Alex Garland began as a novelist as
whose jacked-up, modernized brand of genre pulp caught the eye of British
director Danny Boyle. After Boyle had screenwriter and long-time collaborator
John Hodge adapt Garland’s book “The Beach” into a script, he began to work
with Garland exclusively. This would
define the director’s pivotal second wind of his career—elevating and
reinventing geeky filmic traditions such as the zombie horror “28 Days Later”
and the space-travel thriller “Sunshine.” In his new sci-fi psychodrama “Ex
Machina,” Garland is set on his own for the first time as both writer and
director. It’s evident that his obsession
with subverting tired genres while reveling in fan-bait fetishism is very much
still intact, but what’s surprising is his comfort and confidence behind the
camera.
Somewhere in the not-too-distant
future internet coder Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a lottery to spend a week
with the creator of the world’s most widely used search engine; a deceptively
casual, hard-drinking engineer named Nathan (Oscar Isaac). Upon arrival Nathan
informs Caleb that as a temporary guest he will only be given access to a
limited number of rooms in his remotely located superlab/stylishly modern
stainless steel bachelor pad. To his surprise he finds out that his purpose
isn’t to analyze things as a computer engineer or as a code theorist, but to
rationalize data as a living, breathing, emotional human being. Turns out,
Nathan has created a form of sentient artificial intelligence in the form of
Eva (Alicia Vikander), and needs the shy programmer to test the believability
of her independent thought with a series of personalized interviews.
Garland sets up the story by winding
the key on the back of the jack in the box and letting it play out in slow,
simmering anticipation. By having only three principal characters, in which
they rarely share a scene together, there’s a stripped-down minimalism
expressed that recalls the icy chill of Kubrickian isolation. Cinematographer
Rob Hardy shoots much of the film in long, centered wide shots and the movie’s
sparse sound design and set decoration brings to mind the tense atmosphere’s of
films like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “The Shining.” That said, given the
movie’s sterile visual approach, Garland’s screenplay allows for a number of cleverly-written
passages where the two male leads converse in long dialogues that inform their characters,
delivers necessary exposition, while simultaneously complimenting the
atmospheric tension with naturalistic humor.
Oscar Isaac’s matter-of-fact
line-delivery effectively conveys a tragic King Midas who uses a false sense of
charisma to conceal his character’s profound loneliness and antisocial
perversities. But even with his flaws transparent,
Isaac infuses the performance with unpredictable electricity. As the softly
feminine android Eva Vikander has the most difficult and most thankless job in
the movie. Here she has to subtly play a curious but intense intelligence that’s
learning every day, computing her bourgeoning emotional truth, without
revealing too much about her knowledge and still remaining vulnerable and
submissive to her creator.
Much of the film deals in
complicated gender dynamics. In one of the movie’s best scenes, Caleb and
Nathan discuss the purpose of installing a gender and sexuality within Eva, and
how those same binaries are either installed or indoctrinated into naturally
bred humans. Therefore, as a test-model Eva’s ability to pass Caleb’s Turing
tests reflects not only on her success at humanity but also her femininity. The
fact that two men are deciding what it is to be a convincing woman raises a lot
of interesting philosophic and sociological points about systemic patriarchy,
especially as the film concludes.
If I knock “Ex Machina” for anything
it’s that the impact of the film’s many reveals is softened if you have any
familiarity with this style of Phillip K. Dick influenced science fiction.
“Blade Runner” looms large over this story and the questions of what makes a
person human isn’t much further developed past Riddley Scott’s take on the
subject in 1982. This, however, does not take away from the sheer filmmaking
competence and the moody brilliance on display, and even if I had a good idea
where things were headed I still had great time getting there.
Grade: A
Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2015
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