Collaboration or collision?

It is a case of 'H.A.L. meets E.T.', as Steven Spielberg, and the late Kubrick, 'collaborate' on a futuristic film, says ANAND PARTHASARATHY.

IT is being called the most unusual creative partnership Hollywood has ever seen between two master film-makers: one, the commercially very successful Steven Spielberg; the other, a controversial if respected figure, who died two years ago: Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick - who made that seminal science fiction film, "2001: A Space Odyssey" based on Arthur C. Clarke's vision of the future - nursed a similar project for 15 years till his death in 1999 cut it short. He was obsessively secretive about it - even the production company that underwrote the cost, Warner Brothers, was informed only sparingly about the plot, which he described as a "future fairy tale about the state of the art of artificial intelligence at some unspecified future time". It was known to be a less pessimistic view of the world that "2001" where the spaceship's computer "H.A.L.", finally emerges cleverer than Man and destroys all the humans on board. But it was still a far cry from the cuddly Spielberg perception of extra terrestrial life, personified by "E.T.".

Shall the twain meet? When Kubrick first suggested in the early 1990s, that Spielberg might have a bash at directing his project, the latter's reaction was: "I thought he was out of his mind". But, as Richard Corliss reveals in Time, Kubrick insisted, "This story is closer to your sensibilities than mine".

Guru and chela agreed to disagree and both went on to do other films: Spielberg - his two "Jurassic Park" projects followed by "Saving Private Ryan"; Kubrick the steamy and Freudian Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman starrer, "Eyes Wide Shut", that was his last creative effort. But when Kubrick's widow, Christine, and her brother, producer Jan Harlan, pressed the late film-maker's notes on Spielberg and urged him to take the project forward, he could not refuse. The notes were based on a 1969 short story by science fiction writer Brian Aldiss, entitled "Super Toys Last All Summer Long", about a robot child trying to "connect" with his human mother.

The result, after Spielberg worked this into a film script, is "AI" which was released on June 29 and is due to open in India. It is the first film which Spielberg has directed from his own solo screenplay after the 1977 "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". The film, in its opening days, has perplexed as many viewers as it has thrilled - and for the first time in many years, professional critics are sharply divided.

"AI" is set in the future, during a time when the planet's natural resources are fast depleting due to global warming, and technology is trying to replace them. The film revolves around a robotic boy, David - the first one to have been programmed by "cybertronics" to experience love. David (played by Haley Joel Osment, the boy discovered in Manoj Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense"), has been adopted by a couple whose own - real - child is terminally ill and has been cryogenically frozen till a cure can be found. When this child is cured and returns, the mother tearfully abandons the robotic surrogate child.

David sets out, armed only with a high-tech teddy bear, to discover where he truly belongs. In the process, he discovers a world where the gap between himself and the human world is "terrifyingly vast and profoundly thin" - where bands of marauding humans hunt down robots like him. His temporary companion is "Gigolo Joe" (Jude Law), a "mecha" or mechanical who exists to give pleasure to others. In the film's surreal final section, David confronts his destiny in a series of flashing images which may leave the average viewer as confused as Kubrick's "2001" did when it was released in India 40 years ago.

"A.I. is a story of a robot boy who has been programmed to love," says the film's producer Bonnie Curtis. "In the end, we are not aware that he is a robot. What is so wonderful is that the line between human and robot is so thin. It is artificial intelligence."

It may sound like a science fiction version of "Pinocchio" - and some early reviews have dismissed the character of David as an "Oedipal robot". In its total effect, the film may have sacrificed Spielberg's hallmark - his always uplifting message which shines out even in such a grim enterprise like "Schindler's List" - for Kubrick's bleaker view of the world.

But Spielberg himself disagrees. if Kubrick were alive, he says, "I would be sending him a fax about how much I loved the movie he just directed, called 'A.I'."

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