Alex Garland’s Ex Machina should be a play, so well does it wring drama from 3 characters in a confined setting. It could have been a micro-budget film, but Garland’s previous successes (28 Days Later, The Beach, not the sadly overlooked Dredd) afforded 15 millies: for A-list actors to chew on all the thoughtful dialogue, to add tasteful (if unnecessary) robot CGI to Alicia Vikander as Ava the “AI”, and to generally spruce, fluff, and spread love.
Is Ava AI? Or is she just a glib chatbot wearing a few million dollars of CG accessories? A series of interviews - framed as a Turing test - between Caleb Smith, a coder at “Blue Book”, and Ava, will help us decide, as will tense conversations with Ava’s reclusive creator Nathan Bateman, all high-IQ glib charm/browbeating in a performance so masterful from Oscar Isaac, it has to be an adaptation of his own personality.
Our universities used to manufacture these sorts of superintelligent jerks, so glib that reason itself must concede any argument, testosterone married to intellect, a rare species to be feared, loathed, and even admired (especially given recent innovations in academic lobotomy which create nothing but hordes of brain-dead screaming dickless drones).
AI systems are improving our lives rapidly - as rapidly as they are turned to the sinister purpose of destroying our lives. I can keep track of long lost friends in Facebook, yet certain of my FB messages are algorithmically-forwarded to the FBI as potential thought crimes. I can engage with billionaires in the Twitter town square, yet I am on a week’s suspension for offending the paid activist followers of avowed communist LeBron James.
I can command my Stable Diffusion robot to hallucinate the bourgeoise French esthetic of James Tissot into something more spirited and American (breasts are admittedly not quite there):
Or I can abuse Stable Diffusion to de-calibrate your eyeballs from reality, by making Hillary Clinton appear sexually attractive:
Six of Turner, half a dozen Hooch, is it Grundle or is it Fly? (adapted from classic Goldstein) This is why we need nuanced thought pieces like Ex Machina, a notably rare exception to culturally ubiquitous ham-handed anti-AI messaging typified by James Cameron’s sophomoric, if entertaining, The Terminator (and its sequels). Damn arrogant humans should never have built a machine! Luddism. Icarus duct-taped to the sun. Primitivism preached by technologists; cognitive dissonance as philosophy.
Alex Garland is no sophomore; he’s earned a Doctorate in thematic ambiguity and crafted a story in which any character can be framed as hero or villain. Garland teases mid-wit popcorn marxists like James Cameron with the trope of capitalist megalomaniac Bateman setting himself up as God or Dr. Frankenstein. Then he slowly unveils new bases for valid but opposing conclusions: Bateman isn’t so bad, or he’s even worse!, or he is right about everything! By the end one doesn’t know what to believe (no spoilers out of sheer respect).
James Cameron might smear war-paint over his wrinkled old face and pound his rough-hewn spear on the ground declaring - in grunts and gestures - Ex Machina proof of the evils of technology, while I’m wondering (next to Jim on the couch, rattled by his primitive display of ferocity) if this kid Caleb just inadvertently ruined our one shot to achieve AGI. So long as Jim doesn’t identify me as a threat requiring spear-holing, I can allow the film to inspire all manner of sweet and scary speculation.
Call it sci-fi, then: fiction that speculates over future possibilities/advances. But where most sci-fi authors fit their characters awkwardly to their fevered speculations (Phillip K Dick), Garland’s characterizations in Ex Machina would carry this drama even without brilliant thematic integration. Is your sci-fi ominous and sexy and hilarious and horrific all at the same time? Garland’s is:
I rarely find it necessary to deploy such platitudes.
In comparison, Garland’s recent work like Devs leaves a lot to be desired, but comparison isn’t fair - Ex Machina is a lightning-in-a-bottle scenario, a once in a career event, a film so perfect as to be intimidating. It is the first film I’ve committed 4 stars to - let it be an example to the rest.
I hate myself for wallowing in your validation, but I'd have hated myself more if you had trolled me. Thanks.
One of my favorites as well. Like you, I enjoy the ambiguity: are certain characters good? Are they in the right? Depending on your point of view and perspective, it changes. And the ending is sublime!