Movie Review: "Ex Machina"

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.