*ORIGINAL PAPER
From Mias-ben
Although Stanley Kubrick spent almost two decades developing A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), Steven Spielberg would eventually write and direct the final film after Kubrick’s death. While it may seem odd for a single work to result from two creators—especially two directors so distinct in style and temperament—this combination of minds actually reflects the themes and motifs of the film. Within its visual text, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is obsessed with patterns of doubling and circular design. Throughout the film, faces become superimposed on top of one another, different characters repeat similar actions, and even the film narrative circles around on itself. In addition, specific characters are repeatedly framed through oval structures or reflected against rounded surfaces. These repetitions of shot choice and composition suggest multiple readings and underlying themes, including an interconnection between humans and machines that spans both desire and destiny.
A.I. uses the doubling of faces as one of its main visual motifs. Because this pattern is specific to the main character of David, and because it occurs at each of the film’s significant plot points, the motif becomes highly noticeable. The first example happens at the beginning of the film, when David (a machine, or “mecha,” child) is placed with the Swinton family as a surrogate for their comatose child. As David investigates the family photographs, the camera shows his reflection in each picture frame, visually superimposed over the family faces. This type of facial doubling will continue throughout the film. After Monica abandons David in the woods, he becomes captured by the Flesh Fair (a carnival that destroys mechas for rowdy crowds). While imprisoned, the camera shows David caged underneath a glass stage, his up-turned face visibly combined to the reflections of the performing rock band. A few minutes later, a fair worker scans David with an X-ray gun and reveals both of David’s faces at once; an exterior flesh face over an interior machine. After escaping the Flesh Fair, David goes to Rouge City in the hopes of finding the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio and becoming a real boy, which he believes will gain Monica’s love. When driving into the city, the camera shows the tunnel entrance (shaped like a woman’s gaping mouth) reflected on the vehicle’s windshield, with David again visible underneath. Upon visiting Dr. Know, a hologram that provides David with key information, the camera photographs David’s face through the doctor’s transparent face. Upon David’s arrival in Manhattan, two visual doublings occur: first, when David murders a duplicate ‘David’ robot by smashing its face, which reveals the robotic face underneath (although not technically the main character David, it is none-the-less David’s face); and second, when David peers through the eyes of a partially constructed ‘David’ robot, which superimposes his own face on top of his own face. The film’s last doubling of David happens after he attempts suicide by dropping into the ocean and then discovers a Coney Island statue of the Blue Fairy. He returns in a submarine vehicle and the camera shows the face of the statue perfectly reflected over David’s face on the windshield. Although this is David’s last example, one final instance of doubling remains.
While using these facial groupings to track David’s narrative progress, the film saves its last example to illustrate mecha progress. After being frozen in ice for two thousand years, David is discovered by advanced future robots. These supermechas read his brain, which causes David’s memories—specifically the faces of people he knew—to display visibly on the robots’ faces. Just as before, the camera shows faces superimposed on other faces, only this time accomplished by technological design and purposeful intent. This finale to the motif suggests an inevitable evolution leading from David to these future beings. The film even alludes to this connection in David’s introductory shot in the film, which shows him extremely backlit and purposefully distorted so as to elongate his body and neck, thus foreshadowing the physical appearance of supermechas.
Beyond facial doubling, however, the film also doubles specific images across different scenes. For example, at the close of the first scene, a female mecha takes out her compact and adjusts her make-up. The film then cuts to the Swintons driving in their car, with Monica adjusting her make-up in the exact same manner. A second repetition occurs when Monica first tucks David into bed. The film shows David lying down, bathed in blue light, and then cuts to Martin asleep in his cryogenic chamber, also surrounded by light. To make a further connection, the image of David lying frozen in his submarine vehicle at the end of the film also mimics Martin. Another example is the image of Gigolo Joe and David chained on display at the Flesh Fair, with Joe holding David protectively in front of his body. Following this scene, the film cuts to pictures of Dr. Hobby and his son (the model for David’s design), with one photograph showing the doctor and the boy in a similar pose. In each case, these repetitions connect a mecha character to a human.
A last type of doubling occurs at the narrative level. Like a mirrored reflection, the opening and closing events of A.I. parallel each other in specific detail. The first section of the film begins with scientists discussing how a child robot (David) will fill a great human need for love. The film then shows David’s awkward integration into the Swinton family through a series of painful events, including David stalking Monica as she makes coffee; Monica locking David in the closet and calling it “hide and seek;” Martin convincing David to chop off Monica’s hair; and David nearly drowning Martin by accident at a birthday party. After his abandonment and a long middle-section consisting of worldly adventures, the film returns to these events again at the end. A group of robot scientists discover David in the future and discuss with him the great mecha need to understand humans, which David can fulfill. The supermechas then reunite David with a recreated and idealized version of Monica, and the earlier domestic events repeat: David makes Monica coffee; they joyfully play hide and seek; she lovingly combs his hair; and she bakes David a cake to make up for lost birthday. Whereas the first version of these events sprang from family conflict, however, the final version occurs under false conditions and with idealized love. Both forms of dysfunction follow each other like a circle, trapped in a narrative as restrictive and repeating as David’s single-minded obsession with Monica.
A.I. also uses circles as another visual motif. During the first section of the film, David and Monica are consistently framed through oval structures or in front of circular objects. On their first morning alone, the camera shows Monica’s reflection on the round knob of a coffee container. Later that night at a dinner scene, the camera frames David through an oval ceiling light. When Monica tucks David into bed, the camera positions his head in front of a circular painting. A few scenes later, after David has spilled Monica’s perfume, the camera shows her reflection in an oval mirror. The film utilizes reflections again in the next scene when Monica’s image appears on rounded countertop. When Monica tells David that she has planned a trip for them, secretly intending to return him to the manufacturers for destruction, David sits in front of a large circle window. In the last scene between David and the real Monica, as she leaves him in the woods and drives away, the camera shows David’s face in the side-door car mirror. This is the only time David’s circular framing happens through reflection (used exclusively for Monica), and it creates a connection between the two characters that will carry David throughout the film.
As the narrative progresses, David will continue to be associated with circular framing. When caged at the Flesh Fair, the camera shows David standing in front of a round fan that incinerates robots. When chained to a podium, David again stands in front of a circular design. When viewed through Dr. Know’s face, the transparent eyes and glasses create spherical framing. At the murder David’s duplicate, the film cuts to an overhead angle of David framed through yet another rounded lighting fixture. In the last section of the film, the supermechas watch David on a circular display screen and then talk with him in front of the same round window from the first section. This type of framing finally stops when David reunites with Monica.
All of these motifs throughout A.I. suggest possible readings and interpretations, but the theme of interconnectivity appears most dominant. The superimposing of faces on top of David not only connects him visually to other individuals, but eventually leads to a connection with robot evolution. The repeated images involving mechas and humans not only connect them by behavior, but also by common destiny. Indeed, the circular narrative suggests that while mechas ultimately replace humans, they do not necessarily improve upon them. Both species seem obsessed with the things they lack and both look to the other for modes of fulfillment, represented chiefly in the film by the figure of David. Yet even he is trapped by personal desires, unable to consider anything outside of obtaining Monica’s love, even in the face of total human extinction. The film’s circular framing mimics his circular logic, which in turn mimics the circular logic of everyone else in the film. All sentient creatures, the film argues, become interconnected through chronic dissatisfaction and single-minded self-interest, forced to share a common fate intended for all intelligences, artificial or not.
A.I. also connects the talents and dispositions of Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick. While the film’s nihilistic vision of humanity, and humanity’s eventual replacements, suggests Kubrick’s philosophy, the deeply emotional handling of scenes, specifically between mother and son, suggests Spielberg’s gifts. It seems logical why Kubrick connected Spielberg to the project since Spielberg could show why human love is so attractive and addicting. In turn, Kubrick could see how this love usually stems from self-focused human nature. The ultimate contradictions and unities of A.I. work from this tension. It seems the handiwork of both creators, never recoiling from genuine emotion or its dark consequences.
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