Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Films

Robots

Grant Bartley looks behind the images of the film Robots to find three perspectives on artistic greatness.

Robots is a great movie, but is it great art? Perhaps it’s churlish of me to seek a fault in such a technically perfect film, but it’s because of its technical perfection that I want to review it to explore the questions, What makes a masterpiece? and What’s necessary for a work of art to have enduring appeal? and to emphasize the link between the answers.

Robots is a children’s movie, but there are enough in-jokes, innuendos and subtexts to distract any adult from any fear of condescension. That its fairy tale plot is formularised is merely an irritation. We can recognize that this cautiousness is necessary to keep rich and artistically-insecure financiers calm. Art has always had its patrons, and so its imposed agendas.

…