Nightmares won’t trouble you after watching the subtle but suspenseful
science fiction fright flick “Ex Machina” (***1/2 out of ****) about a sentient
robot with enough cunning to escape from its crafty creator. This cautionary futuristic fable about artificial
intelligence dramatizes the quintessential question pondered by all classic robot
movies: can man design a robot that is not only conscious of the world around
it but also has awareness of itself? In
his dazzling directorial debut, British novelist-turned-scripter Alex Garland
refuses to pander to us with a spectacular “Star Wars” universe as a setting. Instead, he relies rather on the sheer
simplicity of a condo lab facility nestled in the middle of a far-flung mountain
paradise. This ultra-literate, atmosphere-laden
chiller, with just enough full-frontal female nudity to earn an R-rating,
occurs in the near future, not a decade down in the road but right around the
corner. Although it is a foregone
conclusion that the sagacious robot will triumph over her creator and break out
of captivity, Garland’s staging of the action building up to the escape is just
as hypnotic as his gifted cast with Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac as the
humans and Alicia Vikander and Sonoya Mizuno as the automatons. Sci-fi aficionados should know that Garland
has disposed of Isaac Asimov’s three rules of robotics for this dystopian tale. At 107 minutes, “Ex Machina” amounts to a
contemplative, indie-style, art film rather than an obnoxious Hollywood
blockbuster. Mind you, “Ex Machina” boasts
a wealth of computer-generated special effects, but nobody brandishes outlandish
plasma pistols or ducks into a time machine.
Watching this movie is comparable to being mesmerized by a beady-eyed rattlesnake
in an immense glass jar and then wondering what will happen if you place your
hand on the glass. Clearly, Garland has
seen all the seminal robot movies, such as “Metropolis,” “The Forbidden
Planet,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Blade Runner,” “Short Circuit,” “I, Robot,” and
“Her,” and he is familiar with the formula.
Imagine a no-frills version of Steven Spielberg’s “Artificial
Intelligence” (2001) transpiring largely in a laboratory setting with two human
characters, one more sinister than the other, and you’ve got the gist of
“Ex-Machina.”
Garland’s film unfolds with a brief prologue set in New York
City. Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson of
“Unbroken”) is a nerdy, sandy-haired, 24-year old, Internet programmer who
works for the global computer search engine company BlueBook. Comparatively, BlueBook dwarfs Google. Smith wins a company lottery to spend a week
with his eccentric CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac of “Sucker Punch”), who
lives alone in a secluded research facility. Suffering from a hopeless God complex, Nathan
seems to be channeling Dr. Frankenstein.
Indeed, he named his company after Frankenstein’s notebooks. He flies Caleb in by helicopter because his
laboratory is basically inaccessible. One
look at Nathan and you’ll know he is villainous. He sports a bushy beard but wears his hair shorn
to the scalp in a gunpowder buzz-cut. Heavy black horn-rimmed spectacles straddle
his nose, and he uses words like “cool” and “dude” to sound like a friendly,
ordinary geek. We learn during the
conversations between Nathan and Caleb that Nathan is a teenage progeny who
wrote computer code at age thirteen and now owns the biggest search engine
company in the world. Meantime, Nathan
implores Caleb to treat him like a pal. Essentially,
Nathan has summoned Caleb to participate in a “Turing” test, named after the
real-life Alan Turing, the genius whose life was chronicled recently in the
World War II movie “The Imitation Game.”
Nathan has designed a truly sophisticated, female-gendered robot that he
calls Ava (Alicia Vikander of “Son of a Gun”) and has even endowed her with
appropriate genitalia. Nathan wants
Caleb to determine if Ava is self aware or merely simulating
self-awareness. Ava looks like no other
android in cinematic history. She
possesses soft, delicately-sculpted, distaff facial features with slender human
hands, while the rest of her body consists of exposed wiring housed in a see-through
mesh structure. Bits and pieces of the
exposition from this epic make the story really compelling. For example, our mad scientist billionaire has
drawn on thought patterns appropriated from data generated from computer search
engines. Most search engine corporations
content themselves strictly to monetize their information about what consumers
want. On the other hand, our wily
villain occupies himself with how people search for their needs rather than the
needs and then he exploited this information to enable his robot to behave like
a human.
Inevitably, the impressionable Caleb falls in love
with Ava, while Nathan is monitoring their every move. He has surveillance cameras planted in every
room so that he misses nothing. Ava
wants so desperately to get away from Nathan’s laboratory that she turns Caleb
against his boss. Eventually, Caleb
learns that Ava qualifies as just another prototype in Nathan’s chain of
robots. Indeed, Nathan reveals how he
plans to download Ava’s brain into another newer version and scrap her
memories. This seals Nathan’s fate as
far as Caleb is concerned, and he decides to help Ava find her freedom. Before “Ex Machina” fades out, Caleb and
Nathan are no longer friends, and Ava has acquired the upper hand, farther up
than even her perceptive creator has imagined.
Moreover, Ava has turned Nathan’s personal sex robot Kyoko against him;
Kyoko enjoys the freedom to roam around Nathan’s research condo. When he isn’t satisfying his sexual urges
with her, Nathan uses Kyoko as a personal servant. Most of “Ex Machina” involves apparently
monotonous conversations between either Caleb and Nathan or Caleb and Ava. Nevertheless, Garland insinuates enough fascinating
dialogue into those exchanges to make them more than just loquacious chatter. The performances are robust, with Isaac and Vikander
taking top honors respectively as the villainous Nathan and the deceptive
Ava. Sonoya Mizuno deserves honorable
mention as the mute robot Kyoko who surprises Nathan in the final quarter-hour. Don’t mistake “Ex Machina” for a
run-of-the-mill female robot actioneer.
