AI: Artificial Intelligence

Written by: The CinCitizens

Spielberg, All Too Spielberg

Lance Carmichael, CC2k staff writer: When I first saw this movie back when it was released, I dismissed it as an interesting cinematic experiment on a grand, hugely expensive scale–an experiment gone horribly, horribly awry. Watching it five years later, I realize how astute, intelligent and perceptive I was back then — and still am now. This movie just does not work.

At what point did Kubrick attempt to travel back across the River Styx to wrap his fingers around Spielberg's throat? When John Williams's patented oxygen-depriving score was slathered all over the workprint? When Robin Williams'  agent was contacted to see if he'd be interested in doing a little voice work? When a robotic Kid Rock appeared? (Can you imagine a universe where Stanley Kubrick would direct a movie that Kid Rock was in? What would that universe look like? Which circle of hell would it most closely resemble?)

Okay, now that I've expunged that kneejerk reaction out of my system … AI certainly is an interesting failure, and parts of it work well. There's just one basic problem at work here: Spielberg can only do Spielberg, i.e. work in the middlebrow style. He just doesn't have the calculated, abstracted detachment that Kubrick can bring to things.This is a pretty commonplace criticism of the movie, readily concede. But let's explore what it means in a little more detail. A quick chart to define the terms I'm talking about:

When I call Spielberg an unrepentantly middlebrow director, I don't mean it as an insult, exactly. Middlebrow is what capital "M" Movies are all about. Middlebrow movies are built to induce pleasure and to pat the viewer on the back about what a fine, moral, upstanding citizen they are. And Spielberg — along with George Lucas (before he was cloned into Evil George Lucas circa 1990) — are the greatest masters of the middlebrow of all time (although Lucas started out as the Next Stanley Kubrick with his absolutely sensational arthouse sci-fi movie THX-1138.)

The fact that Spielberg had bungled AI because of his inability to think and direct like Kubrick is all-too-readily apparent in the very first scene in the movie. William Hurt, robot inventor extraordinare, leads a symposium on, well, robots. Not only does he spell out exactly where robot and artificial intelligence technology has reached in this future world, he then leads what is to all intents, purposes, and intellectual level an undergraduate discussion group on the moral implications of building AI — in other words, before we've seen a frame of the story, Spielberg has ALREADY BLATANTLY DISCUSSED THE THEMES THE MOVIE IS GOING TO EXPLORE. This is all helpfully hammered home by a woman who raises her hand and scoldingly says "It's a moral question, isn't it?" (Spielberg cast a young black woman in this role, which might seem like a progressive vision of the future until you realize how many hundreds of times you've seen this  (The Matrix and The Shield, just to name the first examples that popped into my head) and what a giant cliche making a black woman the moral voice of a movie is and realize that African-American females haven't even broken out of that cliche in this distant future.) Luckily, Spielberg's editor dissuaded him from adding a little spilt-screen bubble with the woman in it saying "It's a moral question, isn't it?" that pops up whenever humans are mistreating AI boy Haley Joel Osment

Now I'm about to reveal something that will shock and awe the millions of readers of this article. I, Lance Carmichael, have been in communion with the spirit world. Yes, I can contact the dead. And while I was watching AI with Tony, there was a third presence in the room sitting right there on my couch, undetected by Tony. It was the Ghost of Stanley Kubrick. Out of matters of taste, I cannot print out a transcript of what the Ghost of Stanley Kubrick was saying during this scene, but let me tell you that people in the afterlife have FILTHY mouths, because the GSK would put the saltiest sailor to shame. Using telepathy (which is how you communicate with the dead), I asked the GSK how it would've started off the movie.

"Right in the cocksucking, motherfucking action, pissdrinker!," the GSK replied. "Why ruin all the delicious mystery of what Haley Joel Osment is in this movie? Why in Lucifer's name not just start off with him at home with his adoptive parents, acting weird, and let the goddamn audience — at least those who haven't been spoiled by the multi-million dollar marketing campaign — slowly figure out what he is and what kind of emotions he's capable of experiencing? Huh? And why in Satanica's name was Tom Cruise allowed to narrate the documentary about me included in my boxed set?"

Think back to 2001. You don't really know what the hell's going on in that movie until the end, when we're given a clue by the NASA videotape explaining what the mission is that unplugging HAL trips. And even then, it's only an incomplete knowledge from the humans' perspective. It offers little clues as to what happens in the "Jupiter and Beyond" sequence. Yet for me–and for a lot of people, judging by 2001's reputation — this is exactly what makes the movie so magical, so–dare I say it?–religious. You CAN figure out pretty much what the movie "means," and what's happening–you've just got to do a little work yourself. Making the audience do some actual work is what keeps Steven Spielberg awake at night, cowering under his million-dollar, 3,000-threadcount satin sheets (that and the groans of the GSK in his basement). Spielberg is clinically terrified of his viewers losing interest, and packs his movies chockful of outstanding visuals, expository dialogue, and assaultive John Williams music (although Spielberg wasn't always quite this bad — Jaws and Close Encounters are filled with silences, although Spielberg's silences aren't being used for the same effects Kubrick's silences are. A gross, highly innaccurate generalization would be to say that Spielberg's silences are generally used to heighten tension — Kubrick's silences are there to let you think.)

I couldn't argue with the GSK. The GSK's worst obscenities were reserved for John Williams, because the GSK had spent his entire working career rescuing movies from heavy-handed, syruppy music designed to tell you exactly what to think and feel at ever second of the movie by revolutionizing the way soundtracks were done on 2001 and continuing this tradition throughout his career by using the most unlikely, yet oddly effective, avant garde music to create an atmosphere where the themes and stories he was showing us would burble beneath our conscious minds and into the unconscious, ringing all sorts of bells in our ids and egos.

It was a veritbal shitstorm of oaths and curses, my friends.

Tony, I give it back to you. What am I missing with this analysis? Are there any moments where Spielberg succeeds in doing something that Kubrick likely would have failed at? And lastly, do you have any questions for the Ghost of Stanley Kubrick? He's sitting right here beside me right now, watching me type, humming a Strauss waltz.