Friday, June 29, 2001
Intelligent and well done, a review of A.I - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- A.I. - Artificial Intelligence truly is Stanley Kubrick’s final film. Filmographies will probably list 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut as his final film, but A.I. -- Steven Spielberg’s latest -- shall truly be attributed to Kubrick. It is a project that baffled Kubrick so. Many years of self-doubt, introspection and puzzlement were spent by Kubrick trying to conceive his vision of the Brian Aldiss short story. It was left to Spielberg, the three-time Oscar winner, to complete in a mere nine months.
Starring Academy Award nominee Haley Joel Osment, A.I. - Artificial Intelligence, is a story that takes place long into the future. The exact year I missed, but the point is taken that it takes place in the distant future as cryogenics are the fad. Frances O’Connor and Sam Robards play a couple whose son has died. Robards comes home with David, played by Osment, a Mecha -- short for mechanical if I recall correctly. David is the first of a line of new robots that can love. Yes, in the age of super technology, love is still desired.
While David searches for love ‘Gigolo Joe’ -- played with great finesse by Jude Law (another Oscar nominee) -- doles out physical love. William Hurt -- an Oscar winner for Kiss of The Spider Woman -- is Dr. Hobby, David’s mortal creator. There is word that Haley Joel Osment may be up for consideration come Oscar time. He commands the screen well and does a remarkable job emulating the innocence of the intangible wanting desperately to be real. Like in The Sixth Sense Osment acts spooky but with a distinct intelligence like the film itself. I agree with Roger Ebert’s characterisation that Haley Joel Osment is one of the finest young actors in film history.
The movie proceeds at a good pace. It is hardly tedious as the film viewer sits mesmerised at the sets, acting and wondrous special effects. Osment doesn’t blink through the movie, which is an interesting exercise to note while taking in the picture. The effects that render New York City partly drowned are exquisite. From the submerged Statue of Liberty or a tarnished Radio City Music Hall under water, it is quite a cinematic achievement.
Science fiction is not my cup of tea. Even then, I would have paid the $9.50, or whatever the hell it costs to see a movie these days, to see Spielberg’s latest. This film has the evocative and visionary spirit of Stanley Kubrick. It’s eerie and spooky, surreal and imaginative. It truly is an intelligent film that doesn’t stop short of making one admire the vision of men like Kubrick and Spielberg.
Sometimes it’s acting or a good script that makes a movie good. In A.I.’s case it’s the director’s mark. Where else could such a lucid conjuring of worlds far beyond come from, but the men that brought us 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of a Third Kind.
Osment’s character tries desperately to love. He is programmed to do so, but because he is a “special” robot, he desires to be a real boy. Like Pinochio, the Blue Fairy can only make David into a boy. So leads an arduous journey to the film’s ending.
A.I. makes us wonder about humanity. Are we the only ones in this universe? Can our further existence be ensured, or is it up to our actions in the present? Are we our own enemy?
There’s a scene near the end where some superior life being receives the visions held in the mind’s eye of David. Like a decoder, the being places what is probably his hand near David’s head and begins retrieving ‘clips’ of visions as seen in the span of David’s life plus the two thousand years he spends frozen in a helicopter at the remains of Coney Island. Then a crowd of other beings crowd around and extend their hands upon the first being, lifting the images for themselves.
It makes one thing of how, if we just reached out and ‘touched’ each other and those around us, we could understand humanity and ourselves better. Perhaps then we wouldn’t need complicated machines to look like us and love us in return.
A.I. - Artificial Intelligence opens today and it’s worth a look to see what all the fuss is about.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .