In this intriguing video essay for Fandor, Chloé Galibert-Lainé investigates the possible meanings behind on-screen relationships between humans and robots, stating that they could potentially represent the struggle between the duality of reality and dreams.
Man vs. Machine is a very common trope in cinema, and has been for virtually all of its history. (One of the earliest, and most famous, examples of this is Fritz Lang’s 1927 dystopian sci-fi film Metropolis.) But Galibert-Lainé’s study focuses specifically on how director Spike Jonze sets the stage for his characters to battle between their stark realities and the idealism of their dreams. Their weapon of choice? Artificial intelligence.