Spielberg and Kaminski shoot these scenes in cold blues and grays; the small pockets of visual warmth -- like the snug little bedchamber in which David sleeps, decorated with paintings of the sky -- are made to look as artificial as the robot child's love. I think some viewers may make the mistake of thinking that Spielberg is falling back on the cozy, heartwarming imagery he has specialized in. But the emotional distance he maintains encourages us to see that imagery as artificial. In one scene, Monica and the two boys glide down a sunlit river in a canopied boat as she reads them "Pinocchio"; the placid, safe feel of the scene, and the honeyed sunlight, are so close to perfection that instead of surrendering to the moment we see it as part of a world where happiness has been constructed.

That distance is clearly what Spielberg intends, and yet it's a problem, keeping us outside the film, comprehending the meanings but never feeling them. (Part of the problem is Spielberg's screenplay. Oddly for such a visual director, Spielberg lays out the themes in clumsy, expository dialogue instead of showing us.) Clearly this wouldn't have been a problem for Stanley Kubrick, who was at home with coldness. And yet you may feel grateful that we were spared Kubrick's "A.I." How could Kubrick even begin to address the mixed emotions arising from the intermingling of human and machine when, from "2001" on, there were no human beings in his movies? In film after film, Kubrick's overlord misanthropy, the magisterial technique that reduced the actors in his films to stick figures carrying out his bidding, represented the triumph of the mechanical over the human. (What do you remember most from "2001" -- Keir Dullea or the mellifluous voice of Douglas Rain as HAL?) With the exception of Malcolm McDowell's Alex and Vanessa Shaw in a bit part as a prostitute in "Eyes Wide Shut," they were all clockwork oranges. The people in Kubrick's films are either zombies or rats; in his view, machines' taking over would be an improvement.

But how can a filmmaker as openly emotional as Spielberg ever be at home in a world where emotion has become an entirely synthetic thing? A more introspective filmmaker might have related that world to the dilemma facing moviemakers who, like the robot technicians here, attempt to make created beings indistinguishable from real ones. The irony of "A.I." -- and it's an irony Kubrick would have been comfortable with -- is that the robots are more human than the humans. The film is full of examples of reprehensible human behavior. David's "brother" Martin plots to destroy David; Martin's friends, with the cruelty that is natural to all children, attempt to hurt David to see how he'll react.

We feel no sympathy for the humans here (except perhaps O'Connor), but Osment's performance makes you feel the limitations and the artificiality of robot emotions, so you can't exactly warm up to him either. So when the film takes a turn and Monica, unable to divide her love between David and her real son, abandons David and Teddy, it's nearly impossible to know how to react. Essentially, we're watching a screaming, confused child abandoned in the forest by his "mother." While Spielberg's distance keeps the scene from being as manipulative as it might be, it's distressing to watch and not be able to fully sympathize with either character (or to feel divided against ourselves as we might be if we were made to sympathize with both).

As the movie moves into its second part, "A.I." becomes even more emotionally divisive and confusing when it turns into the abandoned David's quest to turn himself into a real live boy by finding the Blue Fairy, from the story of "Pinocchio," who can grant his wish. In this section of the film, David hooks up with a lover-robot Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), who's on the lam after being framed for murder -- a garish, clumsily staged one -- by a jealous husband. This should be the place where the emotional distance between David and the audience dissolves. We're conscious of the poignant irony of a pretend child acting on the faith that a pretend story is real, of the heart tugging in the story of a child who just wants to earn his mother's love. But Spielberg has left out a step. The "imprinted" David seems as artificial as the robot David. If Spielberg is saying that he is transformed into a real being by emotions, then (through no fault of Osment, who is superb throughout) we need to see that evolution, we need to give ourselves over to the notion that a machine can take the place of a human.

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