Ex Machina

by themrmojorisin67

 

Director: Alex Garland

Starring: Domnhall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac

Released: 2015

Trailer

 

Well, well, well… it’s summer 2015, people. It’s hard to believe yet another year has gone by. And with another year comes yet another batch of movies. We’ve got the standard superhero fare—Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and Antman being the two front-runners in this category at this point in time, with Fox’s Fant4stic coming out hot on both films’ heels. We’ve also got Jurassic World coming out in June, and we’ve got the Mad Max reboot that’s currently getting overwhelmingly good press at the time of this review. But one film in particular that finally has a wide release after showing in select theaters interested me greatly: Alex Garland’s sci-fi thriller Ex Machina.

The first element that appealed to this reviewer was, in fact, Alex Garland, who wrote some of my favorite films including Dredd and 28 Days Later. Hearing that he both penned the script and helmed the film piqued my interest. Another element was the story, or at least what elements of the story the trailer chose to show. The philosophical implications of creating artificial intelligence as well as the debate as to whether artificial intelligence is the same as having  actual intelligence/a soul always fascinated me, and potentially seeing a film that covered this territory without putting something like mindless action in the forefront (looking at you, I, Robot) was exciting for me. Does this mean that the philosophical ideas overtake the entire film and remove the important elements of a well-told story as well as some sort of emotional core to hold said story together? Well… we will get to that.

Ex Machina is about Caleb (Gleeson), a computer programmer for the most influential search engine within the film’s world, Bluebook (basically, it’s Google). Caleb wins a company lottery and is given the privilege to visit the company’s CEO, Nathan (Isaac). As it turns out, Nathan wants Caleb’s help with his research in artificial intelligence, specifically with his test subject/creation, Ava (Vikander). As the film goes on, Caleb begins to realize that there is something off about everything at the facility, and must figure out what exactly is going on before things go horribly awry.

ex2

All of the actors in the film do very well in their roles. Vikander is fantastic as Ava, exuding innocence along with a deeper edge that hints that there is something more going on in this place than what she or Nathan initially let on. It helps that she also conveys so much through her actions as well as her words. There are scenes where she is just sitting or lying down, but wordlessly conveys that she wants Caleb to watch her.

Oscar Isaac as Nathan deserves a lot of praise as well. He takes what would otherwise be an incredibly sleazy and unlikeable character and makes him a real treat to watch. Then, there’s Gleeson, who does well with the material he’s given. He makes Caleb interesting and a protagonist for the audience to root for when the chips are down.

But, all in all, Caleb is probably the least interesting character in the film. But why? I suppose it’s because we don’t really have a lot of time to really get to know him as a person. We do get some details about him, namely his troubled past and his increasing attraction to Ava, but he often comes across as an audience surrogate, learning about Nathan and his work along with us. Not that this is a bad thing, per se. Often, films with such a relatively bizarre and out of the ordinary concept need someone to ground the audience in some semblance of normalcy. In fact, Gleeson has done a role like this before in Frank, where he played a sort of straight man to the eccentric Frank character, which arguably helped to keep the film from losing the audience toward the beginning and to ease the audience into the world of the film. Just as in Frank, it feels like Gleeson does the same here with Caleb. Which, again, is not a bad thing, but the film could have given Caleb more time to develop as a character rather than dropping little bits of information about him.

That said, Gleeson’s scenes with Vikander are incredible to watch. These are the scenes where the audience truly gets to know Caleb as a person, mostly because Ava is redirecting his questions toward him and forcing him to think about his humanity and his painful past. Because these scenes are so well done, it’s a shame there aren’t more of them in this film before things go south for the characters. To me, these scenes were the most interesting parts of the film.

Speaking of which, the writing of the film is very well done. The script explores the concept of artificial intelligence, even going into detail as to how this could possibly exist in today’s world. Gone are microchips and hard drives running these sentient machines. Instead,  the audience gets bio-mechanical organs run by a synthetic brain that is both fluid and solid, which allows for the owner of the brain to be able to think and learn like humans do (the film explains this a whole lot better. Trust me, the science is fascinating).

ex

The story is also very character-driven, with dialogue-heavy scenes and very little action. This definitely makes the pace feel slower than a lot of today’s mainstream films, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Though the pace of the film is slow, it never feels like the film is wasting the audience’s time. Every scene in the film has a purpose, be it narrative- or character-related. Granted, the ending feels a touch rushed, but it is still effective and left this reviewer feeling chills.

Overall, while not an entirely perfect film, Ex Machina is still a decent entry into the science fiction genre, arguably one of the best in a long time.

 

Final Score: 9/10

For more reviews, be sure to like this page as well as the Facebook page. For previous reviews, be sure to check out the full directory of reviews. As always, thank you for reading!