I Am Mother

          The faster we move exponentially in technological advances, the more likely it will be that artificial intelligence becomes the main blessing or potential ruination of life as we know it. Even before Leonardo da Vinci created his early mechanical knight in 1495, man has considered the potential for building machines to take on the drudgery of mankind’s tasks—robots of one kind or another. But we’ve also considered the possibility that our creations might try to eliminate their creators.

          And here we are now with drones that can drop our bombs on our enemies or deliver packages from Amazon or Walmart, with cars and planes that can drive themselves more safely than we can drive ourselves, with smartphones that can tell us practically anything we want to know, direct us to destinations, give us instructions on how to build or operate almost anything. We also have films and novels that have explored what AI can do for us or to us—most recently Blade Runner 2049, Ex Machina, Her, and the Star Trek series with their C-3PO and R2-D2. Best known of the literary examinations of robotics are Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, written almost eighty years ago. It was Asimov who introduced the threat of malevolent robots by formulating what he called the Three Laws of Robotics (to be built in to the artificial psyches): 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

          Netflix has a new movie, I Am Mother, that asks most of the old questions about robots and their possible malevolence or benevolence. What I have to say about this movie is loaded with spoilers, so if you ever want to see it, you should stop reading here. But if you’ve already seen it or don’t want to see it, you might find what it was trying to say entertaining or even enlightening. Or not. Some of you might have already decided the film simply leaves too any questions either unanswered or too poorly explained or is just too hokey simply for the sake of dramatic effect.

          Short plot summary: Sometime in the future, mankind has poisoned the atmosphere so that all of mankind has been killed. The opening scene shows a sign that 63,000 embryos are being kept in a safe bunker presided over by an android called Mother, who will allow embryos to be born in artificial wombs when she (it?) decides it is safe to do so. The first embryo she brings to life is a female named Daughter (Clara Rugaard-Larsen). Mother raises her for fourteen years, teaching her about man and the earth and giving her mental skills involving philosophy and ethics, with periodic tests to see how she is advancing. Daughter is brilliant and lovely and seems to be happy and content in her enclosed environment, and appears to love Mother just as a human mother. But she also wants to know when she can go outside the bunker to see what the planet is like. Mother warns her that it is still too toxic to leave their safe haven.

          Shortly after that, Daughter hears a voice calling to her from outside the airlock. It is a seriously wounded human woman (Hillary Swank) who wants medical treatment. She opens the air lock and lets the woman in, angering Mother with her act of defiance. Mother, however, relents and decides to treat the woman’s wound. The woman then convinces Daughter that it is now safe for her to leave the bunker and join her and her band of other survivors. They leave, walking through a devastated landscape, taking shelter in a tall field of corn when flying drones try to capture them. The woman explains that the atmosphere has been restored by these huge, cultivated corn fields, planted all over the planet by the androids. That raises the first question about the robots and their motives regarding the human race: Are they trying to save or eliminate mankind? The corn fields suggest their benevolence. But some of Mother’s actions seem to be malevolent, her anger when the survivor refuses to tell her where she and the other survivors are located, even going so far as pressing her finger into the woman’s wound to force her to say where they are. Later, after Daughter has been returned to the bunker, Mother goes to the Survivor’s home on the beach, where the woman is living alone in a rusting shipping container. When Mother enters and slams the door behind her, the audience is almost certain that nothing good is going to happen for the survivor’s survival. No benevolence there in those androidal eyes. Meanwhile, back in the bunker, Daughter has been given the responsibility of becoming the mother of the remaining 62,999 embryos, who will then become the next race of man, a much better man than the one that nearly destroyed themselves and the planet.

         Too many questions go unanswered, though, All right, the woman had been shot in the side and needed to have the bullet removed. Who shot her and why? If Daughter ever failed one of the tests she must take periodically, what happens to her? Does Mother destroy her and start over with a different embryo? If Mother is actually the "leader" of the androids and can appear anywhere inside or outside the bunker, why does she need to pretend that the world is still too toxic for Daughter? Why does Mother need to leave Daughter alone to care for and raise the other embryos?

          I’d give this movie two and a half stars out of five for its entertainment and dramatic storyline, and four stars for the philosophical precepts it raises.