Ex Machina (2015)
R
5 Stars out of 5
Director/Writer Alex
Garland
Domhnall Gleeson Caleb
Oscar Isaac Nathan
Alicia Vikander Ava
Sonoya Mizuno Kyoko
Like “Under the Skin”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, or “Cloud
Atlas”, director/writer Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” uses science fiction to brilliantly
explore topics not easily examined in other genres: male/female power
relationships, male roles in society, the importance given to superficial
appearances, what it means to be human, and above all else the role that lying
plays in everyday human experience. Almost every aspect of “Ex Machina” comes
together to produce a film that will stand as a classic definition of not only what
can be done with science fiction, but a movie that can stand just like “2001”
as an icon for big ideas intelligently explored in film.
“Ex Machina” begins with a young programmer, Caleb (Domhnall
Gleeson) winning a company-wide contest to spend a week with his company’s CEO
and founder, Nathan (Oscar Isaac). Nathan is an amalgam of contemporary
technology-based corporate titans such as Steve Jobs, Mark
Zuckerberg, or more to the point in terms of actual technology, the two
founders of Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Nathan wrote the code at age
thirteen that formed the basis his company, Blue Book (its name surely also an
amalgam from Blue Tooth and Face Book). However, while Nathan has advanced in chronological
age from thirteen to roughly thirty-five, he remains emotionally a teenager, as
the naïve Caleb will soon discover once he reaches Nathan’s fortress-like home
somewhere (seemingly) in the middle of Glacier National Park.
When Caleb first meets Nathan, the latter is busy flexing
his muscles by pounding on a punching bag. Nathan mixes his language to Caleb
with a hearty brew of frat-boy “bro’s” and “dudes”. He exudes his acquired
alpha male status on multiple occasions by dismissing any comment he considers
contrary by Caleb – this is no meeting of equals despite Nathan’s exhortation
to Caleb that he consider it so. Nathan has brought Caleb to his home/laboratory in order that Caleb might assess whether or not a robot with
artificial intelligence capabilities built by Nathan would pass the Turing
Test. This test simply put is whether or not an AI when hidden from view from
the tester would be indistinguishable from a human. Nathan has decided to up
the ante in his test. He has made a sexualized female robot that is clearly a
robot. He states this makes the test that much more difficult to administer and
to pass. Will Caleb knowing that the robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander) be able to convince him that
she is self-aware and actually thinking, not just simulating the same? Adding to the complexity is that Ava has
been built to look and act feminine within the constraints that she must also
clearly be artificial and not organic in terms of her origins.
Thus ensues a series of interviews between Caleb and Ava
that are set apart as if in chapters. It is a kind of cat and mouse game
between Ava and the intelligent but confused Caleb, but also between Ava and
Nathan as he watches unseen via cameras and audio hook-ups designed to let him observe.
Nathan is helped to some degree by the mute Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), someone
Nathan claims can neither speak nor understand English. As the movie
progresses, I was compelled almost from the beginning to start watching each
scene and wondering whether the character was lying or not. Nathan with his
unstable behavior of alternating intelligence, his belligerence, his constant
heavy drinking seems to exude a kind of malignity that screams, “be careful
Caleb, you are in danger”. This theme is bolstered early in the movie when Ava
during one of the frequent electrical failures which she believes shield her
from Nathan’s prying eyes, gives the same warning to Caleb, “Nathan is not your
friend”.
But is Ava, Caleb’s friend? He stares at her longingly from
the beginning. His focus on her face and hands, the only parts made to look
human, allows him to forget that she is not human. It allows him to indulge his
young male’s desire for feminine company, even as her programming (?) permits
that she act as any young woman in her forced isolation would do. For her
situation is not only peculiar in that she is a robot playing the role of a
woman, she is also a “woman” in peril. Nathan has locked her into her room and
will not permit her to roam freely throughout the house, let alone escape it to
the outside world. Her peril is made that much more clear when she asks Caleb
what will Nathan do with her once the “Turing Test” is concluded, pass or fail.
Caleb states he does not know, but he worries, and his worries are made even
more manifest once he learns from Nathan that like the earlier models of Ava
9.0, she will be re-made. She will lose all memory of the Ava that Caleb has
come to know. Both Ava and Nathan make it quite clear to Caleb, Ava is in
danger.
But who speaks the truth in this movie, what is Nathan’s,
Ava’s, or even Kyoko’s agenda? As the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly
clear that like Dr. Frankenstein, Nathan has started to think of himself in a
God-like role. And yet, like the most typical of adolescent male tech nerds, he
also dwells on the idea of a beautiful woman that is in thrall to his every whim.
Has Nathan made Ava’s 1.0 to 9.0 to indulge his sexual desires, to become more
God-like in his stunted emotional state, to exercise his formidable creativity,
or more likely as with every flawed human, some combination of each, of good and evil?
And what of Ava, does she truly have an interest in Caleb or is he merely as tool to
attain her freedom? Should she
attempt to pass the Turing Test and gain that freedom, or is that a fantasy; must she
instead and unlike the generic woman-in-peril gain her freedom by taking it for herself by using the
men that oppress her or stand in her way? Even the silent Kyoko, her
hidden facial movements having revealed on more than one occasion that she too has her own
agenda, what is it that she wants?
“Ex Machina” explores in careful detail each of these
questions and brings the movie to a satisfying close; a close that suggests the
gap between machine and human intelligence is narrower than one might think, especially when it comes to desires for personal freedom. Additionally, it suggests
that lying and deception are behaviors that humans utilize so well in order to
get their way, that that was the final test of
Ava’s consciousness – that she not only sought her freedom but was sufficiently
intelligent and self-aware that she could and would employ that most human of
traits, lying to achieve her ends. And of course, not just lying, but violence of a very dispassionate nature would also be used by Ava to get her way - you can't get much more human than that.
But “Ex Machina” is really so much more. Watch how Caleb self-deceives
himself about Ava. Of course Ava saw it too and used it to her advantage. But
what is Caleb really thinking when he thinks of Ava? Does he focus solely on
her all too beautiful human face and completely forget that physically she is anything
but human. Does he stop to wonder at the nature of the mind within Ava’s
physical form, at its so non-human origins? What possibly could such a mind
value and want; is there any overlap with Caleb's mind? Does he really believe that
her Google/internet models of human behavior make her human (let alone female)
in any manner? Or is he simply reacting as his male genes have programmed him?
He sees the feminine parts of a thing, and his maleness drives him as if he too
were a machine programmed to seek out and mate with such a “female”. In what
ways is his behavior any less programmed than hers?
That “Ex Machina” discusses these topics carefully but in a
manner that is not off-putting, is testament to the writing. That the viewer
can readily identify the character type played by Oscar Isaac is proof of his
fine acting (see him also in 2014’s “A Most Violent Year”, or HBO’s 2015 “Show Me a
Hero”). In a far more subtle role of Ava where Swedish actress Alicia Vikander
has little more than her face and voice, the actress must display a kind of pseudo-naiveté
that suggests vulnerability and yet seems to conceal a kind of powerful
intelligence. There is also one very carefully choreographed scene where after
appearing to Caleb in a woman’s dress and wig, she slowly and seductively
removes a piece of hosiery. Did she presume that Caleb was watching, was she
continuing her act, her seduction of the miserably confused Caleb, or like the disguised female alien in "Under the Skin" played by Scarlett Johansson, has Ava
come to actually think of herself as a woman? (Think about how both films have the nude female alien or robot "admire" or check themselves for errors in the mirror - what is each thinking: I'm beautiful or my disguise is perfect? it is far from clear in either movie.)
There are so many sophisticated topics and they are portrayed
so beautifully within “Ex Machina” that it is hard to stop describing them all.
For me though, this movie hearkens to the equally brilliant “Under the Skin”.
Humans are so programmed by our culture, our childhood, and our genes, that
when we see an array of fruit arranged in the shape of a face, we define being
mentally sound by our ability to see the face. In “Ex Machina”, Caleb sees very
little more than a human woman’s face on the body of a robot, but he evidently
and despite his clear intelligence and awareness of the situation, responds only a
woman, not to a robot with a human face. He responds as a man. Humans so rarely look past
the skin; we so rarely notice the evidence that our eyes and brain could pick
up of telling differences from conventional humanity, and we respond as if the
alien or robot before us is indeed human. Of course, reacting as humans is yet
another big topic: what we do to achieve our ends, what lies we tell, what
atrocities we will commit, all with the end goal of achieving our desires. “Ex
Machina” explores these topics so deftly, I feel certain it will join “2001”
and a few others as a classic example of what science fiction and film can
accomplish.