****
Caleb, a young computer
programmer, wins a competition to visit the home of his company’s illusive
boss. Once there, he discovers that he is to be part of a test, determining the
true nature of an A.I, in the form of a beautiful young woman.
In Kubrick’s The Shining, we follow Danny as he peddles his way round the empty
halls of the ominous hotel, waiting for something obscene and disturbing to
leap out of a doorway. In Ex Machina,
I experienced very much the same feeling, of waiting for something terrible to
happen. Isolated and locked inside a high-tech house, essentially a prison, and
featuring only four characters, Ex
Machina is a tense, psychological thriller featuring a lot of philosophical
questions. At the heart of the story is Caleb, played by the ever-engaging and
consistently good Domhnall Gleeson, a naïve programmer who relishes the chance
to be a part his boss’ Turing Test, and comes entangled in a web of deceit and
confusion. Gleeson is excellent in the part: from enthusiasm to suspicion and
concern, he inhabits the part. In contrast to Caleb’s undeniable goodness is
Oscar Isaac’s terrifying Nathan, the head of the world’s largest search engine
and Caleb’s boss, who you just know is bad news from the moment you see him…
You’re just not sure in what way he will be bad news. Nathan is a truly hateful
character, deluded by god-like fantasies and power-crazy, and he aroused such
strong feelings in my cinema-going companion that he was dubbed ‘the physical
representation of everything I hate about mankind’. It is, however, Alicia
Vikander as Ava who is the stand-out performer in the role: she beautifully
inhabits the body of someone learning about their own physicality, whilst also
performing the tiniest of idiosyncrasies, a tilt of the head, a curve of the
lip, that captivates you.
Refreshingly, Alex Garland does
not patronise his viewers, instead creating a multifaceted, ambiguous, and
deeply philosophical film about what it means to be human. There are
interesting debates about why Nathan has chosen to give Ava the appearance of a
young woman, about human reaction, and what it is to have power over something
as animated, and yet not living, as an A.I. There are some very disturbing and
unsettling images in the second half of the film, from an A.I scrabbling at a
locked door, to the series of masks aligning the corridor and the constant
threat of that oppressive red light. I have read some reviews wherein the
viewer has argued that the nakedness featured in the film is overtly sexual,
but I entirely disagree with this idea: the nakedness is not sexual, in fact
rather repulsive and uncomfortable, which adds to the uneasy tension of the
film and keeps you guessing what will happen next. I didn’t relax for a second –
the haunting score by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury fits perfectly with the
unease depicted on screen, whilst Rob Hardy’s shots of the sublime Norwegian
landscape only acts as a reminder as to how contained our characters are.
A deeply unsettling, yet also entertaining, film
that is refreshingly short and intelligent, Ex
Machina really got under my skin, and has certainly sparked a good deal of
discussion amongst myself and those I went to see it with. It will undoubtedly
cement the careers of the three central actors, and will hopefully be the start
of an interesting directorial career for Alex Garland. My advice would be not
to see it late at night, because you will certainly need some time to think
about it afterwards.
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