Alex Garland
Ex Machina

(Spoilers present.)

It is not the first time I find myself with far more than a few perplexities regarding a film generally well-received by critics and/or the public. There are two possibilities: either I have fried my brain (in tempura) by watching so many Asian dramas, or the bar has been lowered a bit in recent years. So much so that a film like this Ex Machina (2015), independent (but not so much), with worn-out themes, and poorly written at that, can attract attention.

The plot is simple, and the subject might imply potentially interesting developments: Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a brilliant and solitary programmer, wins (but not by chance) a competition to spend a week in the retreat/laboratory of Nathan (Oscar Isaac), CEO of one of the largest internet companies, where he will participate in a live Turing test, interacting face-to-face with an artificial intelligence named Ava, having a female body and sexuality.

The limited cast and settings, following the philosophy of less is more, give ample room to the concept, which presents a few noteworthy moments in a sea of superficiality and predictable twists. Firstly, there’s an evident imbalance in the characterization of the characters: Ava, needless to say, is the focal point of the story, with her algorithmic and fascinating mind, updated in real-time by the vast amount of data obtained from search engines (the only real novelty in the genre); she also has a nice design and is well played by the Swedish actress Alicia Vikander. The two males revolving around her, on the other hand, are shallow and inexplicably act like perfect imbeciles.

On one side is Caleb: alone, a bit morose, orphaned, with a troubled past; his psychology is barely sketched out, and in line with that, within a couple of meetings, he gets attached to/falls in love with Ava, feeling great compassion for her confinement, for her fate should the test fail, to the point of immediately planning her escape. It will be revealed later that she was designed specifically to appeal to the boy, especially from a physical standpoint—a completely arbitrary ploy to propel the limping script forward. Nathan also is responsible for questionable behavior: a prodigy of science, responsible for a project that might change the future of humanity as a whole; yet, he has no qualms about getting drunk and lowering his guard in the presence of a stranger, allowing the latter to snoop around as he pleases, thus revealing something shady that was already suspected upon entering the laboratory.

Ava is programmed to survive, to escape from the lab: she is capable of causing occasional blackouts to disrupt the surveillance cameras and thereby warn Caleb during their meetings (Nathan realizes this after a while). She is a manipulator, adapting to others’ sensitivities to achieve her goal, and this is reiterated to the handsome Caleb over and over by Nathan; yet, Caleb still falls for it and manages to sabotage the security systems. Both ultimately end up caught, or more aptly, allow themselves to be caught, not so much by Ava’s intelligence as by their stupidity.

In its final part, the film takes on a thriller tone that clashes with the rest of the story, and while this choice might at its best be disorienting, I can't say the same for the ending, hasty, superficial, anticlimactic, also predictable without much imagination: starting from the name (Ava = Eve) of the AI and her repeatedly highlighted sexuality, as well as the inevitable references to the role of man-god, creator of a sentient being, it is easy to discern where the director ultimately aims to go. Eve will escape and blend in with humans, becoming the first woman-machine and, perhaps, fulfilling a design to which the two puppets were presumably entirely oblivious. But this would be the best deducible hypothesis, otherwise, it doesn't explain why she is picked up by helicopter in the end as if it were nothing.

Ex Machina is straightforward, banal, permeated with a faux conceptual depth; it’s the fairground of “I wish I could but I can't.” Surely it's well-packaged with direction, photography, and a soundtrack, but in my view, the script leaves much to be desired, and the fact that it tackled a subject so thoroughly examined from Kubrick to today (Ava herself seems a cross between HAL 9000 and the sensual Samantha of Her) without offering reflections worthy of the name only makes it a run-of-the-mill product like so many others. It is hoped that this directorial debut by Garland (already a screenwriter and producer of several films from 2000 to today), although not terrible, will lead to more convincing results in the future.

1.5