Reference no: EM131845861
Robot and Frank
The best science fiction is usually about our relationship with technology in some way - how technology changes us, and how we shape it, in turn. This is example. Self-disclosure is Evaluative and descriptive information about the self, shared intentionally, that another would have trouble finding out without being told. (Pg. 153). Because the more I watch I realize that technology change us, But it's rare for science fiction movies to have something interesting to say about technological and scientific progress.
Interdependence means that the people involved in the conflict are in some type of a relationship together that requires them to rely on one another. (Pg177). That's why Robot and Frank isn't just one of the year's best movies - it's also a must-see piece of science fiction. Knowing what to do with an aging or ill parent can be a difficult, divisive, sometimes heartbreaking affair, especially if children don't live close by to provide day-to-day care. This would be a great example of emotion, which means that emotion involves only one person's feelings. (Pg131). Because Frank shows that getting old is sick but the worst is being along.
Frank plays, whose failing memory is making living alone in a small town more difficult, dangerous, and an increasing stress on his son, Hunter (James Marsden), who has to drive up every weekend to make sure Frank is okay. Close relationship is that we experience many kinds of relationships in our lives. (Pg 198). This is great example of close relationship because hunter decides to give Frank a healthcare robot, whose blocky shape and astronaut helmet looks a lot like Honda's Asimo robot. But Frank initially hates the robot, voiced by Peter Sarsgaard, who cleans up Frank's cluttered house, cooks him healthy meals, and encourages Frank to start a garden and engage in other physically and mentally stimulating activities.
But the activity that really gets Frank going relates to his secret past as a cat burglar, and when he learns that Robot can learn his skills without judgment, Frank decides to use Robot to pull some heists to help save the town's library, whose librarian, Jennifer (Susan Sarandon), Frank has a crush on. This would be a great example of Listening as the dynamic, transaction process of receiving, responding to, recalling, and rating stimuli and/ or messages from other. (Pg113). By teaching Robot the ins and outs of picking locks, staking out locations, and bypassing security systems, Frank is able to share a part of his life he never could've revealed to Hunter.
I have a special connection to Robot & Frank because I spent years helping take care of my mother and later did eldercare. One of the people I took care of was a man named Gray, who I bathed, stretched, dressed, and walked, and I was there when he had the stroke that eventually killed him. For years, Gray had been taken care of by his wife and female caregivers, and I had the honor of being the last friend he ever made. Gray regaled me with tales of his life in the Navy that I knew he wouldn't have shared.
Despite its, Robot & Frank is a wonderfully intimate, human, insightful, and surprisingly funny film that has a lot to say for both older and younger audiences, with terrific performances by Langella and Sarandon. It's a small film with a somewhat challenging premise, but as someone who's seen the highs and lows of being a caregiver for the elderly, it's a movie that quietly has a lot to say, that you should definitely track down.
Meanwhile, Frank's burglary expertise allows the movie to open up questions of what we consider valuable - as Frank explains to the robot, he always specialized in taking the highest value objects that he could steal the most quickly. This would be great example of abstract, ideas such as love and justice do not have terms that correspond to lower rungs of the ladder of abstraction. (Pg. 73). But what makes something valuable? When Frank shoplifts horribly kitschy bath bombs from the schlocky store that's replaced his favorite restaurant, he treats them as precious because he stole them. And meanwhile, the public library is recycling all its books - except for a few volumes, which are valuable. What makes them more valuable than other books? Is it the information in them, or how it's presented?
Most movies about robots get stuck on the question of whether they're "alive," or whether they have something we'd recognize as consciousness. But Robot and Frank sidesteps those questions, to get to some much trickier ones. The movie is pretty clear that the robot doesn't have any independent sentience of its own - it's just an extension of Frank, no different than a wheelchair or a telephone. But that doesn't mean the questions about the robot's consciousness don't matter - in fact, they're a lot more complicated than you'd think at first. The more we start to see the robot as an extension of Frank, the more the robot's fate becomes intertwined with Frank's.
Robot and Frank is the first story about robots in a long time to sidestep questions about whether robots are human - and instead, to delve into arguably more tricky waters about how dependence on robots affects our own humanity. As a result, you won't just walk out of the film with the rich drama indelibly etched on your brain - you'll also leave debating the questions the movie raises. This is definitely one of the year's best movies.
At its heart, Robot and Frank is a family movie - it's the story of Frank and his family, and what happens when a robot becomes part of the family. Chromatics the study of a person's perception and use of time, to understand how people perceive and structure time their dialogue and relationship with others (Pg102). But as this movie makes space for the characters of Frank and his two kids (and their absent mother) to become living, breathing characters, the robot's role in their lives becomes more complex - and the inclusion of the robot makes this a much richer and more honest family portrait, instead of just being a shiny gimmick grafted onto a traditional story of a senile man and his kids.
To a large extent, the robot is in loco parentis, looking after Frank and controlling his life - trying to get him to eat right and exercise and take on beneficial activities. But he's also standing in for the Frank's son, acting in Hunter's interests, and to a large extent speaking for Hunter. Meanwhile, Frank's daughter Madison (Liv Tyler) hates the robot and wants to get rid of it, even after Frank starts thinking of the robot as his friend and companion.
The movie plays with the divide between an appliance and a person. The robot is part of the family, but is it like the family dog, the family television set, or a family friend? The robot is smart, but sort of like a smartphone and sort of like a smart person. As Frank (and the audience) get used to the robot being around, we tend to humanize it more and more - but the robot doesn't actually change or start seeming more human.