A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Reviewed by Timothy Mitchell
“A.I.,” Steven Spielberg’s film based on the short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss, is an ambitious science fiction drama about the confusing nature of sentient machines. “A.I.” begins with a robotics scientist, Professor Hobby (William Hurt), discussing the possibility of designing an android (or “mechas,” as they are called in this film) that can love. The film then moves forward twenty months to focus on the dilemma faced by Monica and Henry (Frances O’Connor and Sam Robards), a married couple whose only son has been put into a cryogenic freeze until a cure can be found for his disease. To ease his wife’s pain over the loss of their child, Henry brings home David (Haley Joel Osment), the outcome of Professor Hobby’s proposal that is designed to learn, adapt and love his designated parents if Monica chooses to “imprint” David. After some initial, awkward moments with David, Monica decides to imprint the machine, turning him into a loving, but somewhat flawed, little boy. Problems arise, though, when the couple’s real son is thawed, cured and sent home, resulting in a series of increasingly dangerous acts of jealousy committed by the human child on David. To resolve this conflict, Monica abandons David and his mecha toy bear Teddy in the woods. At this point, David assesses the situation in light of his programming and in order to become the loving son that he was designed to be, he devises a solution based on the story of Pinocchio, which he heard Monica reading to her son. In order for Monica to love him again, he reasons, he must find the Blue Fairy so that she can make him a real boy.
“A.I.” is very similar—both visually and thematically—to Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982), another film that presents androids who are forced to deal with the hopelessly contradictory nature of their creation. Both films portray machines that are created to look and act like human beings, and how they cope with the realization that the purpose of their creation is impossible to fulfill since their own inner natures are anything but human. In “Blade Runner,” for example, the androids develop an obsession with collecting photographs as a means of validating their own existence: they believe that if they could appear in photos that portray a past, like how real people do, then they feel that they are “real” too. In “A.I.,” the problematic nature of existence is taken to another level. As we observe in David’s behavior and in the behavior of other androids during the course of the film, it becomes clear that these machines are intelligent enough to perform complex tasks and are self-aware, but their psychological make-ups are deliberately incomplete. They can feel certain emotions and process certain information that are in line with the roles they are supposed to perform (loving son, doting nanny, stylish prostitute, etc.), but like idiot-savants, they become lost or confused when they are faced with situations that demand them to think and feel in ways they were not designed to think or feel. This is similar to artificial intelligence programming in the real world, which focuses only on certain aspects of cognition. The resultant programs can simulate certain cognitive abilities with startling accuracy, but they cannot operate outside of these abilities.
This diverges sharply from other films that portray artificial intelligence, such as “Short Circuit” (1986) or “Bicentennial Man” (1999), where the android protagonists become very human-like not because of their original programming, but because of some accident. In other words, these films argue that genuine sentience and free will are the product of some unknowable force, and that it is not limited by the individual’s inherent cognitive capabilities. “A.I.” takes a more fatalist approach, that sentience and free will are always limited by how our brains actually work and our own flawed thinking. Thus, the androids’ world in this film is sometimes disturbing and conflicted, not necessarily because it isn’t “real,” but because it isn’t entirely sane. Like the dazed characters in Alex Proyas’ “Dark City” (1998), individuals who have their entire memories and personalities shattered and reconstructed on a daily basis, David and the androids of “A.I.” struggle to make sense of the world using minds that were built to be forever underdeveloped. In this sense, “A.I.” is a variation of the Frankenstien story: the tragedy and horror of this film come from the notion that humanity would bring into this world such sentient and yet deliberately malformed beings, and then abuse and discard them when they fail to live up to our own misguided perceptions of what “true” sentience should be (or in some cases, when they live up to our perceptions too well).
The visual designs of this film are very imaginative, from the futuristic cityscape of Rogue City to the ruins of Manhattan, submerged into the ocean due to global warming. The acting from the cast is well done, with extra kudos to Osment and Jude Law, who plays David’s android friend, Gigolo Joe. “A.I.” does have its problems—the ending is unusually upbeat, to the point of contradicting the narrative that came before it. (But to be fair, if Spielberg had ended the film where it should have logically ended, the narrative would be unflinchingly bleak, and bleak, thought-provoking science fiction films like “Blade Runner” and “Dark City” usually do poorly at the box office.) Despite its flaws, “A.I.” is an intelligent, existentialist film, a true rarity from Hollywood, and is well worth watching.