EX MACHINA B+
Great Britain (108
mi) 2015
‘Scope d: Alex Garland Official
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As the author of The
Beach, a 1996 cult novel that became a motion picture, also the writer of
Danny Boyle’s highly inventive zombie thriller 28 DAYS LATER…(2002), the
futuristic space adventure SUNSHINE (2007), but also the sci-fi box office
disaster DREDD (2012), all depictions of humans on the brink of survival, often
expressed through a bleak, post-apocalyptic vision where scientific progress
imprisons and dehumanizes people as much as it liberates them and expands their
potential, Alex Garland’s first venture into writing and directing has led him
surprisingly to an A-list of actors to work with. Exploring the idea of an early era of
artificial intelligence, the film raises ethical questions about the rights of
sentient androids created under a corporate banner that for all practical
purposes “owns” them, capable of making modifications and updates, perhaps
against the expressed wishes of the creatures themselves who have no say in the
matter, but are completely owned and controlled by their creators, despite
having feelings and a will of their own, in the process questioning our own
idea of humanity, where the real monster is man and not the machine. In a sense, this is a bit like the John
Hughes teen comedy WEIRD SCIENCE (1985) where a couple of nerdy social misfits
astoundingly create an ideal dream woman from their computers, one that
supposedly meets their idea of perfection, where in each case, it’s hard for
these men not to fall uncontrollably in love with their invention, modeling
them, after all, to serve their every need.
Scarlett Johansson played a sexy computer operating system in Spike
Jonze’s Her
(2013) using just her voice, programmed to sound warm and compassionate, but
that didn’t stop Joaquin Phoenix from falling in love with his computer. This is a variation on that male fantasy,
where what happens, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that these artificial creatures
have a mind of their own, separate and distinct from their creators, as
expressed by the dying and about to expire replicants in Blade
Runner (1982), but also the ever expanding mental capacities of Johansson’s
artificial intelligence, who never sleeps, by the way, demonstrating she’s
capable of maintaining multiple relationships at once, each one more complex
than the next in search of higher forms of consciousness, literally leaving
humans behind on their evolutionary trajectory.
While the androids have a desperate desire to save themselves, even to
get in touch with their own soul, if that’s possible, humans are still bogged
down in relatively minor details, at the dawn of a new age of scientific
invention, with little comprehension about playing God or crossing any real
moral boundaries. To the film’s credit,
it doesn’t minimize any of these issues, a throwback to Fritz Lang’s
science-fiction classic METROPOLIS (1927), which featured an erotic female
robot that drove men wild with passion, eventually instilling chaos in
contemporary society, a cautionary tale about the crushing power of modern
industrial life where the presence of a robot created in a heavily stylized
human form was a jarring experience.
This film is modeled in that image, but on a much smaller scale in a
more intimate setting, concentrating on a secret introductory project of
unleashing artificial intelligence into the world while still in the early
experimental stages. While the title
refers to a plot device known as “deus ex machina,” which literally means “god
from the machine,” where an object magically solves an impossible problem in
the narrative, the origin comes from Greek tragedy where a machine is used to
bring actors playing gods onto the stage, often with mythological implications,
a perfect example being Icarus flying too close to the sun, with this invention
in the film being described as Promethean, literally bringing something from
the gods down to earth, for which they will pay an eternal price.
Something of a reinvention of Mary Shelley’s early 19th
century Frankenstein story, perhaps
the essence of the film is how complex thought is wrapped in such simplicity
and sleek elegance, where the reliance upon such technical detail never feels
over the viewer’s head, but is presented in a highly appealing manner set in
one of the most extraordinary locations on earth. From the outset we are introduced to a
relatively low-ranking computer programmer in a large corporation, Caleb Smith,
played by Domhnall Gleeson from Calvary
(2014) and 2014
Top Ten List #10 Frank , also Shadow
Dancer (2012), and before that an earlier Garland script NEVER LET ME GO
(2010), which was actually written before the Kazuo Ishiguro novel upon which
it was based was even published. Caleb
works for Bluebook, the world’s largest Internet search engine, where he’s been
selected as the lottery prize-winner among company staff to win a week in an
undisclosed remote location in Alaska with the company’s founder and CEO,
Nathan Bateman, Oscar Isaac from A
Most Violent Year (2014) and Inside
Llewyn Davis (2012), the reclusive billionaire genius who wrote the code
that launched his career success when he was only 13, retreating to the wilds
of Alaska and has barely been seen or heard from since. Flying by helicopter over mountainous terrain
(actually shot in Norway), Caleb is surprised to discover it’s all Nathan’s
land they’ve been traversing for the past two hours, dropping him off in the
middle of an open field where he’ll be retrieved exactly one week later. Following a river to an opulent, ultra-modern
architectural dream home that is fully automated, installed with the latest
hi-tech security systems, with Schubert and Bach playing on his sound system
and Jackson Pollock and Gustav Klimt paintings hanging on his walls, blending
uniquely into its natural surroundings with wall-sized glass windows, while
also serving as his own private research facility, Nathan lives a solitary life
attended to only by the enigmatic presence of silent house maid named Kyoko
(Sonoya Mizuno), who supposedly doesn’t speak English. The reason for Caleb’s visit, where he was
actually chosen for being the most talented coder in the company, is to
evaluate a female robot Nathan designed with artificial intelligence, giving
her the Turing test, designed by British genius Alan Turing from The
Imitation Game (2014), where his job will be to determine if the android is
indistinguishable from a human being, calling the experiment, somewhat modestly,
“the greatest scientific event in the history of man.” Named Ava, Alicia Vikander from Pure
(Till det som är vackert) (2009) and
A
Royal Affair (En kongelig affære) (2012), she utilizes her ballerina
training by the gracefully fluid and agile manner in which she moves, while
also being coy, impassive, and shyly demure, bringing a tender humanity to the
character, where it’s often easy to forget she is playing a machine. Whether in METROPOLIS or a recent film like Under
the Skin (2013), for a hundred years the futuristic, science fiction
element has allowed women to be viewed as an unknowable, alien presence. Both emboldened by the opportunity, each
daily visit holds a certain amount of suspense, because they are infrequent and
limited in scope, each one entitled “Ava: Session 1,” etc. She is, of course, surprised to see him, as
she’s never seen anyone but Nathan before.
Thrown into the mix are blackout periods at the compound when the power
inexplicably turns off, whereupon all doors are immediately locked until power
can be resumed a short period afterwards, where Garland bathes the screen in a
red light, creating a chilling atmospheric mood of dread and suspense. During these blackouts, Nathan has no access
to the sessions that he otherwise observes and records, where Ava uses one of
these moments to warn Caleb not to trust Nathan, describing him as
dangerous. Isaac plays him as a
larger-than-life character with secret motives, a mad genius hiding his real
intentions as he controls everything within the confines of his home,
overseeing all, playing God, so to speak, where despite his friendly
hospitality and outwardly gregarious nature, both Caleb and Ava see themselves
as little more than lab rats within his locked compound.
In keeping with the futuristic aspects of the story, one of
the keys to the film is the ultra-modernistic setting combined with such a
cold, abstract interior design, adding a formal precision that just happens to
be the Juvet Landscape Hotel, The
Hotel - Juvet, an utterly spectacular Norwegian hotel that is one of the
architectural wonders of the world, with a minimalistic, state-of-the-art
design that continually exposes the majestic splendor of the unspoiled
naturalistic world outdoors. This
extraordinary partition of a separate indoor and outdoor existence couldn’t be
more pronounced, a mirror image of their own existence, where Caleb is shocked
to discover Kyoko is an earlier test product, where she curiously seems
programmed to provide Nathan with whatever he wants, something of a sex toy, an
expression of male arrogance and ego, leading to creepy thoughts that become
even more disgusting when he’s willing to share her with Caleb, but the unseen
parallel story is a rat in a maze that can never escape captivity, as neither
Ava nor Kyoko have ever been outside or allowed to leave their perpetual
confinement of living behind glass walls.
Caleb naturally begins to feel empathy for their plight, believing
they’re being mistreated, as underneath their robotic perfection, doing and
saying all the things they have been programmed to do, they are deathly afraid
of Nathan. During another blackout that
she has actually learned to create, Ava reveals her underlying fears of what
might happen to her if she fails to pass the test, as she might be switched off
for an upgrade. Caleb begins questioning
his own existence, wondering if he’s being programmed by Nathan as well, where
Isaac and Vikander are both truly remarkable in the scope of their performances,
conveying secret worlds of untapped motives and possibilities that remain
hidden beneath the surface, challenging the audience to identify with a
computer-programmed robot. Who’s to say
one is better than or inferior from another?
They are simply placed in different circumstances, where the story
revolves around the lives of the three main characters, and to a smaller degree
the fourth, where the brilliance of the film is that it reveals the Turing test
for what it is, a test of the humans and not the machine. Even Nathan envisions a future where the
humans will be at the mercy of the machines, who will be so much faster and
smarter, able to self-repair and live without sleep, illness, or aging, where
they can literally live forever. This
understanding, however, leads to his security fears and overcontrolling nature,
where he continues to tinker with what he’s created, where he feels introducing
A.I. robots is an inevitable part of the human condition, that if he didn’t
create them then someone else would.
It’s a fascinating balance of power between the main participants,
constantly fluctuating in each scene, becoming a story of deceit, obsession,
and manipulation, where the director himself never gives away his true
intentions, which keeps the viewer off guard, where the less one knows, the
better the experience. The familiar
aspect of these stories is attributing human traits to computers, where they
are not simply content to serve humans any more than Scarlett Johansson is in Her, or your
pet dog would be, as there’s simply more to a happy and fulfilling life. Exploring human consciousness through a
science fiction narrative has always held a certain mysterious intrigue both in
literature and film, where Vikander’s beguiling beauty as Ava has an undeniable
femme fatale appeal, complete with all the noirish trappings, where you might
get sucked down the proverbial rabbit hole if you’re not careful. The darkening mood throughout is unsettling
and eventually disturbing, veering into horror territory, where the expanse of
Nathan’s secret hideaway and the suffocating confinement within is an extension
of his own flawed character, beautifully filmed by Rob Hardy, while the throbbing
musical score by Ben Salisbury and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow underscores the
enveloping claustrophobia, where the subject being explored is the mystery of
the human condition, equally baffling whether seen through a computer or a
human vantage point, where by the end they are seamlessly blended into
one.
To his credit, Garland enlisted Murray Shanahan (Home - Professor Murray
Shanahan), Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London, and
writer and geneticist Adam Rutherford as science advisers. Paul Smith interviews Apple co-founder Steve
Wozniak from The Australian Financial
Review Weekend, March 24, 2015, Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak on the Apple Watch ...:
“Computers are going to take over
from humans, no question,” Mr Wozniak said.
He said he had long dismissed the
ideas of writers like Raymond Kurzweil, who have warned that rapid increases in
technology will mean machine intelligence will outstrip human understanding or
capability within the next 30 years.
However Mr Wozniak said he had come to recognise that the predictions
were coming true, and that computing that perfectly mimicked or attained human
consciousness would become a dangerous reality.
“Like people including Stephen
Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very
bad for people. If we build these
devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they’ll think faster than
us and they’ll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently,”
Mr Wozniak said.
“Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don’t know about that … But when I got that
thinking in my head about if I’m going to be treated in the future as a pet to
these smart machines … well I’m going to treat my own pet dog really nice.”
