A 2000 Year Farse.

Film: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

There are countless ways that one can approach reading this film but I would like to focus on an aspect that may seem quite abstract, but stood out to me from the very beginning of the film.  I believe this film can be read as symptomatic statement about religion and the link between human desperation and the invention of God.  At (time: 6:45/145:50) Professor Hobby states in retort to the films main moral dilemma that “in the beginning didn’t God create Adam to love him?”  This is essentially what will link Professor Hobby as the God figure in the film since it is his company that creates the mecha boy David who we will follow for the remainder of the film. 

            As David progresses through the film there is a very important scene with Gigolo Joe wherein Joe exclaims that, “The supernatural is the hidden web that unites the universe.  Only orga believe what cannot be seen or measured.  It is that oddness that separates our species.”  (time: 91:15/145:50).  Here we are clearly given a division of one species to the other, and it is this key that unlocks my theory for the film. 

            Once David has reached Manhattan and has endured his disturbing encounter with his creator he becomes very vulnerable and emotional.  It is at this point that arguably he has achieved his most humanistic reality.  He has already made multiple choices based on emotion rather than logic and he is so distraught about his newfound “mecha brothers" on the assembly line that he is ready to commit suicide rather than press on.  In his failed suicide attempt he gets a glimpse into the deep waters and sees the blue fairy.  It is then in these frozen waters that he spends 2000 years praying to the supernatural in effort to become real. Now we know from before that only orga believe in the supernatural, so the fact that David has abandoned his logical reasoning and put his “faith” in something that wasn’t real is entirely human.  It shows that it is out of lack of logic, self motivated greed, and humanistic desperation that the most human aspect of David turned to the supernatural, or God, for help.  So, how does this conclude that humans invented God.  The worth of divinity only has value when humans place value (faith) into it.  David did just this with the blue fairy; nobody else believed the blue fairy to have supernatural powers but him.  He placed his faith in the supernatural at his most desperate hour, essentially inventing his own personal God.

            But wait, I though Professor Hobby was the God figure..?  He is, the role he has assumed is God the creator who towers above the earth in glory like no other, and the mythical fairy has assumed the role of Christ – the miracle worker who came into Earthly existence and who, no matter how close you can get to him, you can never actually encounter him physically.  The 2000 years that David spends suspended in time, living in a dream state, only to awaken and realize that his supernatural being is in fact a man-made farce that shatters right before him is a statement about humanity spending 2000 years in a haze worshiping a Christ figure that was deemed divine by HUMANS to then witness the Church essentially begin to crumble under the weight of constantly surmounting scandals… 

          I also think the film makes a clear cut statement about love.  The mother wants to fill a void left by her son, so she attempts to fill that void with David’s love.  BUT…  David loves her in a way that NO one can, but he is not real, therefore his love is not real.  So does this suggest that love is in fact not real..?  Maybe humans desire (require?) something emotionally that can never be filled.  Maybe that emotional hole is another reason humans turn to the supernatural in times of desperation…