June 29, 2001 | The opening credit --
"An Amblin/Stanley Kubrick Production" - appears startlingly
contradictory, almost oxymoronic.
After
all, Amblin means Steven Spielberg, since it's his production company,
and Spielberg means uplift and exhilaration, E.T. and Close
Encounters of the Third Kind, Schindler's List (ferociously brutal,
to be sure, but ultimately a triumph of the human spirit) and Saving
Private Ryan (wartime horror as the backdrop for the story of a
private who is, indeed, saved).
But
Stanley Kubrick, the legendarily dour control freak with a profoundly
despairing view of the human condition, means something quite different.
Something on the order of A Clockwork Orange or Dr. Strangelove,
darkly comical cautionary tales of ultra-violence and nuclear holocaust.
Or 2001, which signals the dawn of civilization by showing how
man-apes learn to kill more efficiently by reconfiguring animal bones
as lethal weapons.
So
what gives? How can this equation -- Spielberg + Kubrick -- possibly
compute?
The answer lies in A.I., a once-in-a-lifetime conjunction of
two extraordinarily disparate cinematic sensibilities that - maybe,
just maybe - really aren't as dissimilar as we might assume.
Inspired
by Super-Toys Last All Summer Long, a 1969 short story by Brian
Aldiss, Kubrick began work on the project in the 1980s, and devoted
major hunks of two decades to writing, re-writing and pre-production
designing. Near the turn of the century, however, the notoriously reclusive
filmmaker reached out to Spielberg, a long-time friend through frequent
long-distance communications, to assume control of the material. ("I
think," he reportedly told his younger colleague, "this movie
is closer to your sensibility than mine.") Spielberg was intrigued,
but waited until after Kubrick's untimely death in 1999 to fully commit
himself. Only then did he write a screenplay that claimed Kubrick's
working title - shorthand for Artificial Intelligence - and incorporated
many of Kubrick's concepts and conceits.
The
end product is a boldly challenging and abundantly rewarding masterwork
that should provoke more thought, spark more discussion and even prompt
more passionate response, pro and con, than anything we've seen in megaplexes
in much too long a time. Most of the debates will focus on the question
of artistic lineage: Is it really a Spielberg movie, or a Kubrick film?
I would say it's both, and more, and I would point to one scene in particular
as emblematic of the intertwining.
A.I.
is structured in three acts - or, if you prefer, three movements - that
expand exponentially in scope and complexity. The first segment, set
in a not-so-distant future, introduces Henry (Sam Robards) and Monica
(Frances O'Connor), distraught parents whose son (Jake Thomas) has been
placed in suspended animation after contracting an apparently incurable
disease. Even if they wanted to have another child, they couldn't: In
the wake of global warming, icecap melting and other ecological disasters,
natural resources are severely limited, and childbirths are kept to
an absolute minimum. But there's another way to fill the void in their
lives, courtesy of Professor Hobby (William Hurt), a visionary inventor
at Cybertronics Manufacturing, where Henry works.
Hobby
has devised a robot boy that he claims is the first humanoid capable
of both independent thought and unconditional love. The latter is somewhat
disconcerting to at least one of the professor's colleagues: Even if
a robot could love a human, she wonders, could a human - should a human
- ever return that love? Good question. So good, in fact, that Hobby
can't answer, so he simply brushes it aside and gives Henry an experimental
robot boy to take home for a trial run.
At first, Monica is seriously creeped out by the presence of David,
the ever-smiling, ever-precocious "mecha" (short for mechanical)
in her home. But slowly, tentatively, she warms to the life-like creation.
She takes the fateful and irreversible step of "imprinting"
a parent-child bond in David's memory bank, thereby ensuring his eternal
love. Haley Joel Osment of The Sixth Sense plays David, and if
you had any lingering doubt that he is a genuine actor - not just a
child actor, but an actor, period - take a look at the moment when,
right before our every eyes, his vaguely synthetic smile suddenly softens
into a boyish grin, and David matter-of-factly refers to his imprinter
as "mommy." Amazing stuff.
But
that's not the end of the marvels in this sequence. Monica, stunned
by David's seemingly miraculous transformation, accepts him in a maternal
embrace. Trouble is, there's something oddly, even ominously off-kilter
about the Pieta-like image. The shafts of luminously bright light are
a familiar Spielbergian touch. Yet, at the same time, there's something
unmistakably chilly about this brightness, something reminiscent of
2001. Something ineffably Kubrickian.
More
often than not, when one great filmmaker attempts to work in the style
of another, the result is a hybrid that fascinates without fully satisfying,
that merits little more than the respect due an ambitious experiment.
Think about it: When Truffaut did Hitchcock (The Bride Wore Black),
or Woody Allen did Ingmar Bergman (Interiors), what were the
results? Unique achievements or merely intriguing novelties?
In
the case of A.I., however, the constant tension between Spielberg's
warm empathy and Kubrick's icy detachment results in a stimulating sci-fi
fable that is arguably deeper and richer than anything either director
might have created on his own while working from the same premise. Appropriately
enough for a film that raises questions about the lines between intellect
and emotion, man and machine, reflexive response and artificial intelligence,
the collaboration ensures ambiguities and paradoxes, forcing us to provide
our own answers.
The
second and third chapters provide even greater stimulation. After her
"real" son recovers and returns home, Monica is forced to
choose between him and David. Inevitably, though reluctantly, she abandons
the robot boy in the woods, to give him at least a long-shot chance
of survival. (In the world according to A.I., robot kids are
destroyed when they're returned to the manufacturer.) Fortunately, David
is not alone: He's accompanied by Teddy, a walking and talking "mecha"
teddybear, and befriended by Gigolo Joe (played with wit and cunning
by Jude Law), a preening and prancing "love mecha" designed
to service human women.
David
needs all the help he can get, since he's determined to find the magical
Blue Fairy described in his favorite bedtime story - Pinocchio,
of course - so he, like the impish wooden puppet, can be transformed
into a "real" boy. His journey takes him through the Flesh
Fair, a garish, high-tech carnival - equal parts demolition derby and
heavy-metal rock festival - where mechas are destroyed for cheering
audiences by a flamboyantly sadistic, robot-hating impresario (Brendan
Gleeson). From there, it's on to Rouge City - think Las Vegas re-imagined
by Larry Flynt - where David obtains quick-serve knowledge by a holographic
Dr. Know (who sounds suspiciously like Robin Williams). And then? Let's
just say that David eventually meets his maker, but must wait a bit
longer to find what he's really looking for.
There
are a few scenes that last too long, and a couple of others that feel
unduly truncated. (Fortunately, Spielberg fills in the narrative gaps
- something Kubrick would never bother to do - by employing Ben Kingsley
as the film's narrator.) But the only substantial flaw worth noting
in A.I. is its curiously retrograde view of parent-child bonds.
The whole movie revolves around a child's obsession with obtaining and
sustaining the love of his mother. But, hey, what about dad? David's
adoptive father moves from indifference to hostility without ever pausing
even to play catch with his robot kid. And David's real father, Professor
Hobby, never gets the benefit of a scene that might clarify his relationship
to his creation. Meanwhile, Monica appears to be an intelligent but
unemployed woman who exists only to stay at home and mind the kid(s).
It's almost as though we're watching a future extrapolated from a 1950s
sitcom. If this weren't such a great movie, it might be downright annoying.
A.I.
is generously seeded with visual and verbal references to dozens, maybe
hundreds, of other films and fairy tales. (Don't be surprised if someone,
someday, devotes a doctoral thesis to images and archetypes cribbed
from The Wizard of Oz.) But two allusions are especially significant.
When David and Joe are deep in the woods, they are pursued by Flesh
Fair "recruiters" in a vehicle that instantly recalls one
of the most famous images in E.T. Credit Spielberg for having
the audacity to transform one of his own magical moments into something
so awesomely terrifying.
Much
later, Spielberg tips his hat to the finale of 2001 with an open-ended
conclusion that is either unspeakably tragic or gloriously triumphant.
Or anything else you want it to be. Because, really, it isn't Spielberg's
movie anymore. And it isn't Kubrick's. It's ours. For that, we should
be tremendously grateful.