I Can’t Stop Thinking About This Scene From ‘A.I. Artificial Intelligence’
It’s a depressing masterpiece!
Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi drama A.I. Artificial Intelligence was misunderstood when it came out in 2001, specifically by me. The movie started life as a Stanley Kubrick project that he personally gave to Spielberg, who directed it after Kubrick’s death. At the time I thought it was too sentimental and not cerebral or frightening, like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
There didn’t seem to be enough of Kubrick’s fear of technology and his dim view of humanity in A.I., and too much of Spielberg’s sweeping spectacle.
But I recently rewatched it and I was wrong. The movie is grim. It’s also far more self-aware than I ever gave it credit: Spielberg understands his own work enough that he subverts it in A.I., a sort of gift to Kubrick, a student demonstrating that they understood the assignment.
A.I. is about David, a lifelike robot programmed to love and who is so good at wanting to be loved and loving his adopted parents that they abandon him in a dying world where humans torture robots who feel pain.
David is played by Haley Joel Osment when he was 12-years-old in a profoundly mature and nuanced performance. Jude Law also shows up, as a sex robot who is so good at making women want…
