![]() ![]() Steeped in influences ranging from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Karel Čapek’s breakthrough 1920 play R.U.R., Garland weighs concepts of artificial life and consciousness, yet he carefully avoids Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”, which prevented robots from harming human beings, and therein creates an eerie tension. Ex Machina was shot on a minimal budget of $13 million and released by independent distributor A24, which also put out Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2014), a film that similarly challenges its audience to identify with an alien. ![]() The motives and manipulations of Garland’s three central characters become fascinating and ultimately unnerving, if not altogether haunting, through the course of his stylish freshman effort. Operating on the level of a tense stage play rather than a twisting science-fiction yarn, Ex Machina, the directorial debut of Alex Garland, contains cutting and highly technical dialogue over a thoughtful thematic philosophy-enough to require the same high-IQ, science-savvy audience that could watch Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) without looking up the basics of relativity on Wikipedia. Over the course of several sessions, Caleb must interact with Ava and subject her to a “Turing Test” that, not unlike the Voight-Kampff empathy test in Blade Runner (1982), will evaluate whether she is indistinguishable from a human. ![]() Rather than picking Nathan’s brain for a week, Caleb will assist in a top-secret project to test the quality and believability of Nathan’s invention, the first artificially intelligent android, Ava (Alicia Vikander). While overwhelmed by the experience of meeting Nathan and the possibility of securing his future, Caleb quickly learns that he wasn’t a lucky winner but, in fact, was chosen. When he wins an office contest at his larger-than-Google search engine company called Blue Book, young programmer Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) receives a Golden Ticket invitation to the secluded Alaskan compound of his virtuoso boss Nathan (Oscar Isaac). And also, Jobs has created a thinking, feeling robot, and you’re the guinea pig who will determine if his creation is real enough. Imagine spending an intimate week with Steve Jobs at his prime, except a version of Jobs who gets drunk every night and disco dances with a mute Japanese assistant. ![]()
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