A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)

The movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is a 2001 American science-fiction drama directed by Steven Spielberg with a total running time of two hours and twenty-six minutes. The screenwriter, Ian Watson took the idea of the story from the British author Brian Aldiss' 1968 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long". The lead actors of A.I. are Haley Joel Osment (as David), Frances O'Connor (as Monica Swinton), Sam Robards (as Henry Swinton), Jake Thomas (as Martin Swinton) and Jude Law (as Gigolo Joe). 

 

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence Movie Cover
Ebert, Roger. "A.I. Artificial Intelligence Movie Review (2001) | Roger Ebert." All Content. N.p., 2011. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqS83f-NUww

Summary

            A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is set in the near future where advanced technology creates artificial intelligence. Humans can now have robots, also called mechas, to serve them. Scientists now search for more out of their creations; for the robots to love their owners not only physically but also emotionally. The company Cybertronics creates David, the first child robot capable to love unconditionally. This movie is about a couple, Monica and Henry Swinton who have an extremely ill son who is predicted to die. Henry brings up the idea of adopting a robot child named David. Monica warms up to the idea of having a robotic son and "adopts" or programs him into feeling love towards her. The Swinton family is doing very well with the new addition, until Martin comes home from the hospital; now David and Martin don't get along and it leads to plenty of incidents... . After all this trouble, Henry has had enough of David putting the rest of the family's lives in danger and demands that Monica bring him to get destroyed. Unfortunately, she can't bring herself to do that, so she drops him off in the middle of the forest. David finds himself in a Flesh Fair, where they destroy robots, and he meets a robot friend named Gigolo Joe that will help him find the blue fairy and become a real boy to please the Swinton family. An unfortunate situation happens in the city of Manhattan, where David was supposed to become a real boy and he remains at the bottom of the sea starring at a statue of the blue fairy for 2000 years, until artificial intelligence find him and give him a chance to see Monica again.

Film Review

            In A.I., throughout the movie, there is non-diegetic sound. The soundtrack consists of very calm classical or airy music creating a sentiment of sorrow and emptiness. Scenes such as, when David uses the last of Monica’s perfume, become emotion filled because not only is the character sad but the music triggers the sentiment on itself. To add, in the movie the characters did not talk that much. For the most part, the lighting comes from the windows, which creates a very natural lighting.  For instance, when David is first seen after the elevator doors open at the Swinton’s house, the bright background of the shot makes David only a shadow, which physically alienates him. For the most part, the movie was filmed with low-key lighting, but when showcasing his happiness and loving relationship with his mother, the lighting would shift to high key.

 

Monica programming David to love her
https://www.pinterest.com/

            The plot of the movie is filled with various holes, such as, what exactly pushed humans to create Mechas. We also go very quickly over the part of how life is at home before and after the arrival of Martin. We don't really get to see what it's like to have a robot son that much. It is also never really showed what was happening to Martin for him to be suddenly cured from his so called incurable disease. The shift between David being with the Swinton's and him being in the Flesh Fair is a little choppy. Furthermore, once Monica left David in the woods we never see what happened to them after or any information on the life they lived.

Rouge City
Fish, Allan. "A.I. Artificial Intelligence (no 65)." Wonders in the Dark.
WordPress, 16 May 2010. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.

            The movie is set in the Swinton's house, until David is released into the forest. The different locations in the movie were pretty diverse and futuristic. Especially towards the middle of the movie after Monica releases David into the forest. David and Gigolo Joe end up in after the Flesh Fair and Rouge City, where everything is technological and colorful, and everything is much more futuristic and fictional. Towards that point, the locations are very different than the Swinton household and there is a lot more movement between these locations.

            The development and depth of the characters in the movie is quite remarquable. Most characters are rightly depicted within their first scene in the movie. When we first see Monica and Henry they are both at the hospital by their son Martin’s comatose body. Within seconds, Monica is portrayed as more emotionally unstable than Henry, which carries out throughout the movie. Monica is seen as the more accepting one and Henry as closed-minded yet when they first met David it was the opposite. Martin is mean and hateful to David in every scene, which they share. Joe, the love mecha, represents a lower type of artificial intelligence compared to David which keeps the viewers interested in the technological advances they have made by comparing their reasoning and state of mind in shared scenes.

David and Gigolo Joe walking in Rouge City
"Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence - A Revisit." Aint It Cool News. N.p., 17 July 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.  

            The actors in A.I. were very well chosen. The actress playing Monica portrayed her character as very emotional, which she did perfectly. In moments where she was alone with David at the beginning of the movie, you could truly see the terror she had from how real he was; yet she is still a robot. Sam Robards, playing Henry in A.I., was very protective of his wife. In the scene where David wants to cut a lock of hair from his mother, Henry takes it very seriously and comes to question what his robot son could be capable of doing. Haley Osment, playing the mecha child, David, made a great representation of what a childlike robot could be; by times scary but inoffensive as well. Jude Law, playing Gigolo Joe also did a great job at portraying that artificial vibe, making viewers feel uncomfortable at times, but still making us appreciate him as a character.

Monica letting David go in the forest
"Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence - A Revisit." Aint It Cool News. N.p., 17 July 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.

            This movie brings up a lot of issues with morals, is it right or wrong the way Monica treated David? It also brings up the theme of love and needing to feel love in your life. Needing to feel wanted and needing someone there, whether it be David or Gigolo Joe, if someone can be there for you and feel what you feel towards you, it could solve the problem we see in humanity. It brings up a question in the future, between what is real and what is fake. With the new technology that will grow and grow in the future it makes us wonder if what we know is actually real or not. Creating a robot that can have emotions and love is most likely possible but then again, can we make humans love them back. The main theme of the movie is breaking the limit to which a robot can be real, which is very well represented by Henry Swinton.

David looking at Monica through a glass door

Hassenger, Jesse. "Contrary to Popular Opinion, Spielberg Found the Perfect 

Ending for <i>A.I.</i>." The A.V. Club. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.

            There were not that many techniques used in A.I.  in terms of foreshadowing and flashbacks but definitely some interesting shots. At the beginning of the movie, when Monica is still unfamiliar with David, he seems to appear everywhere she is. The shots are made to put emphasis on his weirdness compared to humans; when Monica does her bed and lifts her sheets up, when they come back down, David is starring right at her smiling. This shot not only scares the character but the viewer as well. There were many different camera angles in this movie. The most noticeable one was just your regular front view, but there was a lot of zooming in or out on important things, to create emphasis on certain things in the background. There were also a lot of shots from the back, where we see what the character is doing, kind of as if the viewer is doing it with them, which makes us feel more connected to the story and the character in question.

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Strengths & Weaknesses

            Overall, we think this is a good movie; the story line was interesting and really made us feel the weirdness of having that robot look so human. There are a couple things that we did not like as much, such as the ending. The ending was dragged out and didn't add much to the story and just made the movie last too long. The ending is actually very thought out; David is found 2,000 years later in history when all humans have died and he is the closest thing to humanity, but it is dragged for such as long time that the viewer can already conceive what will happen. It was very intriguing and so weird that you always wanted to know what was going to happen next. When Martin came back home with his parents it added an interesting twist to the story making it become very dark and sad. As a science-fiction movie, Spielberg did a great job at choosing actors that really made us feel the emotions that he wanted to portray. To conclude, the screenwriter did a very good job at making the movie mysterious and intriguing and Spielberg sense of direction for this movie was impeccable and very realistic in the fictional setting.   

Connections to Course Content

            In many cases we would identify robots as not being sentient. In this case, David was extremely sentient. He felt pain when Monica left him in the forest, and experienced pleasure when he got to spend that one last day with her. His sentience is extremely present in many cases. He also lives through massive experiences that allow him to feel a certain way. For a robot, he very much has many human traits. In the scene where it is Martin’s birthday party, a friend of his clears out the differences between David and other human kids by calling him mecha. By calling David mechanical, he means that David is not like a real human, he is only a program, but David is shown to understand the concept of pain and emotions.

            Is David really a boy or is he just a robot? It is hard to answer this because he believes so strongly that he is a boy, he assigns himself personhood, but we don't really agree with this. Throughout the whole movie, they try to show how we can treat robots as humans, but they also try to show that it is hard to treat them as normal people, because we know they aren't. Robots are also not born, they are created, but can that be enough to grant them personhood legally? David can do anything a normal boy can do, like think, do chores, etc... But he can't do the basics in life, like sleep or eat, so there lays the issue of giving robots personhood.

            The movie goes over the idea of uncanny valley. Even though, David is advanced and can feel emotions, at the beginning of the movie this idea is represented with Monica. David is weird and not human like in the way he interacts with her; he watches her and stares. David is seen with a constant smile on his face, which is not natural and seems automated. David's persona makes us feel like he's human, but we know he isn't and we know there is something a little off about him that just makes us uncomfortable. The uncanny valley is explored in this movie to make us question how we would feel having a robot son; do we treat it as a robot? Or as a normal boy? It arises a lot of questions that make us confused because of that awkward limbo between the real and the artificial.

David and Gigolo Joe

"AI Artificial Intelligence." Time Out London. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.

Questions

1. How would you feel if you had a robot son? Would you treat him as a normal boy?

2. Have you ever interacted with one of these highly technological robots?

3. Love and loneliness is a big theme in this movie, do you think David can actually feel these feelings, or do you think they are simply programmed into him?

4. Do you think interacting with Artificial Intelligence is beneficial to us?

5. Do you believe that Artificial Intelligence will one day live as equals to humans in our world?

Additional Links

            These links focus on the presence of artificial intelligence gaining more and more popularity in our world today and how this may affect humans in multiple aspects of their lives.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/why-we-should-think-about-the-threat-of-artificial-intelligence

https://thedissolve.com/features/adventures-in-licensing/470-a-disturbing-toy-captures-ais-unnerving-fatalism/

http://www.livescience.com/54425-artificial-intelligence-achievements-and-missteps.html

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/heres-scientists-think-worried-artificial-intelligence/

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html

Work Cited

"A.I. Intelligence Artificielle." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Warner Bros, Pictures, 2001. Movie.

Golden, John. Introducing Cinematic and Theatrical Elements in Film. N.p.: TeachWithMovies.com, n.d.