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Review: A.I.
michael: Looks like I get to go first. Let's get some basics out of the way. Some reviews by others: Slate, Salon, Wired. You may want to read the short story that started it all. But if you see the movie, you'll find that the short story has less influence on the movie than a famous and beautiful poem by W. B. Yeats, The Stolen Child. Since it's out of copyright, and since it happens to be one of my favorite poems, and since you uncouth heathens could use some exposure to beauty, I'm going to reproduce it here.
The Stolen Child
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the Lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light
Far off by furthest rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight,
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams,
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest
For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping then he can understand
--W.B. Yeats, 1889
The poem itself in is in the movie in two places, and crops up in several other places as well - "Till the moon has taken flight" takes on literal meaning, for example. Faeries, yep, we got faeries. And there's no one more solemn-eyed than a kid who sees dead people.
I'm sure one of the other slashdot authors will go into the whole Kubrick/Spielberg deal so I'll skip it. The movie is slow, light on dialogue, heavy on music and long meaningful camera shots. (It reminded me of The Thin Red Line several times.) The audience didn't particularly appreciate the slower scenes (one anonymous coward in the back row shouted out "Boring!" at one point), which makes me think this isn't going to be a box-office smash. The acting is superior - a great deal of effort has been expended in having the mechanicals show a consistent face to the world - they don't break character in the slightest, not even an extraneous eye-twitch. Special effects are also superior - rarely in your face, but always there, and entirely realistic. (I'm going to ignore the aliens.)
One area I kept looking for was hard-coded limits on robotic behavior. These robots have neither the First, nor the Second, nor the Third Laws of Robotics, which seems like a foolish design oversight. Several major plot points would been eliminated if the robots were obedient ... but why would humans make disobedient robots? At the very least, it seems like emotion would come well before disobedience on the robot evolutionary scale.
Anyway, A.I. is well worth seeing, at least once. I don't know if time will call this a masterwork or not. It's certainly a fine piece, worthy of respect, and it will certainly be referenced in the many future movies about artificial intelligence (just wait and see), but it seemed to fall a bit short of master-level.
Jon Katz: In A.I., Steven Spielberg (and the ghostly spirit of Stanley Kubrick) has made one of the most astonishing and original scientific fairy tales of all time. The movie is unlike anything you've ever seen, visually or conceptually. Like so many Hollywood movies of the past decade or two, it doesn't quite know how to end, but that's a minor squawk against the backdrop of a masterpiece of story-telling genius and moral power. Through the life of a lost boy -- an artificially engineered one -- Spielberg has brought a fresh, contemporary eye to enduring questions of moral responsibility and technology, and their impact on human life. Be prepared: this is a very disturbing movie. In cinematic terms, Spielberg has chillingly evoked Mary Shelley. He combines his dramatic flair and his acute sensibilities about childhood with fantabulistic animation and design. Spoilage warning: Plot is discussed, no endings.
This is the story of David (played wonderfully by Haley Joel Osment), a robotic boy sent out into a world ravaged by ecological catastrophe (global warming has submerged the great coastal cities of the earth). Although the future is filled with mechanical beings, David is the first child programmable to feel and need love, and to dream his own dreams. His desire to love a mother deeply, once activatd by a spoken imprint sequence, is irreversible. If the relationship doesn't work, David must be destroyed.
Osment's tormented robot-kid is disturbingly convincing, especially his transformation from a machine trying to learn about emotions into a sentient being overwhelmed and consumed by them. Alternately predictable and inappropriate, endearing and creepy, he struggles to fit into a conventional family. Henry and Monica, the parents who take him in (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards) have accepted that their biological son, who is in a coma, will never awaken.
Already, the moral lines are drawn powerfully around this family, a stand-in for our morally obtuse society. Henry agrees to bring a robot child into his home as a surrogate kid without even telling his wife, to help assuage her grief. Monica, mourning her stricken offspring, is a sucker for a loving kid, even a programmed one. David is used in the most profoundly unthinking way. At first, Monica is unnerved by this alien creature, then succumbs to his unequivocal affection.
But their son Martin does recover, and comes home angry and jealous. Here, the movie moves directly into Frankenstein territory. In one powerful scene David is so anxious to be like Martin, whom his new mother loves so deeply, that he starts wolfing down food, which nearly destroys his delicate circuitry. Goaded by their manipulative and somewhat unpleasant natural son, Henry and Monica come to believe they have a monster in their home rather than a loving child, and are overwhelmed by what they've done. Just like Victor Frankenstein, they take no responsibility whatsoever for this creature, sending him away into the dark woods.
David's "mother," to whom he is now forever devoted, takes him out for a drive and abandons him -- an echo of countless fairy tales -- rather than return him to the cybernetic firm that will destroy him. The film's lively middle section depicts a world in which thugs roam the countryside looking to torture and hunt down "mechas," capturing them for a "Flesh Fair," a carnival billed as a celebration of life devoted to "demolishing artificiality" and securing a truly human future.
David's creator Professor Hobby (William Hurt), also stands back as this tragedy unfolds, more curious about his experiment and its commercial possibilities than he is concerned for its consequences. It's a scathing rendition of America's ostrich-like attitudes about technology, as it unleashes AI, fertility, genetic and other technologies on an unprepared world, all in the name of progress, health, or convenience.
In fact, as in The Matrix and almost every other movie which deals with AI, the film delineates a world already sliding into civil war: humans ("orgas," for organic) caught between technological and environmental issues, feel increasingly endangered by the intelligent machines that are more adaptable than they are. It's interesting that almost no artist or futurist looks at AI and the future and sees much good.
As a renegade sex robot called Gigolo Joe (the phenomenal Jude Law) explains to David, whom he's befriended, humanity has belatedly come to regret devloping AI machines unthinkingly. "They made us too smart, too fast, too many," Joe says, perhaps presciently.
Dark and ominous from the beginning, the movie now turns wrenching. Wickedly, Martin has urged his mother to read aloud the story of Pinocchio, with which David becomes obsessed. He sees the parallels between his own story and the wooden puppet's, and he sets out at all costs to find the Blue Fairy who will transform him into a real boy so that his missing "mother" will love him as much as she loves her biological son. But by now, David is no witless, gullible Pinocchio. He is obsessed and resourceful, and has evolved in decidedly non-Disney ways.
The shadow of Stanley Kubrick, who conceived the movie based on a short story by Brian Aldriss, falls darkly across this ground-breakingly inventive tale. There are embedded visual and thematic references to A Clockwork Orange, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with Star Wars and E.T. There's even a sly homage to Pinocchio's "Pleasure Island." And the story draws heavily from the fairy tale genre, especially all those Grimm's fables about kids being abandoned in dark and menacing woods. Kubrick apparently spent many hours talking with Spielberg about the movie, but died before he could tackle it.
But Spielberg really honors him here. This movie is as disquieting as it is eerie, gorgeous and thoughtful; it dares to take on the serious issue of humanity's pell-mell rush to fiddle with human life -- from AI to robotics to genomics -- without realistically or carefully considering the consequences. You can almost hear the technologists of the future explaining why they couldn't possibly have foreseen the impact of the forces their predecessors unleashed.
When Mary Shelley sounded this warning in Frankenstein, technology was primitive and noninvasive, still a somewhat abstract fear. The world in whic David "lives" is not only imaginable but, by many accounts, is almost upon us, at least in terms of the possibilities of AI and the rapid evolution of computer systems into a sort of species.
Speielberg reminds us that we aren't ready. Not only may many humans get hurt, but so may the new machines, along with nature itself. It's a provocative twist on a big and powerful premise. What are we? What are we going to be?
There's a Freudian twist or two as well. What David yearns for is what the shrinks tell us we all want at some point -- pure, undiluted love from and time with Mom. David's fight for that is heroic, down to a shocking and unexpected series of endings, certain to be controversial and upsetting to many. (Parents who bring little kids to what they think is just another Spielberg yarn will be in for an unpleasant surprise). David develops some less attractive human qualities as well. Spielberg seems to be suggesting that it's all too easy to ultimately create machines that behave like humans, but we might not like the results.
This ability, he seems to warn, distracts us, lets us off the hook, prevents us from asking the most signficant question: What does it mean to be human, and what kind of humans do we want to be? That question doesn't often come up when it comes to technology, where the question is more apt to be: how can we create more cool stuff?
A.I. is shocking and haunting, beautiful and unique. For all his sometimes icky Boomer sentimentality, Spielberg's ability to grow artistically, to make deeper, richer, more inventive movies, qualifies in my book as an epic acheivement. When it comes to science, this movie begins where 2001 leaves off, and then goes a galaxy or two farther.
First of all, pacing. There isn't any. The movie drags on, and on, and just when you thought it was done, it drags on some more. I would have been been fidgeting if I'd been an immortal robot programmed to simulate engagement with crap movies.
The soundtrack is obtrusive. Its forever telling you exactly how you should be feeling. (David's in trouble! Sad! The yokels at the demolition derby are throwing rotten fruit at a bad guy! Happy!)
The children are one dimensionally malevolent. Its a common-place that children are monsters, but they're complex monsters. These kids were apparently from the Cybertronics "Damian - finally, a child you feel good about starving and beating!" product line.
There isn't really a clear rendering of how David's mind works. He's emotionally needy, and well-behaved, and, um, hmmn. The movie's vague with regard to where he resembles humans and where he is other.
Cybertronics sensibly keeps its main R&D office in a half-submerged skyscraper in a drowned city. No doubt this makes it easier to attract and retain employees of a certain cast of mind (ie, romantics and those on the run from the law) but I wonder if its really logistically practical.
Spoiler warning:
I had high hopes for the aliens. I thought it would be a good ending if they set David up with a simulacrum of his mother with whom he could spend the rest of eternity, oblivious to the strangeness of his situation. I thought it would be good if the aliens remained remote, curious archaeologists. But no... they turn out to have soft english voices chock full of cloying world-sadness. They're just awfully impressed with humanity and wish they could be like us. Using their essentially unlimited technology they can resurrect the dead but, um, they time-expire faster than a big mac.
In short, as far a golem stories go, rank this not with Frankenstein, Pinochio, or Golem XIV (great novella by Stanislaw Lem), but with "Hawkman versus the Death Droids!!" or the manual for your autonomous robotic lawnmower.
-Zachary Mason
Now, this was a _really_ simple robot, designed to deliver a few different kind of radiation pulses as cancer treatments. How are we going to be able to program safeguards into super advanced robots with emotions and human level intelligence?
Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of entertaining stories about intelligent robots that had to obey people, couldn't kill, and the like. These were fun stories, and I recommend I, Robot to anyone who wants some light reading (though Foundation is better.). Just don't treat it as gospel truth, and remember, other writers have had completely different views of Artificial Intelligence. (My favorite is, Fondly Farenheit by Alfred Bester.)
The ending (after he goes into the ocean) has apparentlly been in the script since Kubrick started developing it. It went through various revisions but it's not a Spielberg add-on, as much as it might seem so.
Also, they're not aliens. They're super-advanced robots. Spielberg does a horrible job of communicating that but it's a fact.
...if I ticked the box I would NEVER see anything by Jon Katz again!!!!
As an append, the movie should be watched as a >robot's< fairy tale. It makes much more sense and is thoroughly enjoyable in that context.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
I found the movie enjoyable, but not nearly as thought provoking or as well executed as it could have been.
.." and I am horrified that they think "this movie begins where 2001 left off, and then goes a galaxy or two farther."
Despite the strong presence of Kubrick's influence (the movie would have been horrible otherwise), there were countless episodes of Spielberg-isms akin to those things that made me dislike Jurassic Park so much. Gratuitious tear-jerkers, cutsey-laughs, and all of the other crap that's thrown in to make the movie more marketable to the typical McDonald's customer and general-purpose merchandisers.
I was also disappointed with the trivialization of Kubrick's role in forming this - it's quite clear from the movie that his role was much more than "talking [about it] with Spielberg".
And I totally disagree with michael and JK's conclusion at the end that this is any indication of "Spielberg's ability to grow artistically
No way. The movie was decent, and I'm glad I saw it, but to even compare this to achievements like 2001, or even Speilberg's real achievements like Jaws, Close Encounters or E.T. is nonsense.
It's a good flick, but it's no epic. Get over it, boys.
I gotta say that you missed the entire point of Starship Troopers (the movie) - as I viewed it anyway. It's not a retelling of the book, it's a parody of it. Heinlein's book, at one level anyway, is an advertisement for an anti-democratic, military dominated state, and the film neatly skewers this with such deadpan subtlety that I'm still not convinced that the actors were in on the joke, let alone the studio execs that funded the film.
I found Heinlein's book repulsive, myself, but I'm aware that this isn't a universally held opinion. Paul Verhoeven, the movie's director, certainly seemed to think so.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Are you kidding? The ending, though a bit too long, is way cool, and absolutely heartbreaking. Besides, if they leave at that point, they'll miss the stunning Coney Island sequence, as impressive a bit of filmmaking as Spielberg's ever done.
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
We all know Katz is an AI, or at the very least a rather messy and verbose Perl script. Sure, with Katz there's something of an emphasis on the A, not so much on the I, but still. Having the Katz AI review a movie about AI is too perfect an opportunity to pass up, so they sneaked it onto the main page. I can live with that, can't you?
I would pick when the narrator comes again, and you zoom out/in on the ice. Man, the first thought that crossed my mind when the next scene began was "Oh jesus what the f*ck is this, the borg?!"
first words out of my friend's mouth: "Oh great.. f*cking aliens"
Commentary heard from the people in front of me (a bunch of 10 year ol' boys): "finally something cool happens!"
honestly, I've never had such a good movie ruined completely by its ending.. I mean, there's been some terrible endings in a lot of movies, but nothing where the ending just destroyed the whole movie, even the good parts, because it makes you focus on itself so much.
- Marooned
------ Poo-tee-weet?
David: "Please make me a real boy"
Teddy: "Shut up"
David: "Please make me a real boy"
Teddy: "Oh God, just shut up"
David: "Please make me a real boy"
Teddy: "I'm going to kick your f*cking ass if you don't shut up"
David: "Please make me a real boy"
Precisely. They talked about David as an "original" robot, which made it seem to me that the robots we were seeing weren't created directly by humans, but instead were created by other robots who were created by other robots, who somewhere down the line had been created by humans, but none of these original robots had survived, so there wasn't any lasting direct contact or knowledge of humans.
Everyone should take the time to run, not walk, to Amazon and pick up a copy of Brian Aldiss's short story collection "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" (taking the name of the 'story' that AI took its plot from - it's actually three stories). Other stories in the trilogy actually deal with this - IIRC, they were indeed aliens, picking through the ruins of human (and robotic) society, after the robots had died out (after they had built a society after the *humans* had died out).
The 'original' reference refers to the fact that this was a robot made by *humans*, not by other robots.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
If it ended before the second half of the end it would of been cool. There is just something about a movie that goes on a little too long for it's own good. This is one of them. It would of been more "Kubrick" if it ended before the second half. But the second half was cool in and of its self, but it just really didn't add anything to the movie I though.
But my big question is, the ice. It couldn't of just froze like that. If the planet cooled itself over time, the poles would start to freeze again and weather patterns would slowly drop more precipitation on the poles where it would then refreeze again. All this meaning the water levels should go down first and then an ice age would begin and the ice flows would descend down from the poles. Correct?
And of course, if so, none of those skyscrapers would still be standing. If an ice flow can sheer off a mountain, the World Trade Center isn't going to be able to resist it!
Yes I saw AI this afternoon. Combine pinnochio with bicentennial man, close encounters, and an oedipus complex and you've got yourself this movie.
There are 2 things that I will mainly comment on: the ending and the plot holes. How many endings were there to this movie anyway? It could have ended when he reaches Manhatten and finds his creator. It could have ended after he jumps into the ocean. It could have ended, albeit sadly, during the 2000 years he spent watching "the blue fairy." How many themes was Speilberg/Kubrik really supposed to bring out in this thing?
The plot holes are many. What the heck happened to his father? His mother is all he talks about. It is so oedipal, it's rediculous. The movie even ends with his mother and him in bed. He calls his mother "Mommy" after he is imprinted and completely ignores the father. He pays more attention to his mean brother. Wouldn't his programmers make it so he was imprinted to 2 people? Thus his father becomes a static character that is quite flat. David calls his father "Henry" the whole movie.
David breaks easily from a little spinach and yet he lasts 2000 years frozen in the water. He dives into water twice and that doesn't hurt his circuits at all. Also how, exactly, are the robots powered? This is a small issue because this is sci-fi and you have to suspend your belief but come on!
Also, when his creator tells him to wait while he rounds up the people, he never hears from "the creator" again. Why isn't there a big search for David?
Why do they bother leading David to New York anyway? Who would expect that he would steal a helicopter and make his way to a particular building in the abondoned Manhatten. If you're gonna lead him somewhere, lead him someplace easily accesible at least.
The last thing is with the aliens. I can't believe that David is the only "living" remnant of humans. If one robot survived, couldn't others? Sure I could suspend my belief that aliens came to study Earth in the future. But how would they detect him anyway. They went directly to him like they knew he was there. And they can bring somebody back but for only one day and only once. How stupid is that? Exactly one day. No more, no less. So some law of nature depends on when somebody goes to sleep? Crazy.
Other than that allusion to the poem, why would anyone fly a ship that everyone could see and run away from? That giant balloon was so bright that the robots could run away from it. There is a full moon 2-3 days per month. I think somebody would get the idea that it wasn't a moon if it was 10x as big as a real one anyway.
Little things: What engineer thought a 3-wheeled car would work? 4 wheels is the most efficient and stable design. 3 wheels looks cool and futuristic though. Also, if half the world has been engulfed, what is David's family doing living in such a luxurious and large house? Wouldn't there be space limits?
I suppose it does takes more than a little talent for a little kid to hold an entire audience's attention for 2.5 hours.
Yes, it is something you will want to see but it will never have any replay value. I won't buy the DVD. I can suspend my belief for a lot of it but there are just so many things wrong with that movie.
I got to see A.I. Thursday night at a preview screening here in Chicago. As someone who's been following the project since Kubrick was going to do it, I've posted some of my initial impressions below, with no spoilers:
I think A.I. would have been a brilliant film had Kubrick been able to produce it, but in Spielberg's hands the results are mixed. You get
the feeling that Spielberg understood about 90% of the story, but there's still another 10% there that he didn't know what to do with, particularly in the film's third act.
Several film critics have talked about Kubrick's use of "non-submersible" units - constructing a movie out of five or six sequences that support the argument of the film and tying them together with narrative links. In most of Kubrick's films, he ties together these units with such skill that a casual viewer doesn't notice that they're there. In A.I., which follows this (for lack of a better world) "Kubrickean" narrative structure the bits are all there, but they feel disjointed and clumsily put together. The transition to the third act in particular, is particularly clumsy, and it becomes clear that Spielberg doesn't completely understand all the
ramifications of the final scenes, because they aren't thematically consistent with the rest of the film.
I think one of the problems is that Spielberg is not an experienced screenwriter, and has trouble with some of the finer points of narrative storytelling. Additionally, his films tend to fall more into the traditional Hollywood narrative structure, so making something outside of that is a challenge for him, especially when
working a much faster schedule than Kubrick would have.
The other thing I missed was the acute sense of irony that fills Kubrick's films. The story of A.I. is really one of a huge cosmic joke, and I didn't get the feeling that Spielberg got it. There is certainly humor in the story (a welcome diversion from some of the film's emotional intensity), but it's "cute" humor, rather than
satire.
Spielberg does get credit for capturing the look that Kubrick probably intended for the film - no doubt the numerous storyboards provided by the Kubrick Estate helped. Also, the performances by all of the lead actors are fantastic, particularly Haley Joel Osment.
The John Williams score is very overbearing in parts - one of the great things about Kubrick's films was the economy with which he used music - here it's a constant presence, and when Spielberg is trying to make a point, he just cranks up the volume.
Despite it's flaws, I think it's a movie worth watching, however, if only for the little nuggets that shine through. It's one of Spielberg's most ambitious films, and I think he did very well with it in parts.
Interestingly, I actually think Kubrick may have been on to something by proposing that Spielberg direct and he produce. It's well known that Spielberg has no patience for post-production, and leaves most of those duties to his long-time editor, Michael Kahn. Had Kubrick been in charge of post-production on this film, and taken the time to get it absolutely right, I think it could have been a masterpiece, even with Spielberg directing.
Anyway, those are just my initial impressions - I will probably see it again, although I don't plan on paying more than matinee prices....
This is true (about Kubrick devising the 2000 years later bit), but let's be honest, he would have done it differently and more enigmatically.
I think one of the worst moments in the film is when David answers the door in the fake house, lets in the advanced AI, and we cut to them sitting on a bed, legs crossed, discussing this awful new-agey science crap that reminded me a little too much of metachloreans. What's with that garbage about space/time, not being able to clone for more than one day, etc. hooey? Couldn't they clone her every day? It's not like they had her memories anyway.
I didn't mind the concept of the ending so much as the execution. Kubrick wouldn't have had that awful conversation. Kubrick was known for his scientific accuracy (just watch 2001), and as a computer scientist, I was plainly ashamed at the pseudo-science that Spielberg was spinning.
Anybody with the tiniest bit of common sense would not program a robot that could harm, that would eat spinach, that would even have an esophagus whose sole purpose is apparently to deliver damaging edibles into its most valuable circuitry.
David was poorly designed.
And I'd like to think that Kubrick wouldn't have made the same mistakes.
If Kubrick had made this movie, people would still be angry at the film (like Eyes Wide Shut, which I think is an excellent movie with some flaws possibly due to his untimely death), but twenty years from now it would be greatly respected. Now, except for the visual effects, it will mostly be mocked.
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
If and when you decide to see this movie, walk out of the theater at the precise moment when David (Haley Joel Osment) jumps off the building into the ocean. Trust me on this. I won't spoil the ending because I've forced myself to repress it.
I'm really hoping someone pulls a "Phantom Edit" with this film..
-- "The reward of suffering is experience." - Aeschylus
but why would humans make disobedient robots?
D$%* it! Why won't this print???
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's about forty-five minutes too long; I'm convinced Spielberg simply wanted to emulate Kubrick as much as possible, and therefore threw a nearly nonsensical completely gratuitous and most especially pointless ending on the movie -- nevermind that it takes up nearly a third of the running time. I would've considered it a masterpiece if they would've just rolled credits after Joe hit the "submerge" button.
Does anyone know much about the "Supertoys" short story? I figure I'll go snooping with Google in a bit; but the short story that Wired reprinted at the link in this article doesn't seem complete. A recent issue of Playboy had two short stories by Brian Aldiss that had "Supertoys" names -- did he just write a whole bunch of short stories about David-the-neurotic-robot, or are all of these excerpts from a novel?
Like Clockwork Orange and 2001, this film is more about exploration than entertainment.
And yes, I realize Spielberg directed it, but it is Kubrick's vision.
There's another review here by Ray Kurzweil, a guy who has been around real-world AI for a while. Possibly a few plot-spoilers, but mostly about the feasability of stuff done in the movie.
I'm originally from Sligo, some 8km down the road from Glencar Lake (where Yeats is said to have written this poem).
In an 1888 letter to Katherine Tynan, Yeats said 'my poetry...is almost all a flight into fairy land, from the real world...The chorus to the "stollen child" sums it up - That it is not the poetry of insight and knowledge but of longing and complaint - the cry of the heart against necessity. I hope some day to alter that and write poetry of insight and knowledge'
This he did indeed go on and do. Here's a extract poem which, though I have not seen AI yet, may address the topical movie's theme:
He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens embroidered cloths
Enwrought with golden and silver light
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
You can see the waterfall in the hills above the lake here
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
I really loved the movie. I know that others will disagree and will nitpick at the flaws (which there were), but I think the great scenes made it worth it.
But the reason I posted - those weren't aliens at the end, they were robots! And the narrator was referring to his fasincation with his human creators. Didn't you guys love the symmetry of the robot's "human" desire to understand humanity? That he already had what he was looing for but didn't even know it? Well, it was probably just me :).
How can I best summarize AI?
Part Close Encounters in the wonder of its visuals;
Part A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick) in its pessimism of human nature;
Part 2001 in its glacial pacing and technology plot;
Part Hook and E.T. in its gushy family sentimentalism with otherworlders.
Naturally, Kubrick and Spielberg don't mix well, so AI sort of splices these together end to end.
Did I enjoy it? Yes. Do I recommend it? Yes, if you like said movies. I really enjoyed Jude Law as a robotic gigolo.
The computer science part of me screamed the whole way though... basic CS punches huge plot holes. The biggest is this: the linchpin of the entire plot is that the robotic boy can never stop loving and longing for its "mother" owner, despite being destined to outlive her. This is absurd -- not being able to reboot his software, or at least reinstall it, is really contrived.
But the photography and special effects are amazing, especially in the hands of Spielberg's admirable ability to have the effects serve the plot and not the other way around.
And if you have any doubt in your mind that John Williams is the most versatile composer working today, this movie will put them to rest. Line up the soundtracks to "Star Wars," "Schindler's List," "Saving Private Ryan," "Seven Years in Tibet, and "AI" and you'll see what I mean.
A final spoiler note: Despite what critics and IMDB commenters say, I'm absolutely against the notion that the beings at the end are aliens. They may be shaped like the "Close Encounters" creatures, but please! "Artificial Intelligence" is the name of the friggin' movie.
[ sorry, plot spoilers discussed ]
Hello all, I rarely find myself necessitating a response to slashdot posts, but the shear number of mass attacks against the ending of this film truly disturbs me. Now, everyone has the priveledge to share and opinion, but I've seen far fewer true opinions and more intintual herd-whinings about the non-Kubrickness of the ending and how sap-happy it seems. Well, let's just think about it for a moment. For the moralists who claim the ending gives no resolution to the human moral issues of the film I say you are wrong. The opening arguement of the film is "what responsibility does a human have to a loving, emotionally-unique robot" (pardon my paraphrasing). However, beyond giving resolution and meaning to the desires of David's life, the ending and the temporary resurrection of the Mom answers this question, at least in part if not ultimately. The mother truly loves David, giving the answer to the philosophical moral issue of the film: David is every bit a human child, so the human Mother must owe him the same responsibility as she does her own flesh-born child. This is what the ending does, reveals and allowd humanity to be redeemed, or at least not damned as unempathetic and purely nihilistic. If the filmed ends with David's forlorn please to be a real boy then the revelation of the film is a nihilistic and meaningless moral destiny for humankind. My feelings and beliefs aside (damn, I'm even dicussing morality, me of all people), it is a much less powerful and meaningful ending to just damn humanity to unfettered distruction and emotional isolation from each other. One of the central issues of the film, especially when it involves the son, is that the family and humanity cannot and will not accept David as the human he so well desires to be. This smacks of Asimov's Bicentennial Man, Card's Piggies, Heinlein's Mycroft Holmes, and countless other varlese who know they are ramen. In fact, the evolutionanry path forged by David's emotional capacity is evident in the mere presence of the future machines. They are uncovering a past that enthralls them because they have lost its memory. They are resurrecting the memories and legacies of their creators, and they KNOW this. That they do not discard David as just another inferior relic of the ancient past, as is the case in so much technology-based fiction, they actually are quite impressed with this little boy robot, who "knew actual, living people". They seek to cater to his desires and wishes because he is their link to a forgotten past. By humoring David, they find a form of carthartic relief in reliving and seeing the forms of their past open up. Its the legacy of humanity passed on to our silicon offspring. I think the ending has its usefulness and demonstrates a much more profound and necessary conclusion to this story than the senseless waste of a human life, David. Of course, I think of David as a fellow human, albeit of different origin and design. So, is the ending perfect or the only possibility? No, but it is possibly much more insightful and meaningful than 99.9% of my peers are giving it credit. Think about it for a while. Let it eat you up inside a little. I mean, what have you got to lose in learning to be emotional about a fictional boy robot-come-human?
I always get the shakes before a drop.
I think it's safe to say that Kubrick's film ended with David praying to the Blue Fairy; Spielberg's begins with David's resurrection. If the film had ended with David's endless, unanswered prayers, I don't think that anyone would be able to deny that it was a serious, provocative film. Most commentators have taken the view that Spielberg's ending was a cheap attempt at tacking on a happy, emotionally satisfying ending that would make the film more of a crowd-pleaser. I question this view. The ending was far from happy. David is delivered into the hands of grey being whose interest in him is identical to the interest that Dr. Hobby's team had in him: How can he help us solve our problems? They offer to David the choice that Monica had. He is given the chance to satisfy his emotional need, at the expense of another. Just as Monica "activated" David, placing him in a world where he was meant to have neither autonomy nor freedom, David chooses to have Monica resurrected, so that she may die again, all for his selfish desire. For the Monica at the end is surely not the "real" Monica; she is the idealized Oedipal mother, just as David was the idealized, perfect son. Did Spielberg actually believe that the ending was a happy one? If so, he is a bigger fool than most take him to be.