Great review. I loved this movie when I saw it in high school and thought it was the best movie I had seen back then. I’ve seen it more than once but not in the last 20 years so I should revisit it.
It's a great movie. I loved it from the moment I watched it the first time. People complained, as they always do, about Spielberg's tendency to fit in fun gags and lots of technology, and they complained about the movie being too long, and too slow.
All of these complaints were off, in my opinion. Tech is part of the future, and in particular a future with life-like robots. Tech in the movie is there to tell part of the story, to underline the world as it has become. And the duration – well, this is a movie about the long duration. Of course, such a movie is long, so that you can feel how this robot boy is virtually searching for the one thing he wants, to be loved by his mother. It is slow because the search is mainly inside – the outer world is symbolic for the inner processes in that artificial life we learn to see as a child who needs love. Artificial or not. It is the evolution story – what love can lead to for an individual, coming to represent the very start of a new species.
About the doomed humanity – well, isn't the movie trying to tell how humans become gods, in the sense that they create the robots in their image, having David as kind of representative of how it all began, how life evolved into the next step?
I believe that there is this message in it: We can survive into eternity, but not directly as we are now, it needs some steps. Our ideas and skills will spawn a new species – and it is full of love and compassion, a wish to preserve and remember, learn about its origin, worshipping its creators.
Like the nature of life, where old life always gives room for new life, leaving its accumulated "knowledge" in the shape of nutrition, mostly, to the next life generation, and even to the next life forms.
It is in reality not a depressing story. It is the exact opposite: an account of how strong emotions; love and compassion, are eternal and will be the main building blocks of future life. We will create what we are not ourselves, seeing the best of us become the essence of life – losing the bad parts.
I absolutely sobbed at the end of that movie when I saw it and I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch it again. It filled me with both awe at the beauty of humanity and also with crushing existential dread.
As a single man, I used to go to the AI movie’s web site and have conversations with the promotional “chatbot” they had installed on one of the pages. The site was already years old and falling apart, so finding the page was a little tricky- it was pretty much sheet-white except for a slot with a blinking cursor inside. I’d ask it questions and it could not keep a train of thought, couldn’t remember my name, couldn’t tell me where it came from or what its password was. I printed out the nonsensical conversations and put them in a folder I called “DATING”.
I only saw it once in the theater. It broke my heart in a Bradbury kind of way and I haven’t approached it again. There were several scenes that haunt me, some mentioned here. A carnival rodeo of cruelty, destroying the outdated models with emphasis on novelty and supremacy was notable too.
Great review. I loved this movie when I saw it in high school and thought it was the best movie I had seen back then. I’ve seen it more than once but not in the last 20 years so I should revisit it.
It's a great movie. I loved it from the moment I watched it the first time. People complained, as they always do, about Spielberg's tendency to fit in fun gags and lots of technology, and they complained about the movie being too long, and too slow.
All of these complaints were off, in my opinion. Tech is part of the future, and in particular a future with life-like robots. Tech in the movie is there to tell part of the story, to underline the world as it has become. And the duration – well, this is a movie about the long duration. Of course, such a movie is long, so that you can feel how this robot boy is virtually searching for the one thing he wants, to be loved by his mother. It is slow because the search is mainly inside – the outer world is symbolic for the inner processes in that artificial life we learn to see as a child who needs love. Artificial or not. It is the evolution story – what love can lead to for an individual, coming to represent the very start of a new species.
About the doomed humanity – well, isn't the movie trying to tell how humans become gods, in the sense that they create the robots in their image, having David as kind of representative of how it all began, how life evolved into the next step?
I believe that there is this message in it: We can survive into eternity, but not directly as we are now, it needs some steps. Our ideas and skills will spawn a new species – and it is full of love and compassion, a wish to preserve and remember, learn about its origin, worshipping its creators.
Like the nature of life, where old life always gives room for new life, leaving its accumulated "knowledge" in the shape of nutrition, mostly, to the next life generation, and even to the next life forms.
It is in reality not a depressing story. It is the exact opposite: an account of how strong emotions; love and compassion, are eternal and will be the main building blocks of future life. We will create what we are not ourselves, seeing the best of us become the essence of life – losing the bad parts.
It is good winning over bad. Heaven.
Well that was fucking horrifying, John. Thank you for inspiring my new recurring nightmare!
I absolutely sobbed at the end of that movie when I saw it and I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch it again. It filled me with both awe at the beauty of humanity and also with crushing existential dread.
someone who isn't me could probably write a fabulous essay about the last act of A.I. and the last act of OUR TOWN.
As a single man, I used to go to the AI movie’s web site and have conversations with the promotional “chatbot” they had installed on one of the pages. The site was already years old and falling apart, so finding the page was a little tricky- it was pretty much sheet-white except for a slot with a blinking cursor inside. I’d ask it questions and it could not keep a train of thought, couldn’t remember my name, couldn’t tell me where it came from or what its password was. I printed out the nonsensical conversations and put them in a folder I called “DATING”.
I only saw it once in the theater. It broke my heart in a Bradbury kind of way and I haven’t approached it again. There were several scenes that haunt me, some mentioned here. A carnival rodeo of cruelty, destroying the outdated models with emphasis on novelty and supremacy was notable too.
Oh yeah IT'S VERY Bradbury
If the maternal scenes weren't enough to warrant hankies, the shot of the Chrysler Building entombed in ice. Bwah!