2001
DIRECTOR: STEVEN SPIELBERG PRODUCERS: KATHLEEN KENNEDY, STEVEN SPIELBERG, AND BONNIE CURTIS SCREENPLAY: STEVEN SPIELBERG, BASED ON A SHORT STORY BY BRIAN ALDISS STARRING: HALEY JOEL OSMENT (DAVID), JUDE LAW (GIGOLO JOE), FRANCES O’CONNOR (MONICA SWINTON), SAM ROBARDS (HENRY SWINTON), WILLIAM HURT (PROFESSOR HOBBY), BRENDAN GLEESON (LORD JOHNSON-JOHNSON), JAKE THOMAS (MARTIN SWINTON), JACK ANGEL (VOICE OF TEDDY)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
WARNER BROS. • COLOR, 146 MINUTES
An experimental robotic child sets off on a quest to become real when abandoned by his adoptive mother.
A fearful fascination with technological progress is one of the cornerstones of science fiction. A.I. Artificial Intelligence explores both our fear and our fascination with advanced robotics, and bears the distinction of being a landmark collaboration between two major screen visionaries: Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick. With films like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Spielberg had become known for optimistic, heartfelt looks at sci-fi, while Kubrick was synonymous with provocative, cynical offerings (A Clockwork Orange [1971]). In A.I., the two forces merge. The result is a future fairy tale that swiftly plunges into the dark side as it compares and contrasts humans with the humanlike machines they create.
Twelve-year-old Haley Joel Osment delivers a remarkably nuanced performance as David, an extraordinary mecha (mechanical being) manufactured by the Cybertronics Corporation sometime in the twenty-second century. A child-bot programmed by his creator to express unconditional love, David is adopted by a couple and “imprinted” to love only his mother, Monica. But buyer’s remorse sets in almost overnight. Like Teddy (a mecha stuffed bear with a creepier voice than HAL 9000), David becomes a superfluous supertoy when Monica’s real son returns from the hospital. Dumped in the woods like a wild animal, David takes up with Gigolo Joe, a “lover” robot (convincingly portrayed by Jude Law) that assists the child in his Pinocchio-derived fantasy of becoming a flesh-and-blood boy. Here, as with the replicants in Blade Runner (1982), the mechanized creatures seem warmer and more human than the organic ones. When Monica abandons David, she warns him that human beings are the biggest threat to his safety, advising him to “stay away from all people.”
Brian Aldiss’s 1969 short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” was the seed that would blossom into A.I. In the mid-1980s, Stanley Kubrick began developing the Aldiss tale into a twisted Pinocchio fantasy, an unconventional fable of the distant future. Unsure that he was the right person to direct it, Kubrick discussed the concept with his friend Spielberg off and on for a decade before saying in 1994, “I have a great idea: I produce it, you direct.” But Spielberg hesitated. Finally, when Kubrick died in 1999, Spielberg undertook the project to honor Kubrick and bring his unrealized vision to the screen. “I was like an archaeologist, picking up the pieces of a civilization, putting Stanley’s picture back together again,” he said.
Because A.I. wanders in unexpected (and often uncomfortable) directions, more than one viewing is required to absorb all that runs beneath the film’s captivating surface, a shimmering facade flooded with Janusz Kaminski’s milky backlighting and spellbinding imagery. Our view of David is frequently filtered through panes of glass, mirrored reflections, and, in one sequence, water, as he lies motionless on the concrete basin of a swimming pool. These shots do more than just dazzle the eyes—they blur the lines between real and unreal, artificial and organic. Virtually everyone in the film—whether human or machine—is sad, lonely, and searching for love. Even the super-advanced species of artificial intelligence that populate the end of David’s 2,000-year journey is so desperate for contact with the lost warmth of humanity, they treasure this child as the closest thing to the extinct human race. As Gigolo Joe accurately predicts, “When the end comes, all that will be left is us.” Appropriately, the modernist John Williams score is as touching as it is unsettling.
Jude Law as Gigolo Joe
Kubrick’s films were often controversial and not fully appreciated in their own time, and A.I. follows this pattern. Though written and directed by Spielberg, it is in many ways a Stanley Kubrick film, confounding and dividing audiences and critics. The San Francisco Chronicle harshly accused A.I. of exhibiting “all its creators’ bad traits and none of the good. So we end up with the structureless, meandering, slow-moving endlessness of Kubrick combined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg.” Newsweek was troubled but awed, calling the collaboration “fascinating—a rich, strange, problematical movie full of wild tonal shifts and bravura moviemaking.”
Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment in Rouge City
Steven Spielberg on the Flesh Fair set with Haley Joel Osment
Many assumed Spielberg was behind the poignant ending, but, in fact, it was Kubrick’s idea. “The teddy bear, the ending, all of it’s in Stanley’s script,” executive producer Jan Harlan told Entertainment Weekly in 2001. “He would be so elated, because the story was so close to his outline. But it still had Steven’s handwriting over every frame.” The monumental partnership between two of the twentieth century’s most significant filmmakers becomes better appreciated as time passes. Perhaps it’s a film tailored more for the future than the present. Like its mechanized creations, A.I. endures beyond its era.
FAR-OUT FACTS
MIND-BLOWING MOMENT
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