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Ex Machina

10/15/2017

7 Comments

 

A-
3.57

A programmer is summoned by his tech genius boss to test his AI creation.

Directed by Alex Garland
Starring Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac, and Domhnall Gleeson
Initial Review by Jon Kissel

Picture
​The title of Alex Garland's sci-fi film is notable for what it leaves out.  Ex Machina is missing the Deus that typically leads that phrase, meaning God of the Machine.  A Deus Ex Machina is a dramatic device in which a powerful solution is presented to a difficult problem.  Ex Machina doesn't resort to this often-cheap device, but by cutting God out of the title, it does invite the question of who in the film might fill that role.  Is it the inventor, the vastly-powerful invented, or the mediator between the two that drives the action?  As the writer of top-notch sci-fi films like Sunshine, 28 Days Later, and Never Let Me Go, Garland has long interrogated the relationship between creator and created, as well as the distance between cold rationality and empathetic feeling.  In his directorial debut, Ex Machina is of a kind with his previous work, as artificial intelligence is subbed in for contagion, cloning, or space travel while the themes remain the same. 

With only three serious speaking roles and a fourth non-verbal performance, Ex Machina is a compact film that traffics in big ideas.  Beginning with search engine employee Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) winning a contest, his prize is the chance to spend a week with the company's mysterious founder, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac).  Upon Caleb's arrival at Nathan's isolated, rustic on the outside/futuristic on the inside retreat, Nathan informs him that he believes he has cracked artificial intelligence, and needs Caleb to help him prove it by performing a Turing test on the model.  That model, named Ava (Alicia Vikander), is a sleek humanoid with a female face whose wry sense of humor and coquettish flirting entrances Caleb.
​
Once the three players are established, Caleb grapples with how Ava, plainly independent and sentient, should be treated by Nathan.  Aside from the ethical concerns, it's also apparent that Nathan and Ava are not telling him the whole truth.  The retreat is stuffed with surveillance equipment, so it's impossible for Caleb to get a true response from Ava, except when the power occasionally goes out and Ava is given a few seconds of honesty.  This Heisenbergian aspect of observer and observed proves itself as a vital part of the film.  On the flip side, Nathan is vast levels of hierarchy above Caleb and treats him like the employee he is, utilizing a need-to-know back-and-forth with him despite the draconian NDA Caleb is made to sign.  He brushes off Caleb's interest in the technical and tells him to focus on the emotional.  When he does venture into the technical, Nathan tells Caleb that Ava is the natural end result of a search engine, as her software is constructed from search entries and camera phones, a level of intrusiveness way above Caleb's pay grade.  That kind of consolidation into the single entity of Ava is a giant unspoken risk, forcing Caleb to weigh Ava's freedom against Nathan's precautions.  He has made this thing because he can.  What is the next step?

In this sci-fi chamber drama, Garland is meticulous with detail.  Simple, spare images fill the movie.  Nathan's dimly lit bedroom wall is covered in yellow post-its, alternate Ava faces adorn otherwise blank hallway walls, and power outages are accompanied by a bath of red light.  There's symmetry in every shot, with no mess cluttering up the frame.  Smooth lines turn into sharp corners.  Conversely, Jackson Pollock's famous painting plays a role, a seemingly random squiggle of color made free-form and without a plan, the only thing like it the retreat.  It's an appealing, if cold, look that makes frames stand out even while it makes interest flag somewhat during the runtime.

As Ex Machina's two sources of mystery, Isaac and Vikander exhibit vast depths.  Both exude an unknowable quality demonstrative of their characters' genius.  Isaac seemingly can't miss, and this is another excellent role from him.  His Nathan has an earned arrogance and unsentimentality beneath his friendly bro exterior. He withholds information while also demanding that nothing goes unsaid from his counterparts.  Isaac plays Nathan as both rational and unpredictable, particularly in a tense scene that builds to a choreographed disco dance.  Nathan filled Ava's brain with the combined Vines and selfies of billions of people, so she should have complete control over her face.  Vikander is up to the task in an even-keeled and interesting performance.  Her sessions with Caleb vacillate between courtesy, curiosity, frustration, and fear, and though her voice retains a level of otherworldly calm, her subtle facial changes completely sell the human within the robot.  In the audience surrogate role, Gleeson has the least to hide in a film where everyone else is holding something back, and therefore makes the least impression.  He ably communicates his gratitude and wonderment at this opportunity of a lifetime, but he is outshone by Isaac's and Vikander's ambiguity.

Ex Machina is a thought provoking entry into Garland's impressive resume, even if it's colder and more sterile than his work with Danny Boyle or Mark Romanek.  The script contains much to unpack, as the complex topic of AI is one that might inform the next chapter of human existence.  A creator assuming god-like powers to make something with god-like power is fertile ground for drama, and Garland has produced an entry worthy of cousins like 2001 and Her.  B
7 Comments
8 link
10/16/2017 10:35:10 am

You suck kissel

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Jon
10/16/2017 12:24:08 pm

I've been nothing but good to the number 8 throughout my entire career, whether it was Hateful or Super. Consider our relationship forever changed.

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Sean
10/16/2017 10:54:59 pm

I didn't read anything negative in your review. What made it a B and not higher.

Reply
Jon
10/17/2017 03:03:08 am

I think Caleb is at too big a disadvantage against Ava and Nathan. His annoying habit of making obvious quotes is either bad dialogue (which I don't think so because of how Nathan makes fun of him for it) or a mean disadvantage the writers put on him. It's such an unattractive trait that the reveal of him getting one over on Nathan doesn't ring true. The movie needs Ava to get out, but how it happens is almost a lie. We've seen everything Caleb's been up to previously and then the film withholds his triumphant action for the sake of a hoped-for fist-pump moment. Gleeson is also vastly outacted by Vikander and Isaac. There's only three characters, and he's too wobbly of a leg for the stool that is the film to completely work.

There's also a coldness to Ex Machina that keeps me at arm's length. I cheated a bit and reposted a Side Piece review. I did rewatch, and was just as admiring on a second viewing but no more attached or impressed.

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Sean
10/18/2017 07:35:42 pm

I thought it looked familiar

Cooker
10/18/2017 01:41:43 pm

"I am a robot, do what I say. I am a washing machine, do what I say."

Good movie; the ending dragged a little for me and the pacing was off at times. B+

Reply
Lane
10/23/2017 11:52:37 pm

In the early 1960’s, Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, wrote a letter of thanks to the renowned psychologist Carl Jung. Jung’s theories on shadow selves and spiritual awakenings had been integral to the A.A. model and Jung’s response is still noted in the latest edition of the Big Book: “You see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum."

In English, what Jung was saying is that we as humans will attempt to fulfill our spiritual cravings through that which gives us easy access to the divine. Enter Nathan Bateman. If god is the missing piece of this cinematic puzzle, then Nathan is the most logical fill-in. No wonder he drinks all the time. Where else does he get a sense of the divine? He’s the prototypical Greek god in this very Greek drama—powerful, bored, and flawed. I mean, if I had a few billions of dollars and more brain cells to spare, maybe I’d tackle the world’s most difficult problems and day drink too. This is what god’s do in ancient Greece.

If “Blade Runner 2049” was ultimately about the question of “love” (in my opinion), then “Ex Machina” is ultimately about the question of “spirit.” It’s the question of what gives one “spirit,” what does that mean, and, ultimately, what does the spirit desire? For Garland, who surely deserves a Mediocrity nomination for this film (though I might have forgotten to nominate him), the spirit desires freedom and color and space. These are obvious answers for a film maker and one of the crucial questions the film raises is: does film offer us a sense of the freedom of spirit or a “black box” of defined reality. Of course, the answer always depends on the film, but I would strongly put Garland in the camp of “free spirit.”

The logic of the film is deep, nuanced, and worthy of multiple viewings (this was my 2nd and I can see a 3rd or 4th in the future). The storytelling was incredibly tight and conveyed a huge amount of information in a very limited timeframe. To do this credibly is so difficult and part of me was afraid it wouldn’t happen, and yet it did. I didn’t look up the logistics of this film, but I’m assuming it was a limited budget and much was consumed with computer graphics for Ava’s character, so the fact that Garland could do as much as he did with the spaces, sets, and landscapes available is all to his auteristic credit.

Both Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander put in terrific performances, but the real credit here goes to Garland. This is a small film that feels big; both scenically, sonically, and emotionally, and that’s not easy to pull off. Cutting the film at the moment when Ava steps on the elevator at the end would have been good, but I understand the need to tie up the emotional narrative. It moves the film from “sci-fi/horror” to “sci-fi/art” and I respect the director’s decision (even if I would have loved the horror ending).

Looking to the spreadsheet, my original grade on this film was a B+, but on a second viewing I’m really appreciating the depth the went into this film.

Upgrade: A

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