When I teach Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, my students watch
and discuss Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Among the questions that always comes up is
the question Prof. Hobby asks at the beginning of it. “Could a human learn to
love a robot.” Spielberg is very clever in that he has personable Haley Joel Osment play
the robot David and since David looks like a real boy, it is easy to learn to
care for him.
Robot and Frank, like A.I., takes place in the “near future.” Frank (sensitively
played by Frank Langella) lives alone in New York state, as a retired
second-story robber who is losing more and more of his memory. His daughter
travels, but his son Hunter (James Marsden) travels five hours once a week to
come and see how his father is. Against Frank’s wishes, he one day brings a
humanoid robot to help care for him. The robot looks like an abstract human
wearing a white space. He is programmed to cook and care for Frank and try to bring
him, and like iPhone’s Siri (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), he can hold
conversations with him.
One of Frank’s joys is reading books from the local library
where he is also attracted to the librarian. Since books are now passé, the
library has been sold and is being refitted to digitize all books and become a
multimedia “library experience.” Librarian Jennifer (Susan Saradan) shows Frank
some special books that will be saved. One is a Dore illustrated copy of Don
Quixote (the book, if you remember, about a man who becomes lost in a
fantasy world of knights and quests). The project director Jake acts
patronizingly toward Frank. When the librarian invites Frank to a fundraiser
for the library, Frank decides to steal Don Quixote as a gift for Jennifer and
an insult toward Jake. There is a poignant moment at the fundraiser when Frank finds he and Jennifer surrounded by people his children's age. No older people are wanted.
We suddenly find ourselves in a funny and charming heist
picture. Robot (Frank never names him) knows laws and the idea of stealing, but
has no Asimov morality programmed into him. After the first heist is
successful, Frank plans an even bigger heist to steal Jake’s wife’s diamond
necklace and gold jewelry. We root for the two to succeed. And we see their
relationship grow, even as Frank begins to confuse the robot with his son.
Robot cooks creatively and gets Frank to change his diet. He
succeeds in learning to create a tomato garden. Frank teaches him the finer
points of picking locks and becomes invaluable cracking a safe.
At one point Frank and Robot talk about life; Robot tells
Frank that he knows Frank’s alive because he thinks. Robot on the other hand
knows that he is not alive; and if he were turned off, he would be merely
turned off. Erasing his memory would mean nothing because, he stresses, he is
not human.
For me, that discussion moves the film into much more than a
simplistic heist film or a film about the difficulties of aging. I began thinking
about the concept of what does indeed make us human. I also began to wonder
what I will feel when the libraries of most of my life are no longer places where
books reside. What if there was never again the need for a physical book? Frank
looks at the Don Quxote and strokes a Dore illustration. That tangible tactile
sensation seems lost forever with an iPad or Kindle.
The technology of the film is subtle but pervasive. Robot is
near future, but also now. I have seen his prototype a couple of years ago on
You Tube. Frank’s phone rings and as he speaks to it, his son and daughter appear
on the flatscreen above his fireplace. Both he and his son carry phones that
are clear with images projected on one side—much like I have heard future
iPhones might work.
But as the technology looks to our future, the film suggests there
are some things we cannot change. The detereiation of the mind and the aging
process are inevitable in “the near future.” Frank’s plight may well be helped
with robot companions. And we as human beings have an inherent need to bond that technology will never be able to change.
Intelligent script, Frank Langella and Susan Sarandan, and ideas to think about. I loved the film.
Robot and Frank (2012) *****
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