Ex Machina (Alex Garland)

[Philip J. Fry]

Trailer:
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IMDb / wiki / RT

Official site

[Peng]

Saw this back in January because I was in UK then. It's an impressive directorial debut, milking the sci-fi setting and compositions for all their worth. However, Garland's style seems a bit too cold for the human element to resonate for me. The chilly style might work great in emphasizing wondrous insignificance (2001) or terrifying abstractness (Under the Skin), but when a large part of the story evolves around the emotional journey of Domhnall Gleeson's character in interacting with this AI, the distance keeps me away too much to connect fully with the ending. Still, good performances all around (loved Oscar Isaac's character, and I will buy the blu-ray just to watch his dance scene over and over) and clever script makes it a fun watch.

[number8]

The coldness seems to be on purpose, considering the nature of the relationship as a Turing test and the ambiguity of the situation. I don't think the setup lends to a genuine emotional connection between them the way, say, the central relationship in Her was portrayed. There's supposed to be something ominous running through it.

I also don't think we're supposed to [

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sympathize with how Gleeson ended up, so creating a distance between him and the audience helped.

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[Peng]

The coldness is definitely on purpose, but I think the director might misjudge how some (like me) would be invested enough in the rather familiar story to find the film occasionally drag. It will really depend on the audience, I guess. Interestingly, I just read two critics who are on opposite side of the same coin for the story's trajectory. Matt Zoller Seitz saw it as poetic inevitability, while Zach Ralston saw it as tedious obviousness.

[Spinal]

Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander are extraordinary. Domhnall Gleeson ... not so much. I liked this quite a bit. Quality scene after quality scene.

[Spinal]

Matt Zoller Seitz saw it as poetic inevitability, while Zach Ralston saw it as tedious obviousness.

The first one, definitely. I saw it with my dad and that's basically what I said to him. I said I don't think it's supposed to be surprising, it's supposed to be inevitable. And I think the film does an excellent job of conveying that.

[number8]

I found it inevitable the moment the film decided to focus on the genders of those involved. It did seem like a simple embracing of tropes and archetypes at first with male techies and female robots, but then they bring up the implications of that, and it seems obvious that there shouldn't be an end reconciliation.

I like this point brought up in a review I read in New Statesman:

A few weeks later, I found myself talking about the film to Deborah Cameron, a professor of linguistics at Oxford University. She pointed out that there are very few male computer voices – lifts are female; the Tube announcer is female; most people prefer a female satnav. “When you ask people what they want, they use code words like ‘approachable’ or ‘relatable’. They mean subservient,” she told me. “They also want breathiness, which is a marker of sexual arousal.” In other words, even though the advent of artificial intelligence is heralded as an era of change, it is likely to reproduce the same old crappy gender dynamics.

[Spinal]

Oscar Isaac's monologue on sexuality was one of my favorite parts.

[number8]

Oscar Isaac's monologue on sexuality was one of my favorite parts.

There's a lot to unpack there, and it's great how many of the points were delivered as a given in the middle of his monologue, like his assertion that your attraction to a certain ethnicity can be the result of social conditioning/programming. People always get so defensive when you suggest that.

[Pop Trash]

This is good, but it's a bit talky and never quite reaches the poetic level of Under the Skin (which it often resembles thematically). At least most of the conversations are interesting and engaging. Oscar Isaac is very entertaining, but I wonder if he is going to have that Llewyn Davis sardonic NYC thing all the time? Is that his schtick?

[Idioteque Stalker]

I had a really good time with this. Most impressive is how entertaining, suspenseful, and titillating it is considering the dialogue-driven nature of the film. It obviously has indie (-ish) crossover hit written all over it. It really is quite tense, but unexpected moments of levity prevent it from becoming too austere, which was surprising and delightful.

The way 8 contrasted it with Her mirrors my thoughts. I'll add that, while the ominous nature of the human-AI relationship is heightened by the heady philosophical human-human dialogue, it's ultimately to this film's detriment that they choose to spell out many of the scientific ideas and thematic concepts (most criminal is the Pollock speech), no matter how oblique to the average viewer. Granted I'm no expert on the more esoteric stuff in Ex Machina, but I can't help but feel that the relationship-focus, in contrast with a nitty-gritty-philosophy-focus, helps to make Her the more elegant film. And even though I ultimately liked the last third, the overly-plotty one-upmanship of the "Well, I knew you'd do this," and "Yeah? Well I knew you'd know" had me rolling my eyes.

Anyway, definitely recommended to fans of talky sci-fi.

[Pop Trash]

I did like the dynamics between the two characters and that Oscar Isaac's character never goes full psycho (he's really just a douchey drunk). Plus you could argue the other guy does go full psycho with the arm slicing and all of that. The moral hills and valleys are interesting.

[Henry Gale]

Once Gleeson said "fucking amazing" about Ava, the phrase kinda echoed in my head regarding everything the film continued to do.

Sooooo much excellence to bask in and then continue to dwell on with this. It's all just awesomely dancing in my head in the moment, but once all that comes down to Earth I'll likely have more to say.

Not sure what competition there is of what I've seen so far, but easily my #1 of the year at this point.

[DavidSeven]

On a dramatic level, I thought this was far superior to Under the Skin and Her. The film continually propels itself forward and avoids the trap of redundancy that those two couldn't avoid. Ultimately, I found it more resonating, more thought provoking, as the audience's assumptions and hopes for these characters are challenged from scene-to-scene, moment-to-moment. I was impressed by Garland's restraint on VFX and his eye for stirring visuals. This isn't a role I would've pegged for Oscar Isaac, but it is truly a convincing and complicated performance. The male protagonist (played by Gleeson) is actually the thinnest drawn and least interesting character, which is sort of interesting in itself. However, it might have been intriguing to see if a different actor could have brought more gravity to the role and how that might have changed the dynamic of this film. Vikander was a great find -- perfect for the role in physicality and presence.

Overall, there's really good work in this one.

[Ezee E]

Yeah, there's a lot of good things going on in this one. I love seeing new technology convincingly done on screen, and there was never a second of disbelief. All the conflictive bits can be predicted from a viewer's standpoint, but since its convincing, I remained engaged. Poetic inevitability is a great description of this, and goes into Ebert's "it's how it's about it," rather then "what it's about."

I'm kind of confused as to why Gleeson cut himself. Seemed a little too much. Poor end for him.

[number8]

I'm kind of confused as to why Gleeson cut himself.

You mean why they decided to make his character take that turn, or did you not get why he did it in the scene?

[Ezee E]

You mean why they decided to make his character take that turn, or did you not get why he did it in the scene?

I don't get why he did it.

[number8]

I don't get why he did it.

He was checking his body to see if he's human or AI.

[Ezee E]

He was checking his body to see if he's human or AI.

I guess that's what I was thinking too, but think that's pretty dumb. The man bled sometime in his life. Also, there's an infinite amount of spots that he could verify that would be much preferred.

This may literally be my only criticism of the movie.

[number8]

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He did check for spots on his skin and only cut it when he couldn't find the seams to peel it back the way Kyoko did.

I think it's more for the audience than anything. There were some hints early on that are meant to suggest such a twist, and that scene ended that thread in definitive fashion and made it clear that it's not that kind of movie.

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[Henry Gale]

To what E and 8 are talking about:

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Since I first heard the basic premise of the film, my mind raced about all the possibilities, and I was almost certain it would take the turn of Caleb being an A.I., if only for the fact of pulling the ultimate reversal of Nathan not needing to rationalize his own version of the Turing Test, but instead making Caleb and Ava equal components of it with only the latter being the "human" in the scenario, even if Caleb viewed himself in those terms.

At on that path of thinking, in terms of Caleb "knowing" he was human because he would've had memories of bleeding in his life: The only moments we get of him in our world are silent, speedy and almost time-lapsed snippets explaining why he's going to Nathan's retreat. It wouldn't be out of the question to say something like that (along with many other necessary details of an artificial past) could've simply been implanted. Also leaving him imprisoned and doomed at the end would suddenly read as him becoming exactly how the other A.I.'s were all along, only without his own knowledge. Could've he ostensibly lived on forever there if he were an android? Eventually discovering his immortality on the terms of realizing he doesn't need food or water to survive? The film would suddenly be about Ava discovering her humanity while Caleb turning from believing he's human to learning of his artificiality.

If there was an origami unicorn at some point, I'd say it could almost be supported as a substantial reading of the movie. But alas, it's only left as fun to imagine.

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[dreamdead]

During the flight from London to Tampa, I got to watch mediocre films (Still Alice, Into the Woods) that had a few redeeming performances. This one, despite being hampered by a small screen, was the only one that resonated in any real way, largely for the reasons articulated above. The overt philosophizing shifts intrigue from Gleeson to Vikander's character, so that her longing and desire becomes where the film's ideas are truly rooted.

In that the whole film feels inevitably tragic, the sequence where Vikander secures a fully physical "human" body was the true standout. Garland knows when to step aside and let a rush of imagery and performance carry a scene. And a lot of Issac's mannerisms are wonderfully blunt and abrasive--the type of personality who's had too much power conferred upon him for far too long.

[Irish]

Voted "nay" again even though I'm conflicted on this one.

I enjoyed the bulk of the movie, despite the way it abuses the entire idea of a Turing test. I liked the way the conversations between the two male leads were theoretical. In some ways the thing operates as a thought experiment inside a thought experiment. One of the character places himself inside a huge, complex Skinner Box and doesn't realize it. That's cool.

As a narrative. I dunno. It's a sci-fi retelling of Perrault's Bluebeard, but almost entirely from a male point of view. That's kinda a weird thing to do. Like, seriously weird because changing the angle of approach undercuts a the power of that story.

I found the sexbot angle to be tired and dull. (Yes, because as human males the first thing we will try and do with world changing tech is try and fuck it. Of course we will). I was really, really hoping this movie would avoid it, but it doesn't. It follows a similar path to every other movie about the initial creation of AI. Christ, that's dull.

The film fast forwards over its most interesting conflicts and we see key scenes on a screen -- so for us, we're watching a screen within a screen and the action is twice removed. Every big reveal in the movie happens that way. Every other scene is two people speaking in placid tones. I don't understand that choice.

I also didn't understand the inclusion of a point of view character who clearly outlives his usefulness after the first act or so. The drama here is between the inventor and his invention, but we don't see enough of it. As a side effect, I never believed in the romance between Ava and the kid.

I should really stay away from movies about AI because I find them to be either (1) paranoid or (2) ridiculous or (3) ridiculously paranoid. This one wasn't. It was a smarter than that. But my disappointment was that it didn't explore its ideas to any great extent. Its gender motifs were straight out of a 1950s film noir, with Ava as a typical femme fatale.

The AI stuff was the more or less the usual bullshit, and deeply unimaginative. I do not understand why AI movies always assume an alien intelligence will have the exact same needs and desires to humans, and not, in any way, be truly alien or "other." (You'd think that such intelligence would be less concerned about being kept in a glass box and more concerned that its mind was arbitrarily confined to a form as flimsy as ours.)

[Morris Schæffer]

As a side effect, I never believed in the romance between Ava and the kid.

But I believed that the kid believed, and that's precisely right.

[Philip J. Fry]

But I believed that the kid believed, and that's precisely right.

This.