A friend invited me to see Ex Machina on a whim, reportedly because it has an insanely high
score on Rotten Tomatoes. We sat down in
the darkened theater, made some jokes about the trailers and settled down for
what was promised to be a great experience.
Two hours later, as the lights went up and the credits started to roll,
we looked at each other and gave a resounding “Yeah, that was pretty alright I
guess.”
Caleb, who works for Bluebook (the film’s fictional
equivalent to Google), finds himself selected in a contest to go and spend a
week with Bluebook’s founder, Nathan. As
Caleb arrives via helicopter to the isolated mountain home, it quickly becomes
clear that he is not so much Charlie on his way to the chocolate factory as he
is at the mercy of his benefactor.
Nathan soon reveals (after a non-disclosure agreement) that he believes
he has invented a true artificial intelligence, and he has brought Caleb to the
testing facility in order to put this new consciousness’s legitimacy to the
test. Enter Ava, robotic intelligence given femininely human form. As Caleb
and Ava interact, it becomes clearer that Nathan is not being entirely truthful
about the nature of this experiment, and Caleb decides he needs to go down the
rabbit hole and get to the truth of Nathan’s intentions and Ava’s true nature.
This set-up works really well for a couple of things,
perhaps most obvious being the performances of the minimal cast. Oscar Isaac is always a personal favorite of
mine, and he absolutely kills it as the drunken, lonely Nathan, resorting to
the companionship of a crafted woman and a complete stranger in order to
fulfill his need for interaction. Also
great though are Domhnall Gleeson as a gradually less naïve Caleb and Alicia
Vikander as Ava, who feels like a natural conversationalist until you notice her
mechanical speech patterns and slight stutter in her walk.
This premise is also perfect to address classic
science fiction themes of the nature of consciousness, the ethics of creating
new life, and the implications of artificial intelligence functioning at
cognitive levels beyond those of humans.
This is all very interesting stuff, but it is also where the film faces
its biggest problems. See, because the
film spends so much time in familiar territory with its philosophy, it never
really breaks beyond the bonds of its predictable storytelling. Almost every one of the film’s major
narrative twists is way too heavily telegraphed beforehand, either because it
is a similar twist to a film that has come before it, or the foreshadowing ends
up being a bit too “fore” and not enough “shadow.” This in no way lessens the impact of the
performances or the philosophy that the film grounds its theming in, but it
does cause certain scenes to feel like a mechanical necessity, particularly in
the film’s climax, where the inevitable end is teased for what feels like an
excessive period of time.
That said, though, Ex
Machina is not a bad film, and it was certainly an enjoyable one. Whether you enjoy good character acting or
tales of roboethics, Ex Machina is
likely to offer something you’ll enjoy.
Just don’t get too upset when the finale is not quite as shocking as the
film keeps promising.
Does a predictable film necessarily mean a bad film? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
No comments:
Post a Comment