Year: 2015
Director: Alex Garland
Writer: Alex Garland
Stars: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac
Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young programmer
working at a search giant (an obvious jab at Google), who is selected to spend
a week at the private estate of the company’s CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar
Isaac). When Caleb arrives, he finds out that Nathan has chosen him to participate
in a special Turing Test to assess the human capabilities and level of self-awareness
possessed by Nathan’s latest A.I. creation. The A.I. that Nathan created has
the body of a beautiful female, called Ava (Alicia Vikander), who quickly еlicits Caleb’s sympathies. Not a
completely originaly concept, but the plot isn’t the most important element of
the film. It’s the ideas. “Ex Machina” is not an action-based, or filled with
flashy effects, story. It’s a quieter, smarter science fiction, that’s best
when the characters just talk to each other, discussing what is intelligence and
humanity.
A first-time director, Alex Garland, has
previously written the scripts for Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine” and “28 Days Later.”
Besides a solid script, he gets really good performances out of his actors and
manages to add tension and fluidity to the dialogue. After hearing a lot of
praises on the look of the movie, I wasn’t particularly amazed. Actually,
besides a few cooler shots in the beginning, it soon becomes pretty boring
cinematically. The soundtrack isn’t particularly impressive either, but it’s
sufficient.
“Ex Machina” isn’t something really
new to the genre, but it’s fresh and thoughtful film among all the summer
blockbusters. A big plus is that most of its science is based fundamentally on
technologies that already exist. Thus, it’s warning us that huge corporations with
great amounts of private information, acquired via social media and internet
searches, are probably just as scary as having to deal with an android having a
convincing human conversation. After all, the robot in “Ex Machina” can freely
draw all the information for people from the web, especially having access to all
of the search engine’s data.
In fact, the conversations in the
first part of the movie, is what intrigues the most: how can the Turing test be
optimized to truly prove an A.I., or even the “feelings” of a machine? And on
the other side of that coin lies the question – what is it to be human, how
intelligent is humanity itself, if it’s so dependent on its own weaknesses? Maybe
we can’t even truly test A.I. if our senses and emotions are so easy to manipulate.
Furthermore, we can see how flawed are actually the humans in the movie. Caleb
is way too easily influenced by his emotions and from the very beginning, we
can tell that Nathan is slightly off the rails. He’s actually the drunk
creator, who had to, at least partially, sacrifice his own humanity to create a
self-aware intelligent being. There’s an
interesting discussion between the characters about A.I. having sexuality,
since it defines the evolution of all living things. It also justifies some of
Nathan’s weirder traits, and some fan service in the film, characteristic of the
B-movie sci-fi.
“Ex Machina“’s plot offers some
delightful twists and turns. However, towards the end things become rather
predictable and really not as exciting as they are in the first part, when the
audience is still trying to figure out what’s going on. A rather enjoyable and
intriguing watch, “Ex Machina” is not a waste of time, but it’s been really
over-hyped, it’s nowhere close to a new classic, let alone the “Blade Runner”
or “2001” of our time.
7,9 from users and 78
from critics on MetaCritic - http://www.metacritic.com/movie/ex-machina
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