Written and directed by Steven Spielberg.
Armed with heavy existential questions and life’s biggest emotions, Steven Spielberg wants to wring every tear out of you with A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the story of a humanoid robot capable of love who wishes for nothing else than to become “real” so his mother will love him back.
You’d have to be made of stone to not feel something when a child pleads for his mother to love him, or to not pity a bereft mother who wants nothing more than to hold a child in her arms and hear it call her “mommy”. It’s impossible. Scenes like these are powerful just on paper, but hand them over to Steven Spielberg, a true master at inducing misty eyes, and they become weapons-grade material. It’s almost too easy for him.
In A.I., we follow David (Haley Joel Osment), who is the first of his kind: a non-organic child-like being who can “feel” love and is programmed to imprint on a parental figure. All triggered by a series of random letters that the parent-to-be/owner reads aloud as if casting a spell. The sequence conjures a devoted child, unaging and enduring (within warranty at least).
A feat of human engineering, and a crossing of a threshold not thought possible. The ethical dilemmas stumble over themselves, the most immediate of which is whether it’s cruel to emotionally indenture a being that mankind will consider a disposable product?
Like David, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is its own feat of engineering. Carefully assembled, its structure and pacing whisk away an otherwise imposing runtime, and some extraordinary set pieces possess eye-popping power. It’s to be expected from Spielberg, however, because his storytelling grasp is only matched by his technical prowess. The expectations might even be unfairly high, because several action-sequences, like a chase through a moonlit woods or a daring escape from police, feel underwhelming when you know what suspense Spielberg can conjure with the likes of Raiders of the Lost Ark or Jurassic Park.
The story is well-aligned, but follows a fairytale template where most characters are just storytelling archetypes that work like cogs to drive the narrative forward. Jude Law stars as David’s unlikely companion, an android gigolo by the name of Joe, and despite the little he has to work with, Jude Law delivers one of his best performances with a high-camp jester-esque cartwheel of an act. Frances O’Connor, who plays David’s mother Monica, doesn’t have the same room to maneuver as she’s pigeonholed into a maternal caretaker while Sam Robards is simply an uncaring cutout of a man who sees David as little more than a kitchen appliance he hopes will bring Monica out of her funk.
The simplistic nature of the humans in A.I. robs it of depth, with David’s child’s eye-level exploration of his existence the only emotional ballast. It’s strange to describe something as tender-hearted as A.I. as also being cynical, but with the two-dimensional parts surrounding David so transparently arranged to drive Spielberg’s points home, you feel emotionally manhandled. Blessed be Haley Joel Osment for his upturned face and evocative performance which you can’t help but be drawn in by.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence is Spielberg at his emotional essence, joining E.T. as another story about mankind’s callous nature in face of the unknown and the redemptive power of innocence. A tear-jerker that despite its oversimplifications you cannot help but feel moved by, a fairytale that tugs at our most raw emotional chords.
Mikkel Frederiksen 