A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001)
I remember back in early 2002.  I read some blog or film site that I can't find now.  The guy listed A.I. as his pick for top film of 2001 and said (paraphrasing): "A.I. is a film that will be understood as a great achievement years down the road.  Right now the expectation of Spielberg doing Kubrick (or Kubrick doing Spielberg doing Kubrick) is too fresh and the best way to approach the film will be to embrace what it is not reject what it isn't (it isn't the last Stanley Kubrick movie)."  I didn't love A.I. at the time, but that idea stuck with me and I have waited it out to see if critical consensus would change to make A.I. one of the canonical films from 2001.  It seems to have happened.  It has risen in my estimation too.

There are many difficulties in coming to A.I.  The first is that the film is about a robot.  The second is the film deals with themes of alienation, loneliness, mortality, eternity and the unattainable.  The third is the film is dark and counter to what the average moviegoer may expect of a Spielberg movie (this is not E.T. with a robot).  Fourth: the film is deeply sad.  But the film is also a showcase of what Spielberg does well and I think is an essential text for arguing the merits of Steven Spielberg as an auteur.  I want to look at one scene.  Actually, the tail end of one scene.  Four sequential images.

David (Haley Joel Osment) is an advanced humanoid robot placed in the care of the Swintons while their biological son, Martin, is placed in suspended animation awaiting a cure to his rare disease.  After a cure is found and Martin is returned to his parents, Martin becomes jealous of David, who is programmed to love his human owners.  One night, Martin convinces David to cut off a lock of his mother's hair.  The parents awake to David holding scissors and are outraged and frightened.  

The next day is Martin's birthday party. The father questions the safety of having David in the household, while the mother is more honest about what truly happened.  While the children are playing, David comes up to Martin and tries to give him a gift.  Martin's friends step in and start subtly harassing David, eventually stabbing his arm with a knife to see if they can activate David's self-protection program.  Immediately threatened, David shields himself behind Martin and clings to him in fear as he steps away from the threatening boys and falls into the pool.  His weight carries Martin down with him, who can't escape David's grip.  Parents jump in to free Martin from the grip of David, who is left at the bottom as they rush Martin to the surface to resuscitate him.  

A seemingly frozen David now embraces nothing as the camera dollies in on a frontal shot of his face, ending on an extreme close up.  Blank stare.  

We are left in suspense while Martin is resuscitated.  But the point-of-view remains with David, underwater.  In addition to the suspense of Martin's outcome, we are left with an ambiguous David, a mechanical being, submerged in water.  We saw what happened when he ate food earlier (resulting in a trip to the lab so the technicians could clean out his insides).  Has he malfunctioned?  Is he conscious?  His arms extended, as if awaiting rescue.  But no one comes back for him.  It seems cruel even if he is an artificial being, and it is this lack of sentimentality that the humans feel for David that can be alienating as a viewer.  It creates an internal conflict between emotional connection (connecting to David's face and responses) and intellectual understanding (knowing that David is programed to look and respond realistically).

This would have been Kieslowski's favorite shot in the film. 

This is where Spielberg sets himself apart from many lesser filmmakers, who would be tempted to add weight to the resuscitation by taking us outside the pool, either to Martin's face or to the face of the mother.  Instead, Spielberg keeps us underwater, not simply because it is more suspenseful (showing Martin's face would suggest his forthcoming resuscitation), but also because it retains the point-of-view of David.  The audience must remain with David, feeling his distance and experiencing the scene as an outsider.  In practical terms, it doesn't matter if Martin lives or dies.  

David has now solidified his fate as the outsider and his life at the Swinton home is over.  The shot reminds me of Kieslowski's use of close-ups in Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993) to express isolation, a distancing effect rather than deepening emotional connection.  The distance is more than aesthetic as this also reaffirms the essential difference between Martin and David: life.  A real boy is mortal.  Mortality is humanity.

The visual distortion mirrors David's inability to understand the adult's response.  He does not understand what has happened nor the weight of it.  

Before the audience is allowed to connect with Martin's resuscitation, we cut to this distorted close-up of the adults lifting Martin and carrying him away.  The suspense of Martin's outcome is relieved, but we now see the adults as David sees them.  Our emotional interest is in David and therefore Martin's outcome loosens the noose around David's neck a touch.  If Martin died David would not be left untouched.  He would have been badgered and most likely beaten.  Though it would not hurt him, he would respond as if it did, and we would respond as if it did too.  David acts only according to his programming.  Hinted at beneath this, on a deeper level not dealt with until the final scene of A.I., perhaps the parents are acting according to their programming.  And what of the audience?

This distorted close-up also shows us the weight of mortality and the distance created by David's immortality.  No one stops to look back into the pool.  No one jumps in for him.

The mortals have gone.  Water engulfs the immortal one, as if still in the womb, awaiting a birth that will never happen.  

The camera pulls straight up from above the water, now freed from the claustrophobic close-ups but revealing the chilling reality of isolation.  David's one friend, a mechanical bear toy, walks up the water's edge but cannot help him.  David is alone.  

We see in the next scene that David's circuits are fine, but the emotional damage wrought on the Swintons has taken its toll.