Bicentennial Man

I’ve watched a lot of movies. Around my second or third year of university? Watcha had a feature where you could rate the movies you’d seen, and I remember entering about 650 ratings before giving up partway through. Not all of them were movies — some dramas and such were mixed in — but to this day I still don’t know the full list of every movie I’ve watched.

I can’t quite remember when I first saw Bicentennial Man, but whenever someone asked me “what’s your all-time favorite movie?” or “any masterpieces you’d recommend?”, it was always on the list. And more recently, when someone asks for my favorite movie, I just answer with this one without much hesitation.

So if you ask me why it’s my favorite, that’s a bit hard to answer. There’s a lot in this movie that I love: it’s science fiction, it has these bookended moments (I love it when two separate scenes connect, like an homage or a full-circle ending), Robin Williams’s warm performance, the moving direction, and so on. Of course, it’s not perfect either. There are basic plausibility issues, inconsistencies that come from adapting the original story into a film, and the awkward parts those create.

Honestly, I still find it hard to properly answer the question of what my favorite movie of all time is, but I think if a movie has had a real impact on your life, then that’s what makes it one. In that sense, Bicentennial Man was always one of the movies that came to mind whenever someone asked me about film — and maybe that alone makes it worthy of the title.

Of course it matters that a work is complete in itself, well directed, and polished as a piece of filmmaking. But I think I care more about things like: what effect does this work have on me? What questions does it ask me? Why did I end up watching it in the first place?

In that sense, I think I deeply related to Andrew — traveling in search of another robot like himself to understand who he is and establish his own identity, and striving to be recognized as human.