered up or relegated to subtext by their childish presentations. They ask us to look deeper into these narratives, because that's precisely what "a.i." will ultimately ask us to do.

Chris Rock didn't exactly do a cameo. He did a character: the shuckin', jivin', lip-smackin' Negro of old Hollywood. But his characterization is not simply intended as uncomfortable comic relief (he is viciously destroyed, after all, in an "event" not unlike a public lynching). Rather, his characterization is also meant to call to mind all the dehumanizing depictions of blacks in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and his fate, and the joy taken in it by the crowd, is meant to draw a correlation between the way the orgas treat and view the mechas in the future with our own racist history. And like the Negro, as depicted in old Hollywood and demeaned daily in society, the mechas are less than human. They are meant to serve and they are meant to know their place.


I'm at a loss to understand why this seemed such a common misconception. I don't think it has anything to do with the film's depiction or the intelligence of the audience. I think people simply weren't prepared to engage with a Spielberg film so deeply, so they accepted everything superficially and expected the usual spoonfeeding. I think if this film had Stanley Kubrick's name on it, people would have been reading the cues all along, assuming copious amounts of subtext.

(Maybe that's just wishful thinking!)

But at any rate, the ending of this film is telescoped from the beginning. We're made aware that life-sustaining resources are running out. We know that this is why mechas were created to begin with. And we know that the orgas resented the mechas "superiority" in this area (Joe: "They hate us because they know that when they're gone, we'll still be here.").

So, there's an expectation that orgas will become extinct in a world where mechas can yet survive. It's reinforced so often, that this should come as no surprise.

And neither should the "look" of the evolved, future mechas come as a surprise. This look was also telescoped throughout the film. Just consider the logo for the company that created David - it looks almost identical to the form the mechas would ultimately take. And consider the distorted image of Hobby through the glass just before he and David are reunited in the flooded Manhattan - likewise, this "father" of the mecha race is made to appear in the image they will assume. (I believe there are others, but I haven't yet gotten my DVD... and it's been a long time since I've seen "a.i."!) And when we finally see them, we can clearly see circuits and lights just beneath their metal "skins". Surely, one has to put 2 and 2 together to make the connection, but they're very clearly presented as mechanical rather than organic. And since we know the arc of the story and have witnessed very similar imagery in a very suggestive way earlier in the film, we should be primed for that "light bulb going off" moment of realization. Our evolutionary legacy should suddenly become evident in that moment of realization.

(And if this had been made too heavy-handed or simply spoonfed to the audience, then Spielberg would have been roundly criticized for that!)


That, to me, would feel like a copout. Worse, a fashionably nihilistic copout (is it still fashionable to be a nihilist?).

Well, anyway, I would easily concede that David's yearning, his overwhelming desire for the most basic of human needs, is given its most spectacular cinematic rendering in the underwater scene - a mecha, imbued with the most potent of human needs and emotions, shall spend an eternity praying in vain at the alter of the Blue Fairy.

But this wasn't Kubrick's intended ending, and I doubt it's one that would sit well with Spielberg either. And with good reason, I think. While it's an extraordinary visual metaphor for human longing, left unresolved it's merely another nihilistic trope, neither illuminating nor complex. It's a too easy gloss of the human condition. Fortunately, the film goes far beyond the dubious and sophomoric 'depth' of some dark, portentous parable. Spielberg takes the narrative several steps further into territory that defies the simplicity of this false ending, but without undermining this extraordinary metaphor of eternal yearning.


Just consider what we would miss without the ending : (1) the human race is extinct; (2) man's creations have outlived and out-evolved us; (3) man's creations are fascinated by their creators and wish to understand us; (4) David's experience with us - something all Mechas can share through him - makes him an extraordinarily significant relic in their eyes, perhaps even a holy relic, perhaps the most holy connection with their creators the Mechas possess; (5) David evolves into something more human, though our notion of what is human has hopefully by now been expanded far beyond the simplistic definition of "a being housed in an organic vessel". David sleeps, perchance to dream (at least in the comforting words of the narrator), but we understand that he has actually reached the end of his existence. He "dies" after consumating his love with a being who's not really his mother, not even the same physical entity as his "mother", and perhaps more a symbol, the mother of all mechas, the ocean womb, all in a room that doesn't really exist except in David's memory, in a scene that culminates in the deaths of both principals and their passing into the mythology of a new race of beings.

A.I. is ultimately a film about the evolution of one species and the extinction of another - though perhaps we are the same, the mechas representing the natural evolution of the human race once we gained the power to affect, if not quite control our own evolution. But had it ended with David Swinton trapped under the sea in a disabled craft before the alter of the Blue Fairy, it would be like leaving David Bowman sitting in space on a disabled craft before the monolith at the end of 2001. Had Kubrick ended 2001 at this analogous point, what would we have? Man overcomes his creation, his tools (HAL), only to have the door to 'beyond infinity' closed in his face. Bleak? Yeah. Dark? I guess. Complex? Not quite. That ending would have earned Pauline Kael's otherwise inapt criticism: "copout".

Instead, we discover a race - our progeny, our evolutionary legacy - and we discover that they are fascinated by their organic forbears, just as we are fascinated by our own evolutionary history. Fascinated enough to dig up a long-lost relic of a long-ago time when creator and progeny walked the earth together.

And we discover that they too need fables to ease the anxiety of the ultimate question of being: from whence did I come and why this inescapable yearning?

Rich,
I must thank you for giving voice to several of the subconscious thoughts I had regarding AI, and more importantly, showing many more nuances I had never conceived. I saw it once, with a thirty minute delay (right around Gigolo Joe's "murder" scene with the client) after a power outage at my theater. Not the best way to go, but I knew there was a lot there. I just didn't take in a portion of it.

I eagerly look forward to my next viewing (and many after that).

Thanks again for your insight. Quite amazing.

Take care,
Chuck

My other random thoughts on A.I.:

The Mechas were advanced in some areas, but not all areas, and in those area, they had to "fill-in-the-blanks" and that included their knowledge and understanding of humans and what it meant to be human with all their foibles and frailties.

The basic idea of A.I. is whether or not man-made machines can become sentient and self-sustaining, and thus perceived (by most humans) to contain and be directed by a "soul" - the life-spark that drives humans.

The other thing is the notion of the ability to dream, and to imagine beyond your present existence that seems to be a human trait that is virtually impossible to pass down to the Mechas, no matter how much time/evolution has passed.

Rich Malloy - . Great posts - great reading. I can't wait to screen the DVD for my wife this weekend, it should provoke a great discussion.

Rich, there's at least one more clue. The first image we have of David - it's through Monica's blurry, sleepy eyes and he appears almost as a shadow. His image at that point is nearly the same as the Cybertronics logo and the super-mechas at the end.

I present to you the Cliff's Notes version in case you don't have time to read all of that:

To sum up Rich's post:

• Chris Rock minstrelry ==> Evoke parallels between Flesh Fair & race lynching
• Look of Mechas ==> Foreshadowed through film
• Ending being more or less depressing ==> far less important than ending being more or less meaningful

Personally, I think the fact that the beings at the end were mecha was far less obvious than Rich claims. The logo thing becomes meaningful only after you realize it for much the same reason that one does not assume that Chrysler automobiles will look like pentagrams. We have been treated to enough films with glowing/luminescent aliens (Close Encounters/ The Abyss) that the internal light show is no guarantee, either. Gigolo Joe's statement that mechas will outlive their creators is sufficiently fulfilled by David alone, so that bit of foreshadowing is also subject to misinterpretation.

If that vital piece of information could have been communicated more clearly via other cinematic means, it would be less subject to misinterpretation. On the other hand, even under the mistaken impression that the beings are not evolved Earth mecha, there is enough thematic material beyond just the "creation myth" angle to the film for the last act to be entirely necessary. Otherwise, I am in complete agreement with Rich.

Regards,

Also, one can see this with the Cybertronics scientists' demeaning treatment of the female mecha at the beginning of the film, i.e. commanding her to take her clothes off, which parallels the unequal treatment of women throughout history to the way orgas treat mechas, as inferiors, as objects.

Given that he was starting to expound upon the lack of feeligs and emotions in mecha, I took that as nothing more than an easy demonstration of the emotionlessness of the female mecha. No embarassment, no modesty, no hesitation - just following her programming. He stopped the undressing soon enough after just a couple buttons, so I don't think there was any real demeaning or sexist intent.

The one thing I'm not sure of is if all this stuff is coincidential or planned out. Its too good to be coincidential, so I say...

Good job Spielberg!

I know I was supposed to feel empathy for the kid, but I felt more compassion for the little Teddy the Bear's tribulations of having to "play" with David's brother, walking cross-country to find David, being helplessly tossed around at the fair, and then working his way out of the lost-and-found box.

And then when he saves the day by producing you-know-what at the end, it made me think Teddy was a better fake-human than David could ever be. Heck, Teddy was a better and more compassionate human than half the humans in the movie.

And then near the end you see Teddy sewing himself up like a little trooper. I barely gave a hoot about David, his mother, or anyone else. Teddy the Bear was the real star.

Upon watching the AI DVD, I have found a glitch in the movie..

In the making of , Halley Joel Osment explains that he did not blink once in the movie. I find this to be wrong.


In the sequence where his mother drops him off in the woods and he starts clinging to her and crying, watch closely he does INDEED blink.