A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TRIBUTE

I went to see this Spielberg’s film twice at the theater when it came out, back in what I consider the happiest years of my childhood, right before beginning high school. I would go to the movies every weekend with my family and friends and had a real blast. I have great memories of watching movies such as Heartbreakers, Scream 3, Urban Legends: Final Cut, The Cell, Scary Movie, and Hollow Man, among many others. Probably not the films that would make it on my top list right now, but good enough for me back then to make me wish I could get to do similar ones in the future. I would dream about becoming a film director and making it out of my hometown someday, so then maybe I could get recognition as an artist, maybe I could be the writer of my own story and make a difference, in contrast to the people around me, who I perceived were mostly interested in football and raising a family.

As a person who felt like an outsider most of the time, I remember being deeply and emotionally touched by the story of the main character of this movie. I hadn’t found out about my sexuality back then yet and less so was I aware of having schizophrenia, but I guess that’s what made me relate so much to the protagonist. An almost human-looking robot kid living in a world where androids are being hunted down by mankind. He’s too artificial for humans and even finding sympathy in his own kind, he feels different. I’ve never had any self-judgments about being gay, I had to hide my sexual orientation only because I was bullied in a very small town, and yet not being able to remain out of the closet was almost killing me on the inside because I really needed the explore that part of myself. But having schizophrenia is a completely different thing. There’s so much stigma and lack of knowledge that it gets scary sometimes. When I had my first episode I never thought I could naturally speak about it like I do now cause I didn’t even know what the illness was exactly so, despite the whole self-acceptance work that I’ve been doing during the last few years, being labeled as both gay and schizophrenic makes me feel like I’m wandering no man’s land sometimes, in a world where being human is seemingly the less important category to be labeled as.

But getting back again to other specifics of the movie, what I really liked about it and still do now as well is the cinematography and the artistic direction. The cinematographer, who’s worked in most of Spielberg’s films, has made a great job with the use of light and color, in order to create extremely beautiful frames that accompany the characters in their emotional journey. Another great aspect to mention is the excellent music made by John Williams, which was nominated for the Oscars in the best original score category. So delicate and epic at the same time. Generally speaking, the whole movie denotes a very strong feeling of melancholia, so that’s why I chose the song Nothing Pure In Me to accompany the video tribute, cause it reminiscences its spirit a lot.

THESIS

To me, this movie is clearly a critic of the human race that, as opposed to the machines, is capable by nature of such cruelty and harm they almost deserve extinction. The whole movie navigates this idea that the androids are purer and less toxic than humans.

ROBOTS ARE PURER THAN MANKIND.