A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
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Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Sam Robards, William Hurt
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Running time: Two hours and 25 minutes

"What responsibility does a human have to a robot that genuinely loves?"

That is the question that director Steven Spielberg's film asks and tries to answer. One could find fault with what the movie has to say and the sentimental way in which it says it, but none could argue that A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) is the work of an artist. It features a disturbing visual brilliance and acting excellence which, even if not matched by the handling of the story itself, is awe-inspiring. The film is at once intriguing, dazzling, intelligent, artificial and frustrating. It poses questions, which the story and the ending, rather than solve, replace with other questions.

In the movie, the world has changed beyond recognition, the coastlines are sunken, and people survive through the help of humanoid robots, mechas. They cannot live without them, which is probably why they hate them. Mechas provide human substitutes in plants and factories, in housekeeping, making food, and even making love. They are everywhere and face human cruelty with a sinister, numb, machine dignity. The areas in which they substitute humans expand by the day.

We enter a world where resources are so scarce that families are not allowed to have more than one child. We are present at a meeting in which the mecha-pioneer, Professor Hobby (William Hurt), proposes a solution to a great human need. He proposes that a robot-child who can genuinely love be designed. The eternal love that he describes is one that is irreversibly activated in the chips of the robot by a code that the "parent" enters.

David (Haley Joel Osment), the prototype, is given to Monica and Henry (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards) whose child Martin suffers a seemingly incurable disease. Luckily for them, and unluckily for David, the boy gets better.

The real boy and the mecha engage in a peculiar contest to win the love of their mother. At this point, the film handles the questions it poses most truthfully. The misgivings and doubts of Monica and Henry are logical and consistent, while the confrontation between the two boys is one of the most intriguing points of the film. Martin's cruelty is met by David's unsuspecting and unresisting alarm. But is Martin's cruelty really different from the anger of an impatient child towards a toy he is unhappy with? Is David's mechanically perfect love enough to inspire love in a human heart?

Then the film becomes less intriguing and more complicated. David is left in the woods with his flawless undiminished love and with his hopes of becoming a real boy so that his mother will love him. He embarks on a dreamlike journey through "flesh-fairs" and halucinatory cities at the end of the world where the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio fulfills his one desire.

Yet is David's love enough to carry a movie through to a satisfying conclusion? Should we be interested in following a child we are made to believe is capable of loving even though our cognition constantly alarms us that it is not? Would it not have been a more rewarding decision to follow the life of Monica and Henry and Martin, the characters we know for sure can love and doubt and hate? We are asked to sympathize with a boy, which is not a boy really: cold logic states that David is never more than a very intelligent toy. If we ever catch ourselves feeling for David, that is not because the story leads us to do so, but because of Haley Joel Osment's dazzling performance.

A.I. was a favourite theme of Stanley Kubrick's. He worked on the project for 15 years but failed to resolve the questions posed. Spielberg has too.