The
Living and the Dead
In
“Artificial Intelligence”
We see
in the film, “Artificial Intelligence” many examples of the close
relationship between the living and the dead. We see this
multi-layered relationship throughout the story of David, the robot
protagonist. It is a universal concept that all living things must
feed off of things that once lived. We must eat dead organisms to
gain nutrients to remain alive. This is true on an artistic and
cultural level as well. Another reason the living need the dead is
simply a matter of a limited supply of natural resources. If the
living never died there would be no room for new life. This is
another theme of the film. One other relationship the living share
with the dead in this film is emotional. Characters sometimes react
to death with mourning and melancholia. The main goal of this paper
is to show how “Artificial Intelligence” is a story about how
death is a crucial part of life, and more of a transformation rather
than simply the end of one’s existence. That one must die or at
least be able to die in order to truly live.
The
opening sequence takes us through a brief history of the apocalypse.
We are shown a vast sweeping glance across the flooded Earth as the
narrator calmly explains what we are seeing. His voice is reverent
almost mournful. This helps to set the tone for the film. The camera
shows us the physical frame of the world as the narrator tells us the
historical frame. We see this two part framing again later in the
story as we are introduced to a new stage of the apocalypse. The
camera sweeps along a frozen world of Manhattan with a new form of
life flying along the landscape with us in their ships. They are
archeologists, there to observe the dead. They chip away at a past
world covered in ice.
This
chipping away at the ice is a metaphor of the journey or coming to
life story of the robots of this film, particularly David and Joe.
When they are first introduced to us they are cold, mechanical, and
run strictly by protocol. As the story progresses that coldness is
chipped away. In an early scene Joe walks into a room to carry out
his duty as a digital prostitute. Up until this moment he seems
innocent to the fact that he is causing any harm to those he is
programmed to serve. When he finds a woman he is programmed to serve
is dead, lying on the bed, he shutters. The husband is in the room
with them and tells her to remember that she killed him long before
he killed her. He knows Joe hears this, but acknowledges Joe’s
inherent innocence as he takes no revenge on him. He simply asks,
“How many seconds has
it been?” He sees Joe as a just a glorified stopwatch, and leaves
him be. After that moment, the death of a woman he slept with, he
becomes more aware of the consequences of his actions. He learns
accountability, becomes more human, more alive.
David’s
journey is similar. He is a different type of love mimicking robot.
His very existence is in reaction to a death of Professor Hobby’s
son. His development came years after the initial development of
artificial intelligence. This came after the apocalyptic flood, one
that killed off hundreds of millions of humans. Death, limited
resources, and the need for mechanized labor spawned the creation of
robots in the world of this film. David’s model came after many
upgrades in technology and many generations of artificial
intelligence. Professor Hobby created David to match his son’s
appearance and likely his personality. If the real life version of
David never had died, the new version of David would have never been
created or needed. David is later programmed to love a grieving
mother named Monica. David’s services are rendered as she attempts
to replace the loss of her son due to an uncured disease. She does
this by reading a specific sequence of words, a code that initiates
his child like love programming. The need for David’s services, as
far as his initial design, is shattered the day the sick boy, Martin
recovers. Since he does not die, David becomes a pending second
child.
David
can not compete with the original biological child, as we see in a
heart wrenching sequence. Martin sees David as competition. Like the
jealous husband, Martin see’s that the one’s he loves have
attempted to replace him. Unlike the jealous husband, he does assign
the blame to the robot. Perhaps this is because he lacks an adult
perspective and can not justly analyze the situation. He is too
innocent to recognize the actions of his parents as a type of
temporary abandonment. As we see it, Martin comes back to life after
his parents have considered him as good as dead. Martin responds by
putting David in his place. He talks to him like he would any robot.
He asks “what can you do?” He compares him to his old toy Teddy
and even mocks him at the dinner table by showing him how to eat.
David becomes fed up with the rivalry and attempts to eat as well.
This causes his face to distort as though he were having a stroke. As
we cut to the next scene we get a shocking reminder that David is a
robot. The technicians have his abdomen opened up as they vacuum up
the spinach. They give him a nickname as they clean him, “Robo
boy” as if they are attempting to comfort a real boy. He is their
creation so maybe they feel he does have sentiment.
David
is ultimately rejected by his programmed mother. He is let go by
Monica because he proves to be a threat to their real son’s life.
The scene where David grabs on to Martin for protection is full of
metaphorical imagery. The boys are shirtless, so we see that David
fits in superficially. One boy even comments on how real he looks.
When David pulls Martin into the pool with him he initiates a type of
baptism. Baptism symbolizes death, burial, and rebirth. David seems
to fall to the bottom, motionless, while Kevin struggles to break
free. Martin is pried free by people who care for him, while David is
left for dead at the bottom of the pool. We never see how he gets
out. This scene is mirrored towards the end of the film when David is
once again buried underwater. Again he is left for dead, entombed in
ice and metal. This time he is preserved in an amphibian police
aircraft as a type of metal and glass casket. It is quit appropriate
for a robot, opposed to having a casket made of wood or anything
else organic. If we look back earlier in the film we see Martin in a
similar metal and glass tomb. This is one where he too is buried
alive and frozen, also awaiting an advancement in technology. In both
cases they are brought back to life by eager hands.
This
film uses mirroring over and over, visually as well as thematically.
One scene that shows a mirroring in behaviors is when David returns
to Manhattan. Just like Martin, he returns home believing that he is
an only child only to find another child, another David. The
protagonist David says “you can’t have her.” He takes a lamp
and beheads his competition. Of course he doesn’t realize that the
other David has no intentions of competing for Monica’s love. He
doesn’t realize that in that way he is unique, that he is the only
David emotionally tied to Monica. All he see’s is a room stocked
full of replicas of himself, mirror images, competition. Professor
Hobby tries to help David understand how he really is special, being
the first of a kind. But even Professor Hobby knows that his real son
can not be replaced by his replica. These series of events kill
David’s innocence. But within the same scene he is born again.
David
is born again as he relives his birth. He walks up to a copy of his
face held by a machine by a chair he glimpses through the eyes up at
the “Bird” he drew for Martin. The bird he saw as his first
memory. This imagery is mirrored not too much later as he pulls the
police amphiblicopter up to the blue fairy. Her eyes overlap his in
the reflection of the windshield. He rests there and begins to pray.
He becomes entombed there with Teddy after the Ferris wheel
collapses. First the floodlights die out. Then he is left praying in
the dark, hoping to be transformed into a real live boy. He doesn’t
try to escape. He is exactly where he wants to be, pending in a glass
coffin, reflecting the scene with Martin. But in Martin’s scene the
lady on the outside was praying for him to live.
We
should also look briefly at the flesh fair. This scene brings up
death in a new light. In fact the scene is lit up quit dramatically.
It is a celebration, but of what, life or death, or both? It is
called a flesh fair, but they are burning and melting metal. So do
they consider these machines to be flesh, or is it an ironical name
for a brutal event? The stadium is a coliseum reflecting the
brutality of those of ancient Rome. We see gladiator types, chopping
robots in half, and bike riders with lions on their helmets. All of
this with a heavy metal band accompanying the destruction. One line
of dialogue stands out, given by a captured robot. He explains to
David that they are doing this “to maintain numerical superiority.”
The Orga need the Mecha to die so they can remain domineers. Since
the life expectancy of a mechanical life form is so much greater than
an organic life form, they must be destroyed in order keep that
balance.
This
film brings up another important relationship between the dead and
the living. Without the living, the dead would have no means to leave
their legacy. There would be no “enduring memory of all man kind”
without David. David carries with him memories of human art, music,
and culture. The new life forms that dig David up 2000 years after
his burial say that he is unique in all the world. They say that
humans may hold the meaning of existence because of their abundance
of culture, music, and art. Now David is the one who can not be
replaced. So these new life forms give him whatever he wants. They
want him to be happy. They need him to be happy. They recognize a
need for him to not just exist, but to live…to become fulfilled.
And so they bring back from the dead the one person who can provide
that, his mommy. After she fulfills her purpose she dies again, and
David goes “to the place where dreams are born.” The lights in
the room go out and the film fades to black. The story dies, and the
audience can then return to their other lives, but with new incites.
The film gives us a few moments to mourn at the end. The music helps
the transition as familiar scores allow us to relive moments from the
film, until finally we are expected to move on. But can we? We are
but another layer of reflection of this film, as we write and discuss
the themes within, we perpetuate the them and give them enduring
life.
“Artificial
Intelligence” gives us several examples of characters that must, on
some level die before they can really live. The film itself is a
symbol of a life. It fades from black, goes through many stages of
character development, and then fades back to black at the end. By
featuring mechanical life forms as its protagonists this film makes
us ask, what does it mean to be alive? Joe tells David “I am. I
was.” He certainly made an impact in the world he participated in.
A woman is now dead and a jealous husband too. But he also made it
possible for David to come to a greater understanding of his reality.
The more a being is aware of reality the more real they become. It
took the deaths of millions for David to be created and several more
to fuel changes in the world around him in order to get him to the
point where he could discover who he really was and to become
sentient. David had to be kicked out of the nest in order to grow up.
He had to learn that death was a part of life, and experience it
first hand as he watched the one he loved die. That experience,
having her tell him that she loved him followed by her death gave him
the closure he looked to the blue fairy to provide. It wasn’t a
blue fairy who really granted him that, but a blue alien projecting
the blue fairy. Even at the end of the film David was not fully
aware, but the end gives us hope. He has become more aware than he
was when he was first built. Perhaps he would need to evolve somehow
beyond his circuitry in order to reach a higher level of spiritual
life. Much of human’s art, religion and culture claims that this
evolution happens after death. You leave your mortal shell and move
onto a new realm of existence. Ironically his prolonged life cycle
only delayed his confrontation of death, and further progression.
David, as far as we see, has not yet reached that point, he remains
in his original physical form, but he has evolved to a point where he
can now dream, and grasp more deeply what it means to be human, to be
“a real live boy”.
