Robot and Us

Frank Langella in Robot and Frank

Our human relationships are increasingly being transformed by technology in this tablet-holding, text-loving, internet-addicted world. All things indicate that they’re not improving.  We seem to be moving beyond individualism into egoistic hedonism.  And how beautifully this is presented by Jake Schreier and Christopher D. Ford in the film Robot and Frank!  

 

The film takes place in the “near future” where a devoted, if not loving, son gives his aged father a robot programed to care for him. The father lives alone and is falling prey to some severe form of memory loss, like senile dementia or Alzheimer’s; as well as depression, obviously.  The twist is that in the past the father was a jewel thief and evaded taxes as well, for which he had done extensive jail time; so he was not the best role model or family man to his son and daughter. The father was a self-centered, egoistical man who hurt his family.  His family still loves him just enough, but they do so now on their terms. The children are grown up, busy with their own interesting selves, and give their father the crumbs of their lives basically through technology.

Frank Langella plays the somewhat demented, extremely lonely and regret-filled father, and he is just wonderful at it! The screenplay is tremendously moving, funny at times, and above all thought-provoking. How have we, in the western, “first world”, arrived at a time where we are so bought into ourselves, our interests, career-advancement, and “me-time” that we are no longer willing to “sacrifice”  it to care for our mothers and fathers; to give them real companionship and care?  

 

I gather that this is a theme that we will see coming up more frequently in films given the aging boomer population and the rising self-centeredness of the technology-addicted millennials. The father-children relationship in Robot and Frank reminds me a bit of the daughter in Amour ,who comes to see her elderly parents every once in a while, when it is convenient for her, yet berates the father, who is the sole care-giver of the mother, for not doing a better job!

 

The irony, in Robot and Frank is that Frank’s daughter travels to distant lands on humanitarian missions and only returns to physically visit her father when her “principles” are called into question by her brother’s gift of a robot companion. She raves against the inhumanity that is technology, but it is only via the satellite that she is really comfortable with her father: on her terms, on her time, when she controls the communication…so distant in every way.  The brother is a little better because, after all, there is the whole father-son relationship gone wrong in childhood thing that keeps him driving up to see his dad and, ultimately, gives him what turns out to be a true gift. 

 

On a side in the film, a precious volume of Don Quixote is stolen from a library that is being replaced by computers. The book is a relic,  filled with old-fashioned ideals of chivalry and sacrifice, lost in a world where nobody goes looking for the thief that stole this treasure, but actively pursue jewel heists.

Ultimately, much to the children's dismay, Frank bonds with Robot more than he ever did with his children. And the relationship between this man and machine is possibly the most moving one of the whole film. That says it all.