Not Coming to a Theater Near You

A.I. / Artificial Intelligence / USA / 2001

How will history retell this particularly bloody skirmish in the Spielberg Wars?

The witnesses for the prosecution include Godard, Crispin Glover, Ray Carney, and a gaggle of Kubrick fanboys; and for the defendant, Bergman and Billy Wilder, who called this film “the most underrated film of the past few years.”

All in all, it’s not at all as awful as is reputed, displaying a good deal of restraint in its sentimentality (which is above all morbid and quite Kubrick-approved). Spielberg’s Wikipedia entry even ventures to call it the director’s first “experimental” film.

I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it is nonetheless a disturbingly grim film. Of course, there are some maudlin touches that smack of Hook and Always: William Hurt’s cloying monologues; Robin Williams’s vocal cameo; Osment’s Jake Lloyd moment. But these are blissfully brief, and the film is far more notable for its rare pleasures. The two lead performances are excellent and not annoying, and the cinematography by Janusz Kaminski is lovely and not bracingly ugly. Both of these are rarities in Spielberg’s films.

And as I have with many of the director’s recent films, I will maintain that the coercive cheerfulness of the ending is largely a self-defeating gesture. Here, Spielberg may well have ended with David expectantly frozen in ice for the rest of eternity — the minor consolation that the final ending offers is hardly more comforting. With its feigned optimism, it is as dismal an ending as is that of War of the Worlds.

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: DreamWorks DVD
05 Jun 2006 1:55 PM | Submit Comment