Which is it?
Alan Turing, code-breaking genius of World War II and
“father of the computer revolution,” was the subject of The Imitation Game, one of 2014's most praised movies. One of the
achievements for which Turing is most noted is the “Turing tests,” ways of
attempting to determine which of unseen conversation partners is human and
which a machine—and in some of the tests, which is male and which female.
Ex Machina begins,
we might say, where Turing tests leave off. Somewhat nerdy Caleb (who resembles
a young Bill Gates and is played just right by Domhnall Gleeson) works for
BlueBook, “the world's largest computer company,” a kind of combination of
Apple and Google. The company was founded two decades before by Nathan, a
genius at coding and programming, when he was only 13. Caleb is told that he
has won a contest to spend a week with the reclusive Nathan at Nathan's retreat
in a remote wilderness. (The actual filming location was a spectacularly
beautiful area in the mountains of Norway.)
Once Caleb is helicoptered to the retreat, Nathan (Oscar
Isaac) says that Caleb will be engaged in a special kind of advanced testing in
which he will interview face-to-face a robot named Ava, some of whose
electromechanical parts will be visible and some of which—including the face
and most of the upper body—will be covered by flesh-like material replicating
human flesh. The humanoid parts will make Ava seem like a beautiful young
woman. The aim of the test, Nathan says, is for Caleb to decide whether Eva has
achieved full artificial intelligence, consciousness, a mind of her own.
What kind of movie is
it—in its essence—that unfolds from this fascinating premise?
Is it purely science
fiction? It starts off as sci-fi. The premise certainly is, but discussions
and repartee between Caleb and Nathan make us wonder whether Ex Machina might be going to develop
into a continental European-style cerebral
drama. Sort of My Drinks With Nathan.
More likely, however, we come to feel, is that the film will instead become an
offbeat romantic comedy, akin to 2013's Her,
in which a man and machine (OK, operating system) fall in love. Eva (superbly
played by Alicia Vikander) is certainly winsome.
But a subtle, yet steadily increasing, sense of ominousness
makes us ask: Is Ex Machina going to
turn into a horror movie? After all,
the isolated house with an eccentric genius presiding over experiments aided by
a foreign helper—Nathan has Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), though she is a lot
better-looking than Victor Frankenstein's Igor—is a classic horror trope. Yet
Nathan's house is nothing like a creepy castle or crumbling Victorian mansion.
It's more like an antiseptic, high-tech version of Frank Lloyd Wright's
Fallingwater woodland house. And the heavy-drinking, very casual but very
precise Nathan, who cuts some mean dance moves to the hot music of the
soundtrack, hardly seems to resemble Dr. Frankenstein, Count Dracula, Roderick
Usher—or Norman Bates. Oscar Isaac was acclaimed for his performance in 2013's Inside Llewyn Davis, but he tops that
performance here. Whenever he is on screen, he rivets our attention to whatever
it is he is doing or saying.
Ultimately, perhaps, based on its closing scenes, one might
say that the carefully calibrated Ex
Machina is a startling parable of power relationships in
society—master/subordinate, human/machine, male/female. Audiences also should
be startled by the brilliance of the creative intelligence behind this gripping
film, which challenges the imagination of its viewers to decide exactly what it
itself is. The intelligence behind the film is that of writer/director Alex
Garland. Garland deserves laurels; he has passed the test of filmmaking genius.
He is one.
“Footnote” to the
film: Ex Machina is permeated by
an array of references and allusions—some direct, some subtle; some verbal,
some visual—to religion, mythology, philosophy, literature, art and films.
Discovering them and following where they lead make for an exciting
intellectual odyssey.
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