ex_machina

Programmer Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) is chosen by Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the CEO of the Bluebook software company, to spend a week at his isolated estate administering a Turing test to Ava (Alicia Vikander), an artificially intelligent robot that Nathan created. Though Caleb is at first excited by the opportunity, the more time he spends with Ava and Nathan, the more he comes to question the latter’s true motives, and he begins to wonder who is testing whom.

Written and directed by English sci-fi vet Alex Garland (28 Days Later), ex_machina is part paranoid thriller, part character study, and part philosophical reflection on the nature of humanity. It’s an intriguing film that keeps you guessing and leaves you thinking until the end, but it also leaves quite a bit of untapped potential on the table.

Aesthetically, ex_machina makes great use of both setting (the Norwegian landscape makes for some breathtaking exterior shots) and set design (the innards of Nathan’s multichambered estate give the film an appropriately claustrophobic feel). The electronica score by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury makes for a fine accompaniment.

The real lure here, however, is the interplay between the characters. Aided by a talented cast, Garland is able to use ambiguity and misdirection to complicate an overly simple premise. As Nathan, a nearly unrecognizable Isaac hides his cunning behind a drunken jock façade, but even after the audience (and, eventually, Caleb) realizes there is more to him than meets the eye, his true motives leave viewers guessing. Is he a visionary who utilizes some shady tactics to everyone’s ultimate benefit, or is he a manipulative, selfish control freak who uses science to cloak his sociopathy? This uncertainty extends to his creation as well. Vikander convincingly portrays Ava as self-aware and worthy of Caleb’s (and the audience’s) empathy but enigmatic as well. How much of what she says and does reflects an autonomous will and how much is simply whatever Nathan programmed her to say and do? Of the three leads, Caleb is the least interesting. Though his requisite tragic backstory gives him something going on beneath the surface, he is, for most of the film, a nice guy who appears to be in over his head. Ordinarily, this would make for a disappointingly bland protagonist, but Caleb functions reasonably well as an audience surrogate. At any rate, contrast the characters played by Gleeson and Isaac here with their roles in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and you’ll get a good idea of their impressive ranges.

The tensions between these characters build toward an ending that, while foreshadowed previously, still manages to catch viewers off-guard. It also leaves questions unanswered and fudges some continuity details. Despite this, ex machina is a film that lingers, not because of it indulges our appetite for the fantastic but because it grants an unsettling look toward a plausible future.

8/10