From: (No Email available)

Date: 2001-07-04 10:48:13

Comment:

A.I.  My Take
- Marvin Price: mlprice@mac.com


Being a filmmaker must be a terribly difficult thing. Consider that like all things, what you get out of a movie is very dependent upon what you bring with you.  

Beyond the lowest level of the human condition we are each the sum total of all our life shaping events, combined with our education, culture, and our genetically diverse ability to learn, and make use of that which has been learned. Indeed, we are each an individual culture, with a unique view of the world.

For a film to financially succeed it must appeal to a vast audience. As you might surmise, appealing to a vast number of unique world views is all but impossible. So the filmmaker must inevitably reach for the simplest of shared experiences and emotions.

This is usually referred to as appealing to the lowest common denominator. A filmmaker must be extremely brave to reach beyond the common. To do so invites significant criticism and financial failure.

I remember leaving the theater after seeing 2001 many years ago. I heard comments like ?What a piece of %*#@,? and ?I didn?t understand it at all,? and ?What was the big black thing anyway?? and ?What was that stupid baby doing in space?? I felt I had just seen the greatest film of all time and the only thing I didn?t understand was the reaction of others.

Perhaps I brought something different to 2001 than those around me, because what I got out of it was certainly different. 2001 left me filled with hope for all of humanity. It left me feeling less alone and as though I might be part of some great cosmic effort to populate the universe with sentient beings. After 2001 I knew that the future of humanity lay not on this planet but in the stars. I fully believe that we are not alone and that the order we sense in the universe around us, might be far more significant than we currently imagine, even considering our various creation myths and fairy tales.

2001 also left me with a questions about the possibilities of building intelligent machines. It left me with the seeds of an awareness about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of creating something like me, and then treating it as if it were less.

To the movie A.I. I brought these early concepts, along with my 43 years of being a black male in the greatest country in the world.  I also brought over 20 years of working in the computer industry, of which 2 were spent happily working in artificial intelligence building expert systems and experimenting with neural networks. I also brought years of reading and enjoying science fiction, and countless nights staring at the stars and quietly speculating. I enjoy thought.

I brought no preconceived notions about Stanley Kubrick, or Steven Spielberg. I brought no expectation to be entertained by typical summer explosions of male hormones on the screen.

What I got out of A.I. was a thoroughly enjoyable examination of ideas and concepts I?ve spent much time contemplating. I?ve listened to people talk about this movie and I?ve read reviews. I know that Spielberg and Kubrick were very brave because they neglected the lowest common denominator with this film. The Pinocchio angle was presumably there to appease that denominator, but I think most people don?t really care about Pinocchio.

When you listen to people talk about the movie, it is fun to think about what they brought to the movie. I?ve heard people attempting to describe it as a cross between Close Encounters, Blade Runner, Disney?s Pinocchio, and an Outer Limits episode. I?ve heard people who become fixated on the William Hurt character?s relationship with his late son and determine that it was a sexual relationship. There are those who?s lives are fairly devoid of any substance and they generally got nothing out of the film.

For me, many concepts were again unleashed. Perhaps because I am a black male, I resonated with the persecution of the artificial beings by humans. I struggled with the question of whether it is truly persecution if they are just machines, until I again accepted that given intelligence, sentience, emotion, and creativity, they are no different than I and therefore I have no right to mistreat them.

I recognized in Gigolo Joe moments in my life when older black people would tell me, ?They hate us you know.? I wondered, since it is generally not acceptable to mistreat other human beings, will the drive to create artificial people come from our desire to have something that is like us available to dominate and look down upon? If so, should we ever develop artificial beings at all? After all, sooner or later they would seek equality and eventually  they might destroy us.

I was delighted by the relationship between intelligent machines and simple machines through David?s relationship with Teddy. It made me reconsider my own relationship with my pets. Would an intelligent machine adopt another machine as a pet? Ha! Did David love Teddy in the same way that I love my cats? Teddy, like my cats, was not intelligent, though it could display behavior that might be interpreted as intelligent. Teddy certainly knew that David was like him in certain ways, ?David. You?ll break.?

I was intrigued by the idea of possibly achieving immortality through our machines. Face it. We are very fragile and don?t last long, but our ?Supertoys? may not just last all summer, but an eternity. When Earth is finally visited by others, they may not find humans, but our next level of evolution; intelligent, spiritual machines.

Spiritual? Yes. Consider Gigolo Joe?s final desire (an emotion), was for David to remember him, to remember that he existed,  that he ?was.?

My point here is that these are the things that I brought to the movie and got out of the movie. The ideas go on and on. The movie was quite long and while that is a criticism as far as some are concerned, there wasn?t a moment in the film when I wasn?t given something to think about. For me, that is the mark of a good movie.

Some movies I would never attempt to review because my life experiences do not overlap with what is depicted in the movie. Most love stories I do not relate to. I simply cannot comprehend the fascination the general public seems to have with organized crime or serial killers. Consequently I may not like such movies and me giving them x out of total stars or a thumbs down would be completely irrelevant to someone who identifies with such films.

This movie I could definitely give 8 out of 10 stars. My biggest criticism would be in the Pinocchio angle. I would have left that out and allowed the audience to realize it by themselves, thereby feeling proud of  having made an intellectual connection.

After all, when playing to the lowest common denominator, the trick is to not make them think you are playing to them.

m.