Defining Favourites: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Steven Spielberg's heartbreaking ode to a friend is a dark, twisted fairy tale.

Photo: DreamWorks Pictures

Welcome to my Defining Favourites, a section dedicated to essays about films that I feel confident in calling favourites in some way or another — akin to Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” reviews. These essays are for paid subscribers, so if you would like to read more beyond the free preview, please consider subscribing.

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by Steven Spielberg, based on the short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss
Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, Bonnie Curtis
Starring Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O’Connor, Brendan Gleeson, William Hurt
Premiere Date: June 29, 2001
Running Time: 146 minutes

It’s widely known that Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick were great friends, despite the two having radically different philosophies about filmmaking and the sorts of stories that they had wished to tell. But with a film like A.I. Artificial Intelligence, one gets the sense that they might have had more in common than one may suspect. It all starts with the fact that this idea to adapt Brian Aldiss’s story was once in Stanley Kubrick’s hands, before it was eventually passed onto Spielberg. Following Kubrick’s death in 1999, it’s hard not to read Spielberg’s own attempt at bringing forth a story that Kubrick had felt strongly about as a loving tribute: but perhaps that’s also where Spielberg has effectively created what is also one of the most heartbreaking films of the twenty-first century.

On the surface, one can see the story of a young robotic boy programmed to “love” like a human child would, as being analogous to Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. But the manner by which this project had originated, under the guidance of Stanley Kubrick, would hint at something darker. For the manner by which David sees the world around himself is eternally trapped in this childlike state of mind, to the point where such innocence cannot comprehend the cruelties he witnesses around him. It’s not only the perfect lens for Steven Spielberg to encapsulate the darkness of this premise; but it’s a way to show the destructive nature of humanity as it moves towards a wholly capitalistic and materialistic world. In an age where AI seems to be normalized in everyday activities, supposedly to perform tasks that are deemed menial, it’d only seem as if this film has aged beautifully, but perhaps with a bleaker outlook.