A.I.: The Spielbergian Code/Coda
Stephen Spielberg's A.I., or Artificial Intelligence, tells the tale of a next-gen Pinocchio desperate to become a real boy so he can win back the commitment of the flesh-and-blood mother who has been forced to abandon him. The travails of the young robot, spun in a screenplay first stroked by the ailing Stanley Kubric, succeeded in winning the regard of many critics upon the film's release--at least, the first part of the film did. The final ten minutes, however, which spin a happy ending of sorts for the hero, earned rancor from those who would have preferred the curtain to close on the image of a robot boy forever trapped underwater in the carcass of a helicopter, within yards of a female statue whose embrace he will never receive and whose arms could not convey the warmth for which he longs even if he did reach them.
Many a film critic has responded with similar disdain to the upbeat endings with which Steven Spielberg concludes a number of his other movies. Admittedly, the genre prescriptions of high-energy adventure flicks like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. (1982), Hook (1991), and Jurassic Park (1993) demand that their respective heroes escape peril and accomplish their nigh-impossible tasks. Ending these popcorn movies with the death of Eliot's friendly alien, the splintering of the ark by a stray grenade, or the victory of Peter Pan's self-absorbed nemesis would have changed their very nature, so critics can forgive their adorable, theater-candy sweetness. Less generosity follows Spielberg's more serious-minded period pieces, films which regularly receive glares for wrapping up tragic historical events in nice little sentimental packages with quotable sound bites from the leading characters. Schindler's List (1993), Amistad (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and even Munich (2005) have been classified thus, and I wouldn't be surprised if his upcoming Lincoln (2009) fit the same bill.
Then there are the sci-fi flicks, like A.I., that presumably should have ended just a few minutes earlier. The ominous and slow-paced Close Encounters (1977) should have concluded with the dramatic landing of the enigmatic spacecraft, not with some hokey, anti-climactic meet-and-greet between man and alien. Had Minority Report (2002) ended with Anderton's incarceration or the last minute suicide of Max von Sydow's character, instead of the happy reunion of John Anderton with his estranged wife and the comfortable relocation of the three "precogs" into a cottage by the sea, it could have retained its noir aspirations and dramatic impact. And, though I have not heard anyone else throw this particular aspersion against the recent War of the Worlds (2005), I must admit that my own satisfaction with the adventure stumbled at a conclusion that resurrects the brother we thought eliminated by alien invaders in what had been (and no longer is) the film's most heartrending scene.
We balk at these endings filled with community and hope, dismissing them as unrealistic or, at the very least, unartistic. The film snob in us determinedly avoids narratives that conclude amidst warm fuzzies: we turn from scenarios in which characters react to extreme (or alien) difference with patient understanding to more familiar scenes of xenophobic hatred and conflict. We snicker at the troubled marriage that somehow, miraculously, mends, and fix our jaded eyes on the disintegrating family marked by the worldly staples of neglect, abuse, and adultery.
Fear and its progeny we recognize and welcome as old companions, while the prospect of peace and joy gets pushed to the periphery of our perceptions--anathema to the discerning, "honest" mind. No one is ever truly happy for long: uncertainty about the future, an inability to connect fully with even those closest to us, awareness of personal and global pangs, and assorted other grievances held against the human condition prevent us from embracing the possibility of happiness unconnected with present pleasure--let alone the ridiculous promise of eternal joy in some life after this one.
This cynicism prevents many of us from enjoying certain movies, and prevents an even greater number from entertaining the possibility of a benevolent God with a joy-filled agenda. Pervasive pain falls like shutters on our sight, obscuring the divine radiance waiting to flash out if we take a second and a third glance at those sappy signs of love everywhere manifest in friendship, family, and romance.
Think about it: what does the kind of movie you favor suggest about your general stance towards life?
Posted by Paul Marchbanks at October 24, 2007 12:08 AM
Comments
Warning: spoilers ahoy!
There's a difference, though, between happy endings and treacly ones, and I think the ending of A.I. falls into the latter category. I mean, come on, the aliens recreate the robot's mother from a sample of her hair that the teddy bear has kept in his belly all this time? Ick.
The ending was also not aesthetically appropriate--it had a deus ex machina (as opposed to deus ex caelo) feeling to it, as though it were an extra act tacked onto the movie solely for the purpose of giving viewers the warm fuzzies. Much of the tension of the film arose from the unanswered question of whether the boy robot could be considered human. The ending most critics would have preferred, in which the film closes on the poignant image of the boy gazing at the Blue Fairy with longing, would have left this question foremost in viewers' minds. The little robot has developed hope, imagination, and the ability to be moved by human culture (Pinocchio), but is his love for his mother genuine or is it a mechanism? And we could extrapolate from the robot boy to ourselves: we're always hearing that what we call "love" is largely a chemical phenomenon, a matter of hormones and evolutionary tropisms. If love has a chemical basis, does that make it any less real?
But Spielberg closes the door on intriguing questions like these by piling on the schmaltz.
Happy endings are all well and good, but to be successful, they need to be handled in such a way that they don't seem contrived or overly sentimental. Viewers will naturally recoil if they feel they're being manipulated.
Posted by: Courtney Vien at November 8, 2007 11:33 PM