Movie Watch: "AI: Artificial Intelligence"

Being in the midst of a very busy season in the accounting field, I have not been able to find the decent time to write recently. Thank goodness I have a good friend who's been kind enough to assist me in improvising the looks of my Blog while I was away. The Blog could have been in danger of being listed as a museum item without your help Sarini. Thanks... :-)

Among the things I will be writing in my blog would be my review of the movies that I've recently watched. Hopefully, this will become a permanent feature in my postings, and I would be more than happy to receive feedbacks on my reviews from others.

I watched AI : Artificial Intelligence on HBO last night, and I have to say it was the most moving story that I've read or seen in a long time. Before I watched the movie, I had heard people reviewing the movie as the 'modern day Pinocchio'. To be honest, that does not give a fair impression of what the movie is really about. In synopsis, in the not-so-far future the polar ice caps of earth have melted and the resulting raise of the ocean waters has drowned all the coastal cities of the world. Withdrawn to the interior of the continents, the human race keeps advancing, reaching to the point of creating realistic robots (called mechas) to serve him. One of the mecha-producing companies builds David (starring Haley Joel Osment), an artificial kid which is the first to have real feelings, especially a never-ending love for his "mother", Monica. Monica is the woman who adopted him as a substitute for her real son, who remains in cryo-stasis, stricken by an incurable disease. David is living happily with Monica and her husband, but when their real son (Martin) returns home after a cure is discovered, his life changes dramatically.

The drama is set when the mecha David, having a particular software downloaded into him by his 'mother' Monica to enable him to love like a real human, finds that he can't compete for Monica's love with her real son Martin. As a result of this, to add to the result of 'sibling' jealousy from Martin, David increasingly becomes a liability to the family and was eventually dumped away by the family. And so began David's journey to find the Blue Fairy (the fairy that turns Pinocchio into a real boy in the fairy tale) with the hope that he could also be turned into a real boy, and win back the love of his 'mother'.

The most touching aspect of the movie is the undying love that David has for Monica that lives with him for eternity. The childlike belief that there is a real Blue Fairy that could turn him into a real boy, and fulfill his wishes to win back the love of a 'mother' who dumped him, and the perilous journey that he took to find the Blue Fairy. What would you do if you actually met David and he asked you where could he find the Blue Fairy so that he could be turned into a real boy so that his mother could love him again? What happened at the end of the movie was enough to bring lumps to my throat and made me struggle to hold back tears. And to think, I’d usually laugh at my sister when her pipe works keep bursting in the midst of Hindustan movies.

Some good messages that can be taken from the movie:
1. Loving and making someone to love you is a very big responsibility. Love is perhaps the most difficult, if not impossible, feeling to erase, and once you have loved, that feeling will stay with you forever. Unrequited love will leave behind scars that will remain with one till death. So be careful when you sow the seeds of love with someone. Someone once made an analogy about love with fishing. Once a fish has taken bait, the scar from biting the bait will stay with it forever. Even if you throw the fish back into the water, it will live the rest of its life in pain as a result of that scar. And so will someone who has been loved and unloved.
2. True friends will stick by you even under the direst circumstance. There is nothing as reassuring than to know that there’s always someone there to hold your hand and walk with you when you’re down in the dumps. Someone who is always there to tell you that you’re never alone, that I’ll always be here with you. A teddy can surprisingly be more reassuring than you would think. :-)
3. Nothing is as pure as an innocent child’s love for his mother. And vice versa. I wonder if it was a coincidence that the movie was shown on Mother’s Day.

And then, some interesting facts about the movie that you might not have known:
1. When work began on the movie in 1993, Joseph Mazzello, who was the kid who starred in Jurassic Park in 1993, was cast as David.
2. Spielberg used the water-filled set from Perfect Storm, The (2000) for the flooded world of the future in this movie.
3. One of the reasons for Kubrick waiting so long to make the film, is that he wanted David (Haley Joel Osment's character) to be played by a robot.
4. The movie was originally to be titled A.I., but after a survey it was revealed that too many people thought it was A1. The title was changed to A.I. Artificial Intelligence to prevent people from thinking it was about steak sauce.
5. The film shows the World Trade Center towers standing 2,000 years in the future.

That's Pinocchio for you...

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