Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

You've gotta be kidding. Do you understand what's even happening in it?

yeah, this. the ending is nearly as devastating as anything in an ozu film! it's brutal and terrifyingly sad.

otm

I think the only flaw of AI, really, is designing the future-robots to look too similar to past Spielberg/movie aliens. It's definitely a little confusing, especially for a film that's already put its viewers through the emotional ringer.

This is pretty good on AI: http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/335/6_ai_artificial_intelligence

Often feel one of Spielberg's greatest lifts from the Classical Hollywood era is his ability to smuggle in darker or ambivalent themes into his films while maintaining a more obvious (melo)dramatic sheen.

Watched AI again over the weekend (after screening Jaws and Close Encounters), and sorry to say it didn't seem better on second viewing. There are some basic aspects of it that I don't like -- thin character development, fairly ridiculous logistical details like Joe and David being able to pilot the helicopter/submarine, bad use of narration -- but the main issue I have is that it doesn't actually have anything interesting to say about artificial intelligence. It really did just seem like a Pinocchio story in sci-fi clothes to me. Granted, there were a couple of scenes that tugged on the heartstrings (particularly the one where Monica leaves David in the woods), but by the end of it, I was not only unmoved, but genuinely happy that it was finally over after what seemed like a completely unnecessary, story-arc/momentum-killing coda.

I'm sure I will lose any of you who like this movie (esp the ending) with that statement. I can't overlook it: the ending took what might have been a decent-to-good modern adaptation of Pinocchio and turned it into a maudlin B-movie. I can't find any reason why that ending *had* to happen, other than to give the *appearance of* a happy ending, or one last chance to tug on the heartstrings. Otherwise, fading out with David and Teddy stuck underwater staring at the fairy statue perfectly closes out the story arc, and gives the film a sadly poetic ending to boot.

And not coincidentally, this is my primary gripe with (late) Spielberg -- he seems unable to make a movie that doesn't conform to old school Hollywood cliché, at the expense of a story that could otherwise be interesting and thought-provoking. Terry Gilliam said it another way, and I paraphrase-- "Spielberg movies give you answers, Kubrick's makes you ask questions."

Heh. The hermetic let's-prove-this-thesis-statement approach to filmmaking is what often repels me about Kubrick, who often directs as if he's going to try, dammit, to force feed the answers.

Nearly 1000 posts on this thread - looks like a must read.

I think the AI advance in the movie is not that science has made a human replica, it's that science has made a creation that is not physically or intellectually but emotionally more human than human. Uncorrupted, unconditional love. Time and time again in the film, he is exposed to the shittiness of human existence. And his reward is an eternity of loneliness while society falls apart around him.

But I'd argue that uncorrupted, unconditional love *isn't* human -- it's exactly what you'd expect out of something that was designed and programmed. It executes something very well, but it is incapable of the kind of contradiction and second-guessing of a human. (And also -- similar to HAL in 2001 -- seems primarily motived by self-interest.) While David's story was tragic, it was hard for me to feel a lot for "him", because I knew he wasn't human. I knew he wasn't capable of actually realizing how deluded he was. In fact, I couldn't even justify calling him "deluded", because he was completely ruled by his imprint to Monica. You can't have tragedy without the notion that it might have been averted had the hero just realized in time, or made different choices. This hero wasn't capable of doing that, so the movie's arc was in a lot of ways pre-determined and anti-climactic.

I mentioned in the dedicated thread, but a recent rewatch of WOTW solidified my opinion that the first half is masterful and easily among Spielberg's all-time best and the second half fizzles out spectacularly and makes me wonder if he didn't just have his nephew direct it so he could catch up on his reading.

yeah, this. the ending is nearly as devastating as anything in an ozu film! it's brutal and terrifyingly sad.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, 29 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 29 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL

Everything about WOTW is great except Tim Robbins and the very end.

It executes something very well, but it is incapable of the kind of contradiction and second-guessing of a human

Sure, but I think one thing the movie is asking is whether this is a good thing or a cruel thing. Which is part of its tragedy, that being totally good is his flaw. Anyway, tragedy (at least classically, in the arts) is something that can't be averted. I think the most ingenious, painful thing about the whole story is that William Hurt places him with this family knowing fully well they will fuck it up; he's more interested in watching how David handles it. Is it cruel to be cruel to a creation programmed not to be cruel?

Terry Gilliam hasn't made a motherfucking good movie in 30 years

he seems unable to make a movie that doesn't conform to old school Hollywood cliché, at the expense of a story that could otherwise be interesting and thought-provoking.

tell me how Munich does this, for starters.

Is it cruel to be cruel to a creation programmed not to be cruel?

Yes it is! However, once Hurt's character makes the God-to-Adam comparison *in the first real scene of the movie*, it's obvious to me that he's a cruel, selfish, mad-scientist archetype, and I'm left with a countdown to the inevitably tragic ending. That's just too soon to show your hand in a movie imo.

I'm not saying the concept of this movie is bad -- I'm saying Spielberg made a bad movie out of it.

tell me how Munich does this, for starters.

I need to watch it again. Maybe it doesn't!

As work on special effects got under way, Kubrick reached out to one last author, the English novelist Sara Maitland. She was the only nonscience-fiction writer to work on the project.

He wanted, he told her, a story-teller. "By the time I came to the project it had become enormous, unwieldy, unfocused," said Ms. Maitland. She quickly concluded that the story needed to make emotional sense as a myth or fairy tale, and believes that Kubrick realized this.

Kubrick was fascinated by artificial intelligence and fond of robots, which he regarded as a more environmentally adaptable form of human being.

"He decided to make this film because he wanted people to shift to a more positive view of A.I.," Ms. Maitland said. "He was quite open to me about that.

He said, 'I think of them as I'd like to think of my great-grandchildren.' And he's very fond of his grandchildren."

Kubrick also was adamant that the story work in terms of myth. "He never referred to the film as 'A.I.'; he always called it 'Pinocchio,' " Ms. Maitland said.

It was the relationship between David and his mother that most occupied Kubrick and Ms. Maitland. An alcoholic whose Bloody Marys David would mix for her in a vain attempt to win her affection, the mother was the emotional center of the film.

At the story's conclusion, the robots that have inherited the Earth use David's memories to reconstruct, in virtual form, the apartment where he had lived with his parents. Because his memories are subjective, the mother is much more vividly realized than the father, and his stepsister's room is not there at all; it is just a hole in the wall.

For Ms. Maitland, the film would end with David preparing a Bloody Mary for his mother, the juice a brighter red than in real life: "He hears her voice, and that's it. We don't see him turn to see her." Kubrick, however, wanted a coda in which the new race of robots, because of a technological limitation, cannot keep the the mother alive after reviving her. The movie would end with David in his mother's bedroom, watching her slowly disappear.

Ms. Maitland hated this, and was furious with Kubrick for insisting on it. "It must have been a very strong visual thing for him," she says, "because he wasn't usually stupid about story. He hired me because I knew about fairy stories, but would not listen when I told him, 'You can have a failed quest, but you can't have an achieved quest and no reward.' "

https://partners.nytimes.com/library/film/071899kubrick-ai.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz7sPiOoU7A

For Ms. Maitland, the film would end with David preparing a Bloody Mary for his mother

if it'd been a Hendrick's martini it would've been Spielberg's masterpiece.

can't see the video link [work blocked] -- but re: the story above, like I say, the concept itself could have resulted in a good movie imo. I don't think Spielberg made one.

But I'd argue that uncorrupted, unconditional love *isn't* human

this is part of what makes the movie so strange and compelling and hard to watch imo. there's something profoundly discomfiting about its intensity.

(like, there's an implication we're more comfortable with robot parts of ourselves rather than the raw open wound of longing that david personifies)

well, it can be, until children become fully 'human'. xxp

that's a good point as well.

i've come around to the aliens/robots (was this ever settled?) at the end because there's something tragically pathetic about their veneration of humans...

this is part of what makes the movie so strange and compelling and hard to watch imo. there's something profoundly discomfiting about its intensity.

there were parts that were eerie to me, like the scene where David walks in on his double at Hurt's office. He smashes the face off in a fit of jealous/protective rage, and in moments like those, it's clear that because he isn't human, you don't quite know what he's capable of. Again reminiscent of HAL in 2001, and I think had there been a lot more uncertainty like that in the movie, I'd have been more engaged

robots, created by humans iirc. or descended from robots created by humans.

thus the veneration.

xp

i just do not get how anyone can think the ending of A.I. is a "happy ending." what's happy about it? it's so sad.

that said, i have not seen it since 2001. but i remember the ending being incredibly cathartic. i was nearly shaking when it was over. there aren't many times a movie has done that to me (ordet is another one). and i'm no spielberg partisan.

and i agree that the film isn't really "about" artificial intelligence. it's about humanity! in the same way that "blade runner" is about humanity. the unique plights of the robots in both films just serve to defamiliarize the human condition and make certain features of it tragically salient.

i feel like discussing the ending of A.I. is like that whole blue/black or white/gold dress thing. i see it as sad, even tragic, and i just can't imagine anyone thinking it's a "happy" ending. other people think it's a happy ending and can't understand why others find it so unsettling.

prob not on this thread, but i've used the "uncanny valley" analogy for the ending a few times--it's the simulacrum (literally) of a happy ending, and thus a deeply unsettling one because (perhaps) David doesn't have the capacity to care whether it's "real" or not. he literally desires, and gets, the idealized freudian fantasy, and i think that moment kinda estranges us from our own desires in an uncanny way.

i think that's true

i think it's cathartic because it calls up a lot of intense and contradictory emotions. the contradictory thing is key.

SPOILER ALERT FOR 1955 DANISH FILM AHEAD

in "ordet" we're moved because the wife returns to her husband and family from the dead, and we emphathize with them. but we also empathize with her confusion. on top (or beside) that, we recognize the basic impossibility of what we're thing, which also recalls the finality of death in the world we live in. the sudden onset of all these emotions is overwhelming. (to me, anyway. some other folks at the last screening i attended chuckled instead.)

er, basic impossibility of what we're /seeing/

sorry

i think the same applies to A.I.

see also some of mizoguchi's endings, which are cathartic in part because they are /both/ happy and desperately sad, somehow.

Ok, on rewatching:

DUEL
This was a masterfully shot tight wee thriller. You only get that one phonecall with his wife as any sort of backstory but it informs the whole rest of the film. I hadn't seen this for years but yeah, it's a good one.

SUGARLAND EXPRESS
I actually last saw this only a few months ago, but I stuck it on again for this project, still great. It makes sense as a step-up from Duel, everything that was good about that but more ambitious, plus characters I cared about.

JAWS
To reiterate, just masterfully done from start to finish. It's over 2 hours long but feels much shorter, every scene seems like a setpiece of some form or other.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
I was hoping for a similar Damascene conversion with this, and the opening supports that, the sand and the wind and the mystery set everything up for the sense of wonderment I assume I was meant to experience for the rest of the film. And I liked all the military/Truffaut/spaceringtone parts (which must have been the stuff that stayed with me as a younger too, cus I recalled the hand movements exactly) but what a drag all the Dreyfuss stuff was (and the lady with the kid as well, but there was less of that). The clutter in the car and house flying about was done better in Jaws, where you got a sense of the whole boat/protection disintegrating. The playing with food/tossing shrubs about actually seemed like an ok portrayal of manic depression, but it was played so much for laughs that the melodramatic shouty/crying in the shower stuff didn't feel earned. Which I put down to a failing on the part of the Master director. Also I never found that flat top mountain as iconic as other people I guess. The last half hour(ish? from when they got up the mountain anyway) looked great, the set as well as the ships, but I donno, no emotional impact to me. Although if my family was annoying as his then fuck it, I'd get on the spaceship too, bring on the anal probing. Reading all this back, this film was in no way a disaster, but a disappointment. It's just not for me, is that allowed?

I should have been up to 1941 today on my one-a-day schedule but I missed a day so I'll double up tomorrow, with E.T. Which I don't have fond memories of.

which cut of CE3K did you see? sounds like the first (ie no interior of the ship)

probably essential to see on a theater screen for full impact anyway.

CE3K feels like an outlier in his ouevre in that it's main drawback is that it's boring (I haven't seen 1941). His other bad films are bad for different reasons.

I actually haven't seen Duel or Sugarland Express, this thread inspires

yeah, boring, yr nuts

boring jfc

Bridge of spies is mad boring, that's what's wrong with that statement

yeah I haven't seen that yet

and by "yet" I mean "I will never see that"

another great ilx film thread for the blind

it is an outlier, but mostly for the "fuck my family, I'm leaving with the aliens" bit at the end

Hmm I may need to rewatch I don't remember that bit

Morbs you don't sense saccharine with yr eyes, maybe reconsider yr 'blind' digs

Duel is passable at best - used as evidence of excellent early work before he went shit. But its just a 6/10 nothing to see here.

Duras' The Truck is more like it.

which cut of CE3K did you see? sounds like the first (ie no interior of the ship)

Yeah, I asked upthread if I needed to seek the the other and was told no.

probably essential to see on a theater screen for full impact anyway.

Quite possible, the big scenes may have seemed more immersive, I watched it at home with the lights out but my setup isn't overly poncy.

tbh I find Morbz' eternal defense of Spielbergo kind of endearing, an achilles heel, a lone almost random populist chink in an otherwise impregnable armor of misanthropy

Just that one scene in Jaws with the wean imitating his gestures seemed much more genuine (did I read somewhere improvised?) than all the weepy moppet shit in CE.