God,
Spielberg is such an easy target. He’s pandered to our lowest common sensibilities for so long—practically inventing the idea of the
action film that encapsulates the
zeitgeist, making it a must-see event—that we somehow doubt that the man can have an interesting
idea in his head.
His latest film A.I. Artificial Intelligence proves that he can and he does. His singular crime this time around is editorial. The movie is just too damn long, particularly in the middle, the most overtly "special effects" section. But chock full of ideas A.I. is, as befits the honest, mature attempt of the world’s most successful filmmaker to bring to life the unrealized passion of one of the world’s greatest filmmakers. The difference between Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick, indeed, could be said to be the real subject of this film.
No need for spoilers here. The idea of Spielberg attempting to realize Kubrick’s decades-in-the-planning evolutionary fable is reason enough to spend your money. Whether he succeeds completely is irrelevant. None among us can know exactly what Kubrick had in mind this time around. How he was going to realize what he alone saw in his mind’s eye is obviously impossible to ascertain. And likewise none among us should deny that Spielberg can fill a movie theatre and satisfy an audience. Whether you’d like to go home with the audience and, over a good brandy or a cup of tea, discuss the movie you’ve all just seen is also irrelevant.
There’s no accounting for some peoples’ taste.
Food for thought:
- What if HAL, the tragic-in-the-Aristotelian-sense artificially intelligent character of 2001: A Space Odyssey had evolved into your friend, or better yet, your adopted son?
- What if a great tragedy in your life had caused you so much pain you were blind with grief, yet heroically determined to be the captain of your fate?
- What if you were a genius on the order of, say, Albert Einstein, and people wanted to pay you for what you knew? What would be your business plan?
- What if you were an orphan?
- What if you were hunted like an animal, or a European Jew during the middle of the twentieth century? Suppose you were an American Slave in the year 1801?
- What unspeakable act would you perform, in the name of love?
- What would you do in order to know, for sure, that you were loved?
- And if the world as we know it to be were to end— multiple millennia from now—would the intelligent machines that survived the cataclysm love us or hate us for the ideas we left behind?
We talk a lot on this website about
E2 being greater than the sum of its parts. We speculate upon the
idea that our
database might some day become
sentient, that it could learn to learn, to
categorize, to grow into the perfectly distilled image of our
myriad separate ideas of what the future will be like. Would
E2 in the future exist without
editors and
gods?
What is love?
Stanley Kubrick asked the question frequently throughout his distinguished career. It might be argued that each of his films, at its core, concerned itself with this existential conundrum.
Steven Spielberg has given us his answer to that question. It is up to each of us to consider, maturely and honestly, what it is we feel in our own hearts. We owe both filmmakers—and ourselves—nothing less.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence is not a film for the cynic or the biological chauvinist who insists that man will inherit the universe.
We build our machines in the manner in which we ourselves are built. And if we cannot love our Creator, and if we give our Creator every reason not to love us, well, then, the question comes to mind:
What’s the point?
On Hollywood and filmmaking:
Below the Line
sex drugs and divorce
a little life, interrupted
- Hecho en Mejico
- Entrances
- Sam's Song
- Hemingway and Fortuna
- Hummingbird on the Left
- The Long and Drunken Afternoon
- Safe in the Lap of the Gods
- Quetzal Birds in Love
- Angela in Paradise
- And the machine ran backwards
a secondhand coffin
how to act
Right. Me and Herman Melville
Scylla and Charybdis Approximately
snowflakes and nylon
I could've kissed Orson Welles
the broken dreams of Orson Welles
the last time I saw Orson Welles
The Other Side of the Wind
ASC
avid
Below the Line
completion bond
D/Vision
Film Editing
Film Editor
Final Cut Pro
forced development
HD Video
insert
king of the queens
Kubrick polishes a turd
movies from space
moviola
Panavision
Persistence of Vision
Sven Nykvist
Wilford Brimley
21 Grams
A.I.
Andrei Rublyov
Apocalypse Now Redux
Ivan's Childhood
The Jazz Singer
Mirror
Nostalghia
The Sacrifice
We Were Soldiers
Wild Strawberries