Ex Machina
 |
| All robots say, "Beep boop, beep boop." Just ask Chappie. |
Director: Alex
Garland
Writer: Alex
Garland
Starring: Alicia
Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac
Rating: Four and a
Half Stars out of Five
Availability: In
theaters now.
Ex Machina simultaneously
works three primary levels of
social anxiety into every frame. Its brilliance lies in how those
anxieties are often at odds with each other in moral rooting
interest. While some films would be crushed under the weight of
narrative and thematic confusion, Alex Garland's (the screenwriter of
Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later
and Sunshine)
directorial debut takes a simple, though by no means easy, step
toward transcendence by embracing the messiness of human interaction
and endeavor.
Caleb
(Domhnall Gleeson) is a programmer for the world's largest search
engine and obvious Google stand-in, Bluebook. He learns of his
winning an intracompany “prize” that involves a helicopter ride
and a weeklong stay at company founder Nathan's (Oscar Isaac) estate
in someplace that looks like the wilds of Iceland, somewhere James
Bond might go for an adventure. But it's more of a mysterious working
vacation for Caleb, as Nathan requires him to sign extensive and
unprecedented non-disclosure agreements about what he may or may not
witness at this estate, which he admits is actually a research
facility.
Nathan,
having moved on from child prodigy search engine building, is now
more concerned with deeper understandings of where humanity is and
where it could go. He is developing artificially intelligent androids
in his mountain-forest hideaway, growing a stressed-out hermit beard
in between boozy benders and health food detoxes. Isaac plays him as
charming and duplicitous, the ultimate Silicon Valley inspiration
machine that can turn ruthless at the drop of a hat and hint of a
shift in power dynamic.
He has
built something beyond even the brainy Caleb's imagination: a
seemingly working A.I. That is why Caleb is there, to perform a
Turing test on the android, named Ava (Alicia Vikander), to determine
whether the machine can reasonably pass as an intellectual human.
She's something to behold, with Vikander's natural face plastered on
a synthetic, movie magic body, with a partially see-through
midsection and obvious whirring noises that kick in with every
slightly-less-than-human movement she makes. The subtlety of the
design and filmmaking on display here blends into the background to
the point where it isn't remotely obvious and allows the audience to
focus instead on the Vikander's body control.
The
way Ava moves – and intellectually – is part of the first level
of social anxiety Garland explores. She moves slowly, impossibly
smooth, every motion calculated for optimal performance, never taking
into account the idiosyncratic ways individual people move. The
effect is like what you get by replacing a band's drummer with Garage
Band – it hits the notes, but something is off. Her eyes remain
fixed on Caleb during their sit-down question and answer sessions
that feel more like interrogations. It's unnerving and taps into our
society's amazement at the advancement of technology and fear of the
same. Caleb is too far along the path toward advancement
partisanship, too enthralled by this new feat, to stay as cool and
detached as necessary during these interactions. If he could keep his
calm, he would notice Ava perpetually getting more advanced in her
conversational abilities, more emotionally intelligent and able to
flatter him. Vikander plays this perfectly, her eyes growing from
nearly dead to filling with life as the movie goes on, collecting
human-looking body parts along the way to visually explain her
growing consciousness.
Is
this growth to semi-humanity genuine and are these feelings for Caleb
the real deal? Or is he being manipulated by this advanced thinking
machine? Is her purpose to test him? Is he secretly the creation?
These questions begin to weigh on him, and Ava is there, catching up
on tics and cues at an abnormal rate, making him feel better about
himself and, by extension, her. To complicate matters, the facility
suffers constant power surges that may or may not be intentional on
any of the characters' parts. Garland shoots these power outages in
stark reds, a visual alarm that should warn the characters to tread
softly. But, as is all too human, as these outages give them freedom
from constant observation, Ava and Caleb soon begin to show feelings
of care, maybe even love, for each other.
It's
not much of a question whether Ava passes the Turing test, and
Garland should be applauded for dispensing with that fairly early,
because the more important question on his mind is voiced by Nathan
later. I'm paraphrasing here, but he tells Caleb that artificial
intelligence has been inevitable for decades. He wants to be the one
to crack it, and that rush to be first leaves out the obvious and
equally important notion of doing it right. This leaves the viewer in
a state of fear for the cliff diving aspects of these inventors'
personalities, as they fail to recognize the calculated nature of
this artificial woman they keep in captivity.
And
that's where the second social anxiety – the feminist angle – of
Ex Machina comes into
play. Ava is a female robot for very specific reasons related to
where power lies between human beings. She is kept against her will
by her creator, a man, who does with her as he wishes. Despite his
entire reason for conducting this experiment – to create a
thinking, reasoning being – he denies her the ability to make her
own choices. On one level, she is a machine, and as such, she is a
tool. Nathan's admittance that she is only one model of a continuum
on the way toward achieving the best possible product is a nuanced
bit of humanizing for him, taking him out of pure bad guy territory –
his silly, drunken dance sequence is another. This is a machine that
has proven to be quicker to the mental draw than even these brilliant
scientists, and that is frightening, and rightfully so. But, if she
is able to pass the test, thus ensuring her status as a
consciousness, Nathan must face some difficult realities about the
nature of having a mind, questions he seems ill-prepared to answer
given his constant inebriation/head-in-the-sand coping. Is Ava a
person? If she is, then he is playing into centuries old gender
discrimination with more than a hint of sexual slavery as
subtext.
Enter Caleb. He's the classic “nice guy.” He's full of feeling and goodwill, quickly growing to want Ava's freedom nearly as much as she does. But, with the possibly preprogrammed attraction growing between him and Ava, he's acting in his own self interest. He wants to be with her. He fantasizes – in sequences seemingly shot on videotape, a nice flourish by Garland to show the vagueness of the plan – about a romantic and sexual life with her outside the walls of the research facility. Without going so far as to say it explicitly – Ex Machina is too refined for that – Caleb expects her companionship as a reward for freeing her. Simply getting satisfaction from helping someone – even an artificial being – self actualize is not on the table. He must retain the semblance of power he has in these interrogation scenes, so his own sense of self (re: ego) is not imperiled.
Enter Caleb. He's the classic “nice guy.” He's full of feeling and goodwill, quickly growing to want Ava's freedom nearly as much as she does. But, with the possibly preprogrammed attraction growing between him and Ava, he's acting in his own self interest. He wants to be with her. He fantasizes – in sequences seemingly shot on videotape, a nice flourish by Garland to show the vagueness of the plan – about a romantic and sexual life with her outside the walls of the research facility. Without going so far as to say it explicitly – Ex Machina is too refined for that – Caleb expects her companionship as a reward for freeing her. Simply getting satisfaction from helping someone – even an artificial being – self actualize is not on the table. He must retain the semblance of power he has in these interrogation scenes, so his own sense of self (re: ego) is not imperiled.
Tied
in with the previous two anxieties is the most existential of them
all. What if we, humanity, aren't “it?” We know about evolution,
sure, and some of us even understand the intricacies of how it works.
Nathan and Caleb are two such people who get it. That, along with the
shifting gender power dynamics, are part of what freaks them out
about this situation. Throughout the film, Garland has his two male
leads inch their way toward a realization that Ava might represent
their obsolescence. This gets to the heart of everything Ex
Machina stands for, and the
questions get harder (impossible?) to answer. You can be as
pro-gender equality as you want, but what if the opposite gender is
also an artificially created being – is it okay to be wary then? Is
it still an accomplishment for an artificially intelligent being,
programmed from the start to be smarter than humans, to outthink one?
Is discovery worth the slippery slope toward death for the world as
you know it? Is there even a moral component to this, or is it, like
Nathan suggests earlier, all part of a continuum to find the best
possible product?
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