Spielberg: Artificial Intelligence: A.I. part 4
At the end of Act III, David and his robot big brother Joe have escaped the Flesh Fair and are back in the woods. David declares his goal: to find the Blue Fairy of Pinocchio. David’s search for the Blue Fairy is, of course, the "search for the father" that Joseph Campbell writes about — in David’s case, literally so. He’s temporarily replaced his "mother" with a nanny-bot, he’s replaced his "evil" brother Martin with his "good" brother Joe, and now he’s going to replace his "bad" father Henry with his "good" father Prof Hobby — although he doesn’t know that yet.
Spielberg: Artificial Intelligence: A.I. part 3
At the beginning of Act III, A.I. appears to change protagonists for a third, or even fourth, time (if you count the prologue). Since this kind of structural gambit is unprecedented in Spielberg, it’s tempting to assume that it began with Kubrick, who performs a similar serial-protagonist stunt with 2001 and has multiple protagonists in Dr. Strangelove. But the serial protagonists in 2001 are four individuals all reacting to the same stimulus (namely, the monolith), whereas the protagonists of A.I. are all looking at a question ("what does it mean to be human?") from a different point of view. In the end, of course, they’re all fakeouts: David is the protagonist of A.I., and when we see parts of the narrative from other points of view, it’s only to give us some contrast or perspective to David’s struggle to become "real."
Spielberg: Artificial Intelligence: A.I. part 2
Act I of A.I. ends with the news of Monica’s son Martin awakening from his sleep. Act II (30:00 – 52:00) then deals with the consequences of that development. It also represents a first for a Spielberg movie — the narrative switches protagonists at the act break. Up to this point, it’s looked like Monica is the protagonist of A.I., but in the fade that occurs at 30:00 the point of view shifts decidedly to David, and will remain there for the rest of the movie (although it could be argued that it shifts again at the beginning of Act V).
Spielberg: Artificial Intelligence: A.I. part 1
WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT? David is a little-boy robot who has been programmed to love a woman he believes to be his mother. When she rejects him he vows to do whatever it takes to gain her love. This, to his little-boy-robot mind, involves tracking down "the Blue Fairy," a character from Pinocchio, so that he, like Pinocchio, can become a "real boy." The result is Spielberg’s strangest curveball, a movie that combines the solid, earned, heartfelt sentiment of Spielberg with the cold, wicked, despairing cynicism of Kubrick (who developed the movie for years before turning it over to Spielberg). Parts of it are almost unbearably sad, other parts are almost as unbearably creepy. Like many "important" Spielberg movies, it has five acts.
Spielberg: Minority Report part 1
WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT? John Anderton, like many Spielberg protagonists, has seen his family shattered. His son has been missing for many years, and that trauma destroyed his marriage. John is unable to put his family back together, and so he has, again, like many Spielberg protagonists, become obsessed with his work. As it happens, John’s work is being a homicide detective in the future, so he catches murderers by sifting through the thoughts of a trio of "precogs" who live in a swimming pool in his office. As a bonus, due to the nature of the precog’s thoughts, he is able to catch murderers before they actually murder. This he does to comfort himself about the loss of his son, and to please his "work father" Lamarr Burgess, the man who co-created the "precog" detective program and gave Anderton his job. Anderton is absolutely convinced of the rightness and justice of his job, and so when the precogs "accuse" him of a future murder, Anderton finds he must clear his name for the future murder of a man he’s never met.
Election roundup
My apologies to my readers who are anxious to read my analysis of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. I’m getting to it. In the meantime, these three articles on the McCain campaign caught my eye and express my feelings much better than I could. All three are worth clicking through to.
All politicians stretch the truth, massage it into the best fit with their message. But, let’s face it, John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies. Not just exaggerations or half truths but the sort of straight up, up-is-down mind-blowers we’ve become so accustomed to from the current occupants of the White House … John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let’s stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We’ve got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They’ve both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.
So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country … McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement … McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain – no one else – has proved it.
Crooks. That’s the only word for it. There’s no noble or higher purpose here, there’s nothing admirable about it, not even in the most brutal, Machiavellian sense. They’re liars. They’re crooks. It is taken as a Republican given that anything that can gain power is justifiable, regardless of how loathsome it is or how depraved the fabrication … If we welcome open, direct lies into our political discourse, it’s not political discourse anymore — just the oratorical equivalent of an organized crime ring. McCain knows he can lie through his teeth and almost nobody will truly call him out on it — at least, not compared to all the people who will hear the lie. That’s been the strategy for every election involving the old Nixonites, from then until now, and there’s no chance it’s going to go away until there is a price to be paid for being a nationally televised liar. So when’s that going to be?