Considering that in the latest FANGORIA (#304, on stands this week), Steven Spielberg is subjected to a thoughtful analysis regarding his “dark side,” I thought it appropriate to chat up a film we neglected to discuss in depth in that piece, one that may in fact be Spielberg’s grimmest work.

I’m talking about 2001’s unjustly overlooked, posthumous Stanley Kubrick collaboration A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, a rather unappreciated gem of dark sci-fi that opened to acceptable box office, mixed critical response and general audience confusion before slipping into the dustbins of delete-bin filler. Part of the problem perhaps rests in the film’s pedigree. Kubrick started the film, adapting Brian Aldiss’ 1969 short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” and linking up with Mr. Hollywood himself, Spielberg, resulting in a back-and-forth fax-machine-fueled conspiratorship. When Kubrick passed away in 1999, Spielberg made it one of his many missions to fulfill the fruits of their brainstorm and complete the picture, resulting in a thoroughly unique blend of chilly, dystopian, “Kubrickian” dissonance and emotional, grandiose “Spielbergian” pomp. Expectations were so perversely high from both fan bases that A.I. was bound to let some folks down.

Young actor Haley Joel Osment, fresh off his success as the star of THE SIXTH SENSE, turns in a haunting performace as David, the doe-eyed child android—or “mecha,” as they’re called—who, in the distant, environmentally battered future, is charged with filling the void left in a family whose son is trapped in a coma. David is programmed to love, and love he does. He literally “lives” to be the ideal son to his lonely, distressed “parents” (Sam Robards and Frances O’Connor). When their real boy wakes up, David is pushed to the sidelines, and after a poolside accident, he’s abandoned completely, returned to the factory to be destroyed, along with his devoted, intelligent, talking teddy bear.

Mommy lacks the courage to broker the killing of her former child, and of course, this beautiful robot is confounded as to why his mother abandons him, so he escapes, embarking on a cross-country quest to find her again and have her love restored to him. Along the way, he meets the suave sex robot “Gigolo Joe” (a magnificent Jude Law), who joins his flight when both androids narrowly escape a MAD MAX-esque “Flesh Circus,” a Roman-styled junkyard arena where innocent, neglected and broken robots are decimated to the roars of crowd enthusiasm.

Inspired by tales of Pinocchio, David begins to believe if he can only find The Blue Fairy, he can be turned into a flesh-and-blood child, thus pleasing his mommy and being re-embraced by the household he pines to return to. In a way, he does find what he seeks, but the end is a cold comfort indeed.

And that end is what alienated a lot of people. Without unleashing spoilers to those who have yet to appreciate this brilliant film, there are two climaxes. The first feels like something Kubrick would have done, a final note that’s haunting and bitter and a little bit cruel. The second is, on the surface, more fanciful, and has the aura of E.T. about it. Many critics of the film spoke out against this conclusion, accusing Spielberg of tacking on a more commercial resolution. But Spielberg himself has noted that this ending was in fact the one intended by Kubrick, and a deeper look reveals it to be the darker, sadder and more cynical one—a denouement that offers resolution to our tiny hero’s plight, but one that is devoid of the warm humanity and kindness that he seeks thoughout the movie’s running time. In fact, Spielberg and Kubrick are suggesting that our concepts of “human kindness” are just that—that in practice they don’t really exist, and it just might be in the lowly machines we create that those concepts will truly find perfection.

A.I. is a masterpiece. I used to call it a flawed masterpiece, but as with so many of the pictures we now call classics, it is after repeated viewings that we see it is not the film that is flawed, but perhaps the human being watching it. The film has always looked good on DVD, but on the Blu-Ray issued earlier this year, it is an all-consuming, special FX-saturated visual experience. A sensory enveloping that also engages on emotional levels few genre films attempt. It’s a film that stands as the best of both its creators’ intentions and abilities, and one that will keep finding new fans. And it deserves that legacy.

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