AI: Artificial Intelligence
Written by: The CinCitizens
Tony Lazlo, CC2k staff writer: Lance, great question. Not only does Spielberg accomplish something in this movie that Kubrick could not have, but my answer also dovetails with my realization about who is actually the most loathesome character in this movie: Henry Swinton, the husband and father, played by Sam Robards.
First, let me explain what Spielberg does so well: He makes Gigolo Joe into the most likable character in the movie, though during this recent screening, I gained greater sympathy for David than I ever had before. AI is largely a movie about child abuse. It’s about a family that decides to have a child for the wrong reasons – for their own emotional well-being, and because the mother (Frances O’Connor) apparently likes being a mom.
Or at least she thinks she likes being a mother – and all this leads to a life of shit for David.
Gigolo Joe, by contrast, takes to parenthood almost instantly. After David inadvertantly liberates him from the Flesh Fair, Joe asks David what he’s doing. David says he’s “looking for the Blue Fairy.” Joe asks what the Blue Fairy is, and David tells Joe all he knows: that she’s a woman.
Joe immediately springs into one of his kooky Gigolo Joe arias – “I know all about women. About as much as there is to know. No two are ever alike, And after they've met me, no two are ever the same” – but his intent is pure: Joe wants to help David, and the only vocabulary he has to express it is the randy-philandery crap he was programmed with.
Later in the movie, we see the best example of what I referred to earlier: a robot evolving in the field. Witness this speech that Joe delivers to David in a last-ditch effort to get David to abandon his search for the Blue Fairy:
“She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you, David. She cannot love you. You are neither flesh, nor blood. You are not a dog, a cat, or a canary. You were designed and built specific, like the rest of us. And you are alone now only because they tired of you, or replaced you with a younger model, or were displeased with something you said, or broke. They made us too smart, too quick, and too many. We are suffering for the mistakes they made because when the end comes, all that will be left is us. That’s why they hate us, and that is why you must stay here, with me.”
Lance, I can’t pretend to know how Kubrick would have handled this material, but I do remember something you said during our screening: that you suspected that SK would have made Joe a lot creepier. Hell, considering how Kubrick already had Lolita under his belt, I could imagine him casting Peter Sellers as Joe and going for the child-molester vibe whole-hawg – and it would have been the hell-and-wrong choice.
But I can tell you something that Spielberg bungled and that Kubrick would have nailed: Sam Robards’ father character. I mentioned that AI is about child abuse. It is, but it’s also about spousal abuse. Henry and Monica Swinton lose their child to an unspecified illness, and Henry brings her a frozen-in-amber simulacrum of a child to assuage her pain.
What in the holy fuck is the matter with this guy? Lance, your girlfriend put it best during our viewing: the only identity Henry allows his wife is motherhood. I further added Henry Swinton to the rogues gallery of fuckhole husbands from the works of Ira Levin: The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby. To be sure, Henry doesn’t sell his wife’s soul in AI, but recall what he says to her when he pitches her the robo-child idea: “My company has put an enormous amount of trust in me.” I shuddered in remembrance of the heartless professional ambition that characterized the husbands in Levin’s two famous novels.
Here’s the problem, though: Spielberg portrays Henry in far too sympathetic a light, and Sam Robards turns in way to agreeable a performance to earn our hate. All we have are the facts of the story – Henry’s systematic destruction of his wife’s psyche – and a few moments of Henry yelling at or shaking David; none of those are enough to make us really hate this guy (unless you’re like me, and you key in on him after repeated viewings). Robards needed a director's perspective to really hone his performance into a hateful one. Now, instead of reimagining his whole performance, I’ll focus on one simple shot. After David almost drowns his organic brother by accident, Henry and Monica share a silent agreement to get rid of David. Spielberg – loving hack that he is sometimes – simply shows Henry walking out of the room. Kubrick would have shown only the tail end of Henry’s exit – a few dischordant frames of Henry’s arms and legs slipping from the frame like snake oil. Kubrick would have shrouded Henry with abusive dread and made concussive his every move and shout.
In an ideal world, we would have had Kubrick direct the first NSU I specified, and have had Spielberg handle everything with Gigolo Joe. This would have drawn the best, sharpest and most satisfying dramatic contrast between the two fathers in this story.
That said, I do have a question for the Ghost of Stanley Kubrick.
Mr. Kubrick, thank you for joining us from the beyond. With as much profanity as you deem necessary, could you appraise my breakdown of the NSUs in AI and offer me any critiques or corrections? I would also be honored to hear how you would have made this movie, across the board.