The joys of a great sci-fi movie can’t be matched by much. New, exciting, thought-provoking, dangerous, enlightening. It’s hard to do, both in writing and film production, but believe the hype, Ex Machina can be added to the greats.
Written by Alex Garland (who has penned some amazing stuff already), Ex Machina is about mankind and Artificial Intelligence. Caleb, a 26-year-old programmer for the company Blue Book (think Google), wins a contest to spend a week with the CEO/brilliant programmer Nathan at his secluded home. Once there, Nathan tells Caleb that he’s there to help him evaluate his latest project that he’s been working on in complete secrecy at his mountain compound. That project is Ava, a walking, talking robot with the must cutting edge AI. Nathan has worked long and hard on Ava but needs a fresh perspective on her. Is she really communicating and making decisions on her own? Could she actually be called alive?
So we have the fantastic Ghost in the Machine premise at work here and the action is highly compressed into Nathan’s compound. Very little happens outside of it with just Caleb, Nathan and Ava (and Nathan’s live-in help, Kyoko). And his compound is really cool. It’s future-modern (looks like the movie takes place in the not-to-distant future) with nature built in for accent (some room walls are the mountain rock itself). Super clean lines, flush, pop-out doors, a completely connected and voice operated household. Nathan’s living quarters (kitchen, exercise area, living room) are very open, but the bedrooms and lab (where Ava is kept) are subterranean. There might be cameras everywhere, but there are no windows. The set design is top notch and is basically a character. It’s very well thought out and conceptualized.
The real star is Ava (Alicia Vikander). Her design is fantastic and the special effects to make her look like a real robot interacting with actual humans is crazy. She has a human face “mask” that covers about half of the head. The rest is a silver mesh-like material and see through limbs. Most of her torso is clear, showing off her endoskeleton and other machinations that make her move. Her movements are mesmerizing too. Alicia is a classically trained dancer, so the command of her body lets her move and emote in the human frame we all know, but her motion looks very ethereal. And it’s all so beautiful, it’s something that Jonathan Ive would create and call his masterpiece.
Caleb is the innocent man brought into Nathan’s world. He’s your average guy who thinks he’s a good guy. Level headed, trustworthy. Nathan is different. He’s an alpha male. Intimidating, incredibly smart, which made him incredibly successful. He’s also isolated himself, which makes him rather uncomfortable to be around (to be fair, he was probably already really weird before he built his compound). Caleb is relatively easy to read, Nathan isn’t. He has an agenda, more than a few secrets and has no problem manipulating people to get what he wants. He sees the future farther than most and wants to be a part of it before anyone else. Nathan is one of my favorite antagonists in quite some time (thanks largely Oscar Isaac’s incredible acting).
With Ava looking so real, you forget that she’s mostly a special effect, making her a complete, living character. Caleb is brought into their space and stuck between Nathan and Ava, always questioning the motives of both. Ava isn’t a real person, but just like Caleb in the movie, that distinction of person vs non-person blurs completely and you become sympathetic to her. The movie works so well because what Caleb goes through, the conversations with a brilliant weirdo and a brilliant (?) robot, pull your sympathetic perspective to Nathan and Ava’s side with each scene. You walk a tightrope until the very end of the movie.
Alex Garland has written quite a bit, but this is his first time directing a movie and I am more than impressed. From writing this wild tale, he was very intimate with the characters and their intentions. He manages to conceptualize and frame everything so well, that you don’t realize it until the movie is over. The way Nathan’s compound is designed, how and where the characters interact with each other (I just realized that Nathan and Ava share very little screen time together) is extremely smart.
Such an interesting and well-made movie, I think Ex Machina is easily one of the best movies of 2015. Perfectly cast, fascinating to watch and absorb, even the soundtrack is amazing. Ex Machina has it all, can’t wait to see what Alex Garland does next.