We're going Sci-Fi (in part) and Artificial Intelligence especially in these last days of April. Here's Sebastian...
Here's a film featuring artificial intelligence very much unlike those in theaters right now: Jake Schreier's Robot & Frank (2012) starring Frank Langella as an aging man reluctantly learning to accept a robot, voiced by Peter Sarsgaard, taking care of him when he begins to show signs of dementia. Robot & Frank garnered some critical acclaim but didn't make much noise at the box office. It's a quiet film, a deliberate one, set in "the near future" with a sentient, talking robot as a title character. It might be labelled as science-fiction but it isn't actually all that interested in playing to that genre's tropes and familiar storytelling devices.
The exact year Robot & Frank is set in is never explicitly stated, but it can't be too far off into our future from what we see on screen. In fact the technological advances shown in the film aren't so much future as they are extremely current present. The phones, screens, cars, and appliances in Robot & Frank are of our time, they're just not common in our time. Some of those choices are made out of necessity by the film-makers – it's cheaper to have characters drive the very latest car models than make up and build new ones – but it also serves to give the world of the film a rich, lived-in feel that wouldn't be achieved if every single thing in it was new and shiny and ultimately strange to us. [More...]
Susan Sarandon and Frank Langella in Robot & Frank
And when we do get a hint of some slightly more advanced future-tech, the movie shows enough restraint to not make the scene be about that. We see characters operate ultra-thin, translucent phones, but where most films would cut to an insert-shot to let us get a closer look at the gadget, Robot & Frank refrains. This isn't a story about fancy phones, after all.
What's the problem? It's a robot."
The one prominently featured advanced technology is, of course, the robot. (His full name, VGC-60L, is spoken only once, in one of the film's funniest scenes.) But he isn't some fantastical futuristic contraption, either. Rather plain and clunky, the robot's design is based on Honda's ASIMO and wouldn't look out of place kicking a ball around at a trade show or making Angela Merkel uncomfortable.
In one beautifully composed scene, Frank sits with his friend Jennifer (Susan Sarandon) in the library – maintained by her and almost exclusively frequented by him – looking as out of place as the books they so love. In the background, behind a shelf and half-obscured by some designer furniture, stands the robot. Not a menacing presence, not lurking in the shadows waiting his turn to take things over. Just a reminder that he's around. It's a theme that is found again and again in the film: the focus is not on technology taking over, but rather on how it is integrating into our world.
A world that is a long way from being the cold, soulless place of sci-fi dystopia. Nature is still a vital and important part of this near future, as we are reminded of in several scenes of sunlight shining through trees set to classical music that evoke Terrence Malick, if not in scope then certainly in impact.
"Some things take time, Frank," the robot says at one point while working with seemingly loving dedication and deliberate pace at a garden he started in Frank's backyard. It's the filmmakers' creed, too. The movie doesn't rush things but moves along with great care, giving us ample time to think, if we want to, to appreciate the imagery, if we are so moved, or just to enjoy the wonderful performances by Langella and the rest of the cast, which also includes James Marsden and Liv Tyler.