Review: ‘A.I’ sets the record straight on Spielberg, Kubrick

Geoff Carter

Friday, March 15, 2002 | 9:52 a.m.

Movie critics are a pretty thick-headed lot. Kind of slow on the pickup. While we discussed the noncommercial aspects of Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" last summer, not one of us directly addressed the obvious: Spielberg had made his first interpretive film. We were so busy nitpicking at "A.I.'s" ambiguities that we failed to acknowledge their significance.

With the release of the film on DVD (DreamWorks Home Entertainment, $29.99), we can make up for lost time, and with the filmmakers' help. An unprecendented film in so many ways, "A.I." deserves that much. The two-disc set allows nearly everyone involved in the production, from the special effects crew to the actors, to talk about their contributions -- the treats they brought to Spielberg's misunderstood surprise package.

By now practically everyone is aware that "A.I." began life as a Stanley Kubrick project. The late filmmaker brought Spielberg into his confidence early on, sharing story treatments and concept art with him via fax. (In a concession to Kubrick's fetish for cloak-and-dagger secrecy, Spielberg hid a dedicated fax machine in a closet.) Somewhere along the line, Kubrick decided that Spielberg should direct the film, while he produced.

The finished film, which began production mere weeks after Kubrick's death, confused audiences with its mix of sensibilities. People expected another "E.T." of this story of a robot boy that yearns to be human; what they got fell between "Empire of the Sun" and "2001: A Space Odyssey." Spielberg got cold, and Kubrick warmed up. Cinema snobs blamed the story's fairy tale aspect on Spielberg, when in fact it came directly from Kubrick's story treatments.

The DVD doesn't entirely set the record straight, but it comes close. "While Stanley was alive, he said, 'This is actually a film that should be directed by Steven Spielberg,' " says Kubrick's producing partner and brother-in-law Jan Harlan, in a making-of featurette, "Creating A.I."

"He appreciated Steven's different talent very, very much." That explains, now and for all time, whose film it really is -- officially, at least.

Unofficially, "A.I." is haunted by Kubrick's spirit, and the cast, crew and director encourage it. Haley Joel Osment had the idea that his character should never blink -- a very Kubrickian idea. Composer John Williams quotes gorgeously from Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier," the only piece of music Kubrick insisted should appear in the film. And for the first time since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Spielberg wrote his own shooting script, to keep Kubrick's ideas from being further filtered down.

An entire disc of documentaries and storyboards, however, pale in comparison to the movie itself, which looks and sounds absolutely perfect on DVD. The behind-the-scenes story of "A.I." is interesting, but all you need to know about the film is within the film itself. With the patience and forthrightness of a historian, "A.I.'s" supplemental materials simply tell you where to look for the film's questions, and allows you to answer them.