I can hear the scoffs now: But what about that ending?
So let’s begin at the end: A.I. has one of the most cryptic, complex and widely misread final scenes of this (or any) decade. A robot, cursed to a life of seeking a mother’s approval – a mother who long ago threw him away – waits through the eons for the chance to fulfill his mission. Discovered in the ice by future androids that now run the planet, this titanium pet, so savagely mistreated by the human race, becomes the universe’s final link to the extinct species that created it. And in a sickly scene of smiles and tears he is allowed, finally, to complete his purpose, as an artificially replicated mother says all the words he’s been waiting to hear. (More at Techland: The Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels of the Decade)
David’s tears do not connote a happy ending. They simply mark the end of his perpetual agony. It might as well be a mercy killing. Steven Spielberg’s sweetness coalesces with Stanley Kubrick’s cynicism, and the contradictions begin piling up, challenging our basic assumptions about love, technology and the conscience of our society.
All along the way, the same themes resurface. What obligation does a creator owe his creation? While a robot’s love is pre-programmed, is ours any different? If we were able to create a whole society of second-class humans, what would we do to them? Turn them into sex slaves? Use them as tools for therapy? Destroy them in fits of rage and fear, to prove our superiority?
This is heavy, serious stuff, and Spielberg, working with a concept that Kubrick had labored on for years, embraced his colleague’s analytical approach to filmmaking. Those who felt betrayed by A.I. were the ones who assumed the film was asking us to identify with the robots, and that we were therefore being asked to see David’s fulfillment of his mission as a happy ending. But Kubrick didn’t look with his characters; he looked at them. So A.I. is less a character study than a species study, looking at this scenario and pondering how mankind would make use of all this fake flesh. Spielberg and Kubrick devise a series of situations: A family in mourning, sex clients, flesh fairs, scientists, and the apocalypse. They provide a focal point: David. And then they ask us to draw the conclusions.
Woefully unappreciated – even dismissed – upon its release, the film’s critics said Spielberg’s emotional cues fell flat when it came to David. But A.I., like all the best science-fiction, is less portrait than mirror. The cityscapes and technology may be futuristic, but this only underscores the fact that human nature is a constant. And the focus here is less David than the way those around David react to him, and what that says about how humans tick. I put A.I. right up there with Hitchock’s Vertigo – another long-underrated gem that dissects the less-than-rosy reality of human intimacy.
It’s not give-give; it’s give-take.
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