Movies about
newborn artificial intelligences and their creators have been
resurgent lately. The concept has been around for decades, of course,
but with the new rise of the Silicon Valley enterpreneurs and the cults
of personality that have developed around figures like Steve Jobs and
Elon Musk, it's the perfect time for cautionary stories about new
technology and the often accompanying hubris of their inventors.
The
genius entrepreneur at the center of "Ex Machina" is Nathan Batemen
(Oscar Isaac), the head of a Google-esque internet company. He has
secluded himself at a remote estate in the wilderness that is only
accessible by helicopter. One of his employees, a young programmer
named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), wins a mysterious contest where the
prize is to spend a week with Nathan at his retreat. Caleb quickly
discovers upon his arrival that he's really there to help Nathan run
tests on the secret project he's been working on: an A.I. named Ava
(Alicia Vikander).
After years of movies like "I,
Robot" and "The Machine," where this kind of story inevitable devolves
into action sequences and large scale pyrotechnics, one of the nice
things about "Ex Machina" is how small scale and intimate it is. There
is some violence and plenty of special effects, but writer director Alex
Garland has made a piece of science fiction where the relationships,
moral dilemmas, and existential questions are put front and center.
It's very close in spirit to "Her," though "Ex Machina" is a thriller at
its core with much darker themes. "Her" and "Ex Machina" both involve
a young man and a female-identifying A.I. getting to know each other
and establishing a relationship. And both rely heavily on good
performances, strong aesthetic choices, and careful worldbuilding.
Now
Domnhall Gleeson and Alicia Vikander are excellent here, but the
lynchpin performance is Oscar Isaac's. Nathan is intelligent,
charismatic, persuasive, and gracious toward Caleb, encouraging him to
treat Nathan as a friend rather than an employer. He's also clearly a
little off-kilter due to the isolation and lifestyle - think of a Tony
Stark who has been taking to himself and his robots for too long.
However, when Nathan talks about Ava and his work, the coldly rational
scientist-playing-god emerges. Nathan is so personable and displays
such sympathetic human flaws, it's easy to overlook his capacity for
evil.
Then there's Vikander's Ava, who is one of
the most compelling A.I. characters I've ever seen. A great deal of
the plot involves a Turing test, where Caleb converses at length with
Ava over the course of several sessions to determine to what degree she
behaves the way a human would. Like Nathan, there's more going on
inside Ava's head than there appears to be at first glance. Vikander
plays on the audience's expectations - A.I., particularly female
A.I., are often portrayed as childlike, naive, innocent, and
victimized. Ava is all of these things, but only up to a point.
Vikander is excellent at embodying this.
For a
movie that revolves around conversations in a claustrophobic setting, it
feels very dynamic. A lot of this has to do with the pacing and the
actors, but I think the special effects work also deserves a lot of
credit. For most of the film Ava appears as an unfinished gynoid with
partially transparent, synthetic body parts except for her human face
and hands. It's completely convincing and effective, and goes a long
way toward there always being something interesting onscreen to look
at. Nathan's decor is also nicely sinister and thematically relevant if
you're paying attention.
There's also the
dialogue, which presents some very interesting, lively debates between
Caleb and Nathan, and then Caleb and Ava, about the nature of A.I. and
the human experience. I like that Garland assumes a level of knowledge
about A.I. and genre savvyness a few notches higher than the norm. All
of these characters are smart, which allows the story to be smart, which
means that the points that Alex Garland wants to make hit a lot harder
than we usually see in similar movies.
And it
doesn't hurt that it works just fine as a traditional thriller, with one
heck of a finale. Just because it doesn't involve expensive CGI
explosions doesn't mean "Ex Machina" doesn't deliver some heady thrills.
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