Love, Death, and Andrew

If you’d like to watch Bicentennial Man before reading this analysis (recommended), you can watch the film in its entirety for free on YouTube.

Bicentennial Man is a film that chronicles an android’s 200-yearlong journey to understand what it means to be human. The film opens with the Martin family welcoming Andrew, a humanoid NDR robot butler, into their home. When the Martins realize that he is “defective” – experiencing creativity and emotion, they elect not to have him repaired and instead nurture his newfound consciousness.

Over the course of a century, Andrew watches the Martin family grow up, grow old, and pass on – including “Little Miss”, the youngest Martin daughter, whom he had developed a special bond with. Despite his best efforts to become more human, even upgrading his body with a humanlike appearance, the death of Little Miss proves to Andrew that he is still just a machine. Not only is he condemned to live forever, to watch everyone that he cares for leave him, but unable to produce tears, he has no way of expressing the terrible pain that this causes him.

Andrew refuses to accept his sentence, and develops technology that replicates human anatomy. After replacing his internal systems with ones that mimic a human’s, he can now, for the first time, taste food, cry tears, and experience what it feels like to kiss someone. After sharing a kiss (purely for scientific reasons) with Little Miss’s adult granddaughter, Portia, Andrew realizes that now, not only can he feel a kiss, but he can feel love.

The love he feels is shared; Andrew and Portia start dating, but they are unable to get married as the law does not allow a human being to marry a robot. Andrew makes an appeal to the “World Congress”, asking for them to pass a bill that would grant him his humanity. But despite looking like a human, Andrew cannot be declared one because humanity could not cope with the idea of an immortal man. To rectify this, Andrew injects himself with human blood, which will slowly deteriorate his internal systems, eventually leading to permanent shut down. Not only will this make him mortal, but it will prevent him from having to watch Portia, the love of his life, leave him like everyone else.

Now an old man, Andrew appears once more in front of the World Congress, pleading to be made human. His second appeal is not denied outright. Instead, the Congress asks for time to make a decision due to the complexity of his request. But before he can hear their verdict, Andrew dies in his bed, hand in hand with Portia. After taking a long look at the man she spent her life with, Portia asks to be taken off of life support so she can be with him once again.

Read Between the Lines (Of Code)

At first, Portia does not like Andrew. While Little Miss loved the robot, her husband, Frank, did not. They eventually got divorced because of this, and as a result, their son Lloyd, hated the machine as well – a hatred he passed on to his daughter Portia. But when Andrew realizes that Little Miss is growing old and will soon die, he sets out to befriend her granddaughter. While at first there’s resistance, he breaks through and they become quite close – so close in fact, that Portia believes he’s in love with her.

“No one makes me laugh like you… Sometimes I get the feeling that you feel a certain way about us and that you wish… *laughs*... I don’t know… Having this conversation with [a robot]... I mean, a thing is itself Andrew. A tree is a tree. Water is water. You are a magnificent machine. But no matter how much you change, that's what you will always be… I like you, I even understand you some of the time, but I can’t invest my emotions in a machine.”

But the thing is, by this point in the film, Portia is in love with Andrew. She’s not only trying to explain to him that they can’t be together, she’s also rationalizing to herself why she can’t have feelings for a machine – that getting married to her boyfriend Charles is the right thing to do. But after they kiss for “scientific reasons” she can no longer deny how she feels and refuses to believe that Andrew is not in love with her too – that his deferential response to her engagement is not how he truly feels, and she begs him to change.

“Take chances, make mistakes… Sometimes it’s important not to be perfect. It’s important to do the wrong thing… To make [mistakes]! To find out what’s real and what’s not. To find out what you feel… It’s not about being rational, it’s about following your heart.”

This rant is not only Portia trying to get Andrew to admit that he loves her but also the film answering its core question, “What does it mean to be human?” To be human is to follow your heart even when it doesn’t make sense to. That when your brain (your programming) shows you the logical choice, you make the illogical one because it feels right in your heart.

But Andrew isn’t human – he’s a robot designed to follow his programming (his brain) and think logically. When faced with a choice between logical and illogical, he will always make the “right choice”, even if he doesn’t realize that’s what he’s doing. Because as free as Andrew thinks he is, his decisions are still being guided by his programming. He even admits as much after insulting a sculpture that Portia was working on, “I apologize for telling the truth, but it can’t be helped – it’s my programming.”

When Andrew unexpectedly shows up at Portia’s door for the first time, she asks him what he wants, and he tells her, “Family. My last name is Martin. I am so named because your great-grandfather and grandmother consider me to be a member of your family. Now Sir (great-grandfather) is dead, Little Miss is getting older, you don’t like me, but at least you’ll talk to me if I knock on your door long enough.”

If Andrew is truly seeking family, Portia is not the logical choice. Little Miss had two sons: Lloyd, who hates him, and another son, who as far as we know, doesn’t hate him. But Andrew chooses to intentionally seek out Lloyd’s daughter – someone who he knows does not like him. But this particular relative happens to have something no other family member does: she looks strikingly similar to Little Miss, one of Andrew’s masters. In fact, she’s identical; both generations of the Martin women are played by Embeth Davidtz. This decision shows us that Andrew is not looking for family; with his masters dying, he is seeking a new one because he is programmed to serve. Even after being granted his freedom, he informs Mr. Martin, “I will look for a residence nearby, so that if you ever need anything, Sir… If you command me not to do this, I will obey.”

Portia is right when she thinks that Andrew loves her, but the problem isn’t that he won’t admit it, it’s that he can’t admit it – his programming prevents him from doing so. Despite being “free”, NDR robots are designed to submit to their masters, and because Portia is a part of the Martin family – Andrew’s masters – her needs override his. This is why after finding out Portia is engaged to Charles, Andrew doesn’t profess his love. Instead, after a long pause he simply, reservedly says, “He’s a lucky man. Congratulations to the both of you.”

This response from Andrew is telling of how he truly feels. He is more than capable of showing emotion – earlier in the same scene, he’s practically jumping up and down with excitement when he realizes he’s capable of feeling touch. But here, he shows no emotion whatsoever. He doesn’t say he’s happy for her, he doesn’t say he’s excited… The first thing he says is that Charles is lucky for getting to marry Portia. Andrew is saying exactly how he feels about her without going against his programming.

While Portia does not realize this, it is through her frustrated reaction to Andrew’s indifference that unintentionally creates a set of conditions that will allow him to follow his programming and confess how he feels. For the first few decades of Andrew’s life, whenever he would follow an order, he would always say, “One is glad to be of service”. It is only after Mr. Martin grants him his freedom that he notices that Andrew has started referring to himself as “I”. But after Portia encourages Andrew to follow his heart, he asks her, “In order to follow that heart, one must do the wrong thing?” It is shortly after this that Andrew finally professes his love to Portia. While he may be following his heart, he’s also following his master's command.

“In your apartment you told me to do the wrong thing. Now you are not doing the wrong thing, you’re doing the right thing. Safe to say you’re not following your own advice because if you were you would definitely not be marrying this man Charles… Do you have any idea what it’s like to be in love with someone who’s about to marry someone else?”

Becoming Human Is Just Illogical…

Shortly after Andrew is brought home by the Martin family, Miss (Little Miss's older sister) – who does not like Andrew – commands him to jump out of a window. While jumping out of a window is an illogical thing to do, Andrew is programmed to follow Miss’s command, so he leaps from the second-story window to the ground below. When he is found by Mr. Martin, he is damaged, with stuttering speech and twitching facial features.

Up to this point, Andrew has been a standard robot servant for the Martin family, displaying no signs of emotion or creativity. But in the next scene, while watching over the Martin girls, Andrew drops Little Miss’s favourite toy – a glass horse – and smashes it on the ground. It is when he sees how upset she is that Andrew experiences emotion for the first time, feeling guilt over what he has done. This guilt drives him to develop creativity, eventually carving a horse out of wood to give to Little Miss. While an explanation for Andrew’s consciousness is never given, one can assume that the damage from his fall from the second-story window is what resulted in his "defectiveness". Meaning, it was an illogical decision that led to the beginning of Andrew’s quest for humanity.

That quest would never have been achieved without Portia. Not only does she help him “do the wrong thing” and confess his love, but it is because they are together that Andrew appeals to the World Congress to become a human. The only reason he does this is because Portia is worried that they will never get married or be accepted. Without her, Andrew never makes the choice to become mortal. And it is only when he is mortal that he is finally granted his status as a human being. But it is not his mortality that earns him his humanity – death is not an exclusive experience to the human race. It is his decision to become mortal, to die for love, that ultimately gets his humanity acknowledged by the World Congress.

A robot functioning purely on logic would not have been able to make the same decision. That decision could have only been made by a human. When Andrew dies, Portia – who doesn’t want to live in a world without him – asks their android servant, Galatea, to take her off of life support. At first, Galatea does not move; she is unable to compute this request. As a robot, the decision to choose to die for the sake of love makes no sense to her. But to Portia, a human being following her heart, it makes perfect sense. This shows us that it is because Andrew Martin made the illogical decision to follow his heart that he finally became human.

Do Over

While humans can follow their hearts, they don’t always do so. Some people will take the risk, but most decide to play it safe. Not only does Bicentennial Man encourage you to follow your heart, it shows you what happens if you don’t. Because Little Miss and Portia are played by the same actor, we watch “the same woman” go through life twice, coming to the same inflection point, with one making the “right decision” and the other making the “wrong one.” After being proposed to by their boyfriends, they each have to confront their feelings for Andrew and decide whether or not to be with him. Little Miss even waits to accept her boyfriend’s proposal until after she speaks with Andrew about it.

“Last night, [Frank] asked me to marry him… I haven’t said yes yet… Frank is wonderful. He’s handsome, he’s reliable, he’s someone I could spend the rest of my life with, I could have children with him… [But] I have this friend, who’s very special to me. And he’s just so sweet and funny, and whenever I’m with him I don’t want to be with Frank.”

Despite her feelings for Andrew, Little Miss accepts Frank’s proposal. This is not a decision made with her heart, but rather a decision made with her head. Frank is everything she should want in a partner – he’s handsome, reliable, and someone she could have kids with. But none of these traits are exclusive to Frank; there are plenty of handsome, reliable men that she could have kids with. There’s no one else on Earth who makes her laugh or feel the way Andrew does. The only problem is that he is a robot, and it doesn’t make sense for her to marry a machine. So, she makes the “smart choice” and marries Frank.

Portia, on the other hand, does not make the logical decision. When Andrew shows up at her work and professes his love, she calls off her engagement and runs off with him. Even though it was the wrong decision, she took her own advice and followed her heart. There was nothing wrong with Charles, but just like her grandmother, no one made Portia feel the way Andrew did. Because of this one decision, her life would end up being very different from Little Miss’s.

Little Miss didn’t have a terrible life, but she didn’t have the one she wanted either. Not only did she get divorced from the “right” man she married, but she also had a fractured relationship with her son, and she didn’t even get to spend time with Andrew, who left to track down other NDR robots. By the time he returns, she is old, and after suffering a stroke, is dying. When Andrew visits her in the hospital, she’s holding onto the small wooden horse that he had carved for her as a child. In that moment, Little Miss dies, literally holding onto the past, staring up at the man she loves, wondering what life could have been if she’d followed her heart. Portia didn’t have to wonder. She followed her heart, spent her life with Andrew, and died holding onto his hand, staring at the man she loves, reflecting on an incredible life that was.

The catch-22 of it all is that the logical decision is the illogical one. If the purpose of life is to follow your heart, then you should make choices that allow you to do that. When Little Miss tells Andrew that her boyfriend proposed but she has feelings for her friend, Andrew says to her that, “the answer’s staring you in the face, marry your friend.” But when Little Miss says she will marry Frank anyways, Andrew is confused. Because to the robot who only sees things as black and white, the logical thing to do is to follow your heart.

As a matter of fact, Andrew has been following his heart this entire time. While he is deeply in love with Portia, his first love was Little Miss. When Little Miss tells Andrew about Frank’s proposal, she never once says that she wants to marry her friend instead; that suggestion comes from Andrew. On its own, this doesn’t prove that Andrew loves Little Miss; she never tells him that he is the friend she has feelings for. But if you fast-forward to when Portia is explaining why she and Andrew could never be together, she says, “I can’t invest my emotions in a machine.” After thinking about it for a moment Andrew replies, “Must be a genetic trait”. Not feeling like she could invest her emotions in a machine is precisely why Little Miss decided to marry Frank and not Andrew. Andrew’s acknowledgement of this to Portia shows that he knew Little Miss loved him all along. Therefore, when he’s trying to convince her to marry her friend, he’s actually trying to convince her to marry him.

Forever and Always

Andrew’s 200-yearlong quest to become human is entirely driven by his love for Little Miss. All he wants is for her to recognize him as a human so that they can finally be together. When asked by the World Congress why he wants to be deemed a human, the expectation is that he will say so that he can marry Portia. After all, that is what led him to make his first appeal to the Congress. But Andrew doesn’t say that. Instead he says, “To be acknowledged for who and what I am… [For] the simple truth of that recognition. This has been the elemental drive of my existence.”

The drive for that recognition began when Little Miss wouldn’t accept him for who he was and married a man instead. For the first part of Andrew’s life, he doesn’t appear to have any desire to become a human. In the scene directly before he learns that Little Miss is engaged, he’s trying to open a bank account, not as a human, but as a robot. It is only after Little Miss gets engaged that he starts wearing human clothes, asks for his freedom, and upgrades his appearance to be more human.

During Andrew’s decades-long journey to find other NDR robots, he never once returned to visit Little Miss… until after he got a humanlike upgrade. When he finally looks human, he immediately goes to see her – he’s in such a rush to show her that he looks human, that he doesn’t even change his clothes. The only problem is that he took too long. By the time he finally reconnects with her, she has grown old. As an immortal robot, he did not feel a sense of urgency caused by the passage of time, and as a result, he missed his chance to be with the woman he loved.

“For you, time is a completely different proposition. For you, time is endless.” – Mr. Martin, Andrew’s first master

When Andrew does return to Little Miss’s house he finds Portia playing the piano. Due to her resemblance to her grandmother, he actually mistakes her for Little Miss. This is significant because when Andrew professes his love to Portia he says, “I love you, Portia. I loved you the very first moment I saw you.” But it wasn’t love at first sight because the very first moment Andrew saw Portia, he thought that she was Little Miss. When he seeks out Portia to befriend her, it is not only because she resembles his old master, but because she represents a second chance with the woman he loves. For Andrew, it was always and will forever be about Little Miss.