Michael Suarez
I wasn’t even a senior in high school the summer I went to see Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a film I had been looking forward to for years. And, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when the AMC Theatres intro from the early aughts ended, and the Warner Bros. logo faded in. I knew the general backstory: the film was conceived by none other than Stanley Kubrick, the idea being that he’d produce it while Spielberg would direct. After the former died in early 1999, Spielberg took it upon himself to make the film a reality. What would the resulting film be exactly?
When I emerged from the theater over two and a half hours later, I was convinced I’d seen a masterpiece, even if the reviews I subsequently read suggested otherwise. 25 years later, my appreciation has only grown, and thankfully, others have followed suit. The film is one of the darker works in Spielberg’s filmography, with an ending that broke my heart then and devastates me now.
A.I. tells two stories, though the first ends about a third of the way. In it, a woman named Monica (Frances O’Connor), a mother distraught over her son being in a coma, forms a reluctant bond with a robot named “David,” played masterfully by Haley Joel Osment in perhaps his best work. David is a child “mecha,” a humanoid robot created to love whoever imprints on him. After some time with David, Monica goes through the procedure, and she finds herself at the center of David’s world. This, unfortunately, is not to last.
Monica’s son soon awakens, and after several incidents involving David, she makes a terrible, horrible decision. She quite literally takes David to the woods and leaves him behind. In her mind, this is the better option, given that if David were taken back to where he came from, he would be destroyed by the company that made him. Still, David does not understand this, and I wonder, too, if I have ever truly understood Monica’s decision. Is leaving David out in the world the more caring, and dare I say loving, option? It’s hard for me to answer that question.
I am not a parent, and even if I were, I am not a mother. Perhaps it is unfair to separate parents into the roles of “mother” and “father,” but it would also be unfair to take away any sort of motherly instinct that comes from bearing a child. No, Monica did not give birth to David, but she had given birth before. She is a mother. Regardless, what society has to say about parental and gender roles has nothing to do with how David sees her. To him, she is his mother, plain and simple. When she leaves him behind, we feel his abandonment. This is because the second story begins, and the narrative shifts from focusing on the humans in the film to the mechas.
So far in A.I., we have seen what mechas mean to the humans who navigate David’s orbit. They don’t seem to be the best of humanity, and one has to consider David’s programming. Is Monica ever a good mother to David? Or does David simply believe it so because she’s imprinted herself onto him? What exactly is the difference between David’s experience and the experience of any child in relation to their mother?
I know I am lucky. Lots of people claim to have an amazing mom, and I am one of them. Sometimes, I cannot believe just how lucky I am to have her as my mother. No one in this world is perfect, and she is no exception; yet, if I am being honest, I don’t believe I’ve ever met a better person. Is this due to my own programming? Do I love my mother because of some social imprint that occurred before I was conscious enough to begin seeing the world in my own way? Like Monica’s decision, I cannot say. What I do know is this: my own mother would’ve found a way to make sure I was okay.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the world,” she tells David before she gets in her vehicle and drives away. What parting words these are. Is it fair to conclude that Monica, at the very least, thinks she failed at being David’s mother? If so, it’s interesting that she acknowledges her own failings, because it allows me to see her as more than just a parent who abandoned her child. She is a woman, a human being, who messed up and knows of no way to fix things. How can I judge her then for what she does?
By extension, how can I judge David for what he did? Consider his parents. Mecha or no, David is a child, and he was programmed to behave as such. Monica and Henry (her husband, played by Sam Robards) are his parents, and they did not raise David well. I must therefore examine Gigolo Joe’s role as an adopted father. He understands the world, but unlike David, he was not created to love. He was created for sex, and after he is framed for murder, he goes on the run. Joe was not abandoned. Still, his expertise in how the world works is necessary for David’s survival, as well as to complete David’s quest to find the Blue Fairy, for, you see, David wants to be a real boy so that Monica will love him.
This is the crux of A.I. David wants nothing more than to have his mother back in his life, and if that means journeying to the end of the world to find a way, he will do it. There’s so much I could say about this film, including the entire sequence in a now-underwater New York City, where he meets his creator, Professor Allen Hobby, as well as copies of himself. It’s a dark sequence that climaxes with David’s first attempt at suicide.
This is essential in understanding the film’s final sequence. I’m not sure a lot of people understand that David falls from a building to the water in order to die. There is no Blue Fairy, and there is no way for him to become a real boy. He will never have his mother again, and to David, what is the point of living after coming to grips with that reality? And yet, through a stroke of luck (if I could even call it that), David actually does find what he believes to be the Blue Fairy, but he won’t be able to meet her for 2000 years.
Yes, 2000 years have passed, and I remember the popular opinion 25 years ago that the film should’ve ended with David dying underwater, waiting for the Blue Fairy to grant him his wish. I have never subscribed to that particular conclusion, because it makes no sense to me, nor did I ever believe that that is an ending Kubrick would’ve done. Frankly, that would’ve been a terrible ending that isn’t dark so much as incomplete. The story clearly does not end there.
No, I never believed for one moment that the film’s ending was a happy one. I can recall reading and hearing people talk about how the ending of A.I. was Spielberg sugarcoating what had to be Kubrick’s darker ending. That’s never made sense to me, because the ending of the film broke me 25 years ago, and it continues to break me every time I see it. David’s last day with his mother is also his own last day, and his choosing to die happy at the end is heartbreaking. It’s also difficult to describe, though I will do my best to.
The ending is the answer to the question posed by so many who have lost loved ones: Would you give anything for one last day with them? For David, the answer is an unequivocal yes. As such, his final day with Monica is exactly that: his final day. He will not awake. He knows this. Does David take his own life in a way to ensure his wish does not become a memory? Once the day is over, what life is left for David? He would eventually attempt suicide again, but doing so in the future would be an act of despair.
His existence pales in comparison to the love he has for Monica, his mother, his everything. Without her, without the journey to find the Blue Fairy and thus be reunited with her, what else is there? The world has moved on. As dark as it is, I understand why David has to die. Doing so at the end of the film is something different than when he falls from the building. The thing is, he has to die to truly become human. Suicide or sacrifice, the result is the same. He dies happy, though, alongside his mother, the world around him slowly enveloping in darkness, nary a goodbye to his companion, Teddy.
It’s okay. My mom will die too, David. I will hope to see her again, as well, and perhaps I will once I die. However, it is my sincerest hope that I will not make David’s decision. I believe that I will choose to live. I will not leave Teddy behind. Because the thing is, David is a child. A mecha, yes. Over 2,000 years old, yes. Still, he will always be a child, and he will always love his mother. I am an adult, but I am still my mother’s child, and I, too, will always love her.
Where does that leave things? Steven Spielberg took the idea of what happens to a robot child when it’s programmed to love unconditionally and turned it into something I’ve always identified with. David’s last day with Monica is such a gift, and even at age 17, I knew something like that was unlikely, for I will never know the last day I’ll have with my mother. But I know I’ll tell the universe that I will do anything to have her back for just one more day. Unlike David, I won’t have that opportunity.
This is why A.I. means so much to me. I do not want to lose those I love, but damn it, wouldn’t it be nice to get what David gets? Then again, there’s that ending, and it’s definitely not a happy one. I have nothing but positive things to say about everyone involved in the making of this masterpiece, both in front of and behind the camera. That it was nominated for only Best Original Music Score and Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards, although both were very much deserved, is a travesty, but you know, time has been kind to this film.
Roger Ebert wrote about it in his Great Movies column, and IndieWire declared it the best movie of the 2000s back in 2024. I recognize that declaring a film the best of anything is silly, given subjectivity and the simple fact that no two movies are the same. Still, if I am to be honest here, over the past several years, I’ve come to this conclusion: A.I. Artificial Intelligence might be the best film of the decade.
It is a startling film about robotics (and, well, artificial intelligence) that asks more than the usual “What does it mean to be human?” It transcends it. When the mechas of the far future resurrect David, there seems to be no longer a need for this question. The mecha that speaks to David shows empathy, and I’m curious as to whether the mecha fakes it for David’s sake or if these mecha of the far future actually have feelings. I believe the latter to be true. If so, then the film isn’t so much concerned with what it means to be human. It wants to ask this: “What does it mean to love?”
A bold question if there ever was one, because what is love to begin with? More than that, David is designed to have unconditional love for whoever imprints themselves on him, so does David even experience love? One more question: do any of us? Or is it all instinct, and we are just conditioned to love? I don’t have answers to these questions because, for me, Steven Spielberg’s film is less about them and more about parents and children, specifically mothers and sons.
My mother will die. I will die. We all will, and even those mechas in the far future won’t live forever. What do we do with the time we have? Do we love? Whether love is real or the expression of chemicals, does it matter? I know what I feel. I love my mom, and I will miss her when she’s gone. David loves Monica. I believe that. Programming or not, he loves her. Look at his face as he closes his eyes for the last time in the film’s final moments. He is content. Off to the land “where dreams are born,” a place that is probably not real. It’s okay. He lived, and he loved. That’s human to me.
