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You guys have good taste: though I’d strike A.I off that list in about a millisecond. Synecdoche is a personal favorite of mine as well, and when I read the reviews after seeing it, I was entirely appalled. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who recognized it as entirely brilliant.

Comment by Mike 01.20.10 @ 2:17 pm

Spielberg is consistently under-appreciated because he makes popular films. That’s an obvious enough statement, as well as to say that he has a considerable body of work that contains several formidable masterpieces. He has made about half a dozen films that are the greatest in the history of cinema. Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Artificial Intelligence stand high as his crowning achievements. I won’t needlessly defend the former, but rather state a few sentiments toward the latter.

I have watched A.I without the sound on and the camera work is mindbogglingly exquisite. Spielberg, prone to sweeping shots and a camera that is always kinetic, is somehow able to convey the right amount of motion, direction, and speed to fully bring about the emotions and elucidate the themes inherit in the individual characters. However, turning off the sound denies one the experience of watching one of the saddest films I have experienced. Consider the protagonists. One is a boy designed to replace the designer’s son and purchased for a similar reason of consolation. It’s a robot designed to replace love as is the second protagonist, gigolo Joe, another robot designed to love, this time focusing on the carnal pleasures of love, as opposed to David’s emotional affinities. Why do humans need to design robots to love? Now the greater themes come into play. Spielberg and Kubrick are commenting on humankind’s inability to connect, to feel with one another. Humans design these robots and eventually they take over and the humans have died out, because while humans understand the concept of humanity they are unable to prove it through practice. Hence, the humans hold flesh fairs where they cheer the destruction of the machine, while the advanced machines, ruling in a post human environment, are contemplative and serene, lamenting the loss of humans, and cherishing the discovery of David who will be their key into the past world of living organisms.

Some argue against the success of the collaboration between Kubrick and Spielberg. I have yet to see a finer teeming in cinema between two distinct minds. Kubrick is the nihilist, who believe in the achievements of man as superior to man himself, while Spielberg is the humanist, who specifically is compassionate toward the innocence of children, placing Spielberg solely in the ranks of Truffaut in that regard. Together they crafted a film that is both tender and brutal, and I relish their achievement.

Comment by Jason 01.20.10 @ 3:54 pm