My deepest apologies for the long dry periods of late. And thank you all so much for your words of encouragement, i do appreciate your responses…

Last night I watched A.I., by Stephen Spielberg. Going into the movie I was curious, because, based on the previews, I thought the movie was just the kind I would like, but according to all my friends, the movie was horrible. In fact, I did not receive a single good review from anyone about it. Yet the idea for the film appealed to me and the previews had piqued my curiosity, so I rented the DVD and watched it last night.

First of all, it was long. This played to its advantage for me, because I love longer films that go for about two and half to three hours. Most people are turned off by longer films though and thus this aspect worked to its disadvantage.

The movie is best described as an ethereal science fairy tale, a combination that is not often seen, but that appeals to me. The film isn’t a sci-fi action film, but takes a philosophical approach to its plot and development. Its purpose, in my opinion, was not too wow the viewer with visual effects, but to provoke us to think about the implications of Artificial Intelligence. In many ways, I think it accomplished its goal.

Some people argued that the ending did not fit in with the rest of the movie, that it appeared disjointed, like it was tacked on, instead of being a part of the whole from the beginning. I can understand this perspective, because there is little to prepare you for the jump two thousand years into the future and the existence of some strange alien race. But if the viewer will put aside that for a moment, I think the addition of that plot device can be seen as needed. The story is a futuristic telling of Pinocchio, of a puppet who learned to love and desperately wanted to become a real boy, but more so to be loved in return. If the movie had ended with him eternally asking the blue fairy to make him a real boy, I feel like the movie would have been incomplete. I thought at that point that the movie was over in fact, and felt resentful that there was no sense of resolution. The questions raised by the film were left unanswered, and I was left disappointed. But then the final leg of the journey occurs. Sure, the alien life and what they can do is fantastic and unreal, but so is the existence of a fairy in Pinocchio. In the end, David, the Pinocchio of the story, gets what he sought, not to become a real boy, but to be loved. The moral told by A.I. in its entirety is that in spite all the apparent opposition, David could be loved. In the same manner, man faces the same question. How many people spend their entire lives searching to fill the void inside them, seeking to be loved for who they are, seeking to become something to somehow earn that love. David found it, and it was given to him not because he achieved the impossible, but because he was loved. I found the same thing, not because I was able to achieve perfection, but because god loved me simply for who I was. At the last moment, David fell asleep and for the first time dreamed.

Isn’t the point of farie to capture concepts and with the use of the fantastic and unreal, illustrate the basic truths of reality? If so, then A.I. was a success. I liked the movie.