“EX MACHINA” // ROBUST & ROBOTIC

“EX MACHINA” // ROBUST & ROBOTIC

Nightmares won’t trouble you after watching the subtle but suspenseful science fiction fright flick “Ex Machina” about a sentient robot with enough cunning to escape from its crafty creator. This cautionary futuristic fable about artificial intelligence dramatizes the quintessential question pondered by all classic robot movies: can man design a robot that is not only conscious of the world around it but also has awareness of itself? In his dazzling directorial debut, British novelist-turned-scripter Alex Garland refuses to pander to us with a spectacular “Star Wars” universe as a setting. Instead, he relies rather on the sheer simplicity of a condo lab facility nestled in the middle of a far-flung mountain paradise. This ultra-literate, atmosphere-laden chiller, with just enough full-frontal female nudity to earn an R-rating, occurs in the near future, not a decade down in the road but right around the corner. Although it is a foregone conclusion that the sagacious robot will triumph over her creator and break out of captivity, Garland’s staging of the action building up to the escape is just as hypnotic as his gifted cast with Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac as the humans and Alicia Vikander and Sonoya Mizuno as the automatons. Sci-fi aficionados should know that Garland has disposed of Isaac Asimov’s three rules of robotics for this dystopian tale.
At 107 minutes, “Ex Machina” amounts to a contemplative, indie-style, art film rather than an obnoxious Hollywood blockbuster. Mind you, “Ex Machina” boasts a wealth of computer-generated special effects, but nobody brandishes outlandish plasma pistols or ducks into a time machine. Watching this movie is comparable to being mesmerized by a beady-eyed rattlesnake in an immense glass jar and then wondering what will happen if you place your hand on the glass. Clearly, Garland has seen all the seminal robot movies, such as “Metropolis,” “The Forbidden Planet,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Blade Runner,” “Short Circuit,” “I, Robot,” and “Her,” and he is familiar with the formula. Imagine a no-frills version of Steven Spielberg’s “Artificial Intelligence” (2001) transpiring largely in a laboratory setting with two human characters, one more sinister than the other, and you’ve got the gist of “Ex-Machina.”
Garland’s film unfolds with a brief prologue set in New York City. Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson of “Unbroken”) is a nerdy, sandy-haired, 24-year old, Internet programmer who works for the global computer search engine company BlueBook. Comparatively, BlueBook dwarfs Google. Smith wins a company lottery to spend a week with his eccentric CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac of “Sucker Punch”), who lives alone in a secluded research facility. Suffering from a hopeless God complex, Nathan seems to be channeling Dr. Frankenstein. Indeed, he named his company after Frankenstein’s notebooks. One look at Nathan and you’ll know he is villainous. We learn during the conversations between Nathan and Caleb that Nathan is a teenage progeny who wrote computer code at age thirteen and now owns the biggest search engine company in the world. Nathan has summoned Caleb to participate in a “Turing” test, named after the real-life Alan Turing, the genius whose life was chronicled recently in the World War II movie “The Imitation Game.” Nathan has designed a truly sophisticated, female-gendered robot that he calls Ava (Alicia Vikander of “Son of a Gun”) and has even endowed her with appropriate genitalia. Nathan wants Caleb to determine if Ava is self aware or merely simulating self-awareness. Ava looks like no other android in cinematic history. She possesses soft, delicately-sculpted, distaff facial features with slender human hands, while the rest of her body consists of exposed wiring housed in a see-through mesh structure. Bits and pieces of the exposition from this epic make the story really compelling.
Inevitably, the impressionable Caleb falls in love with Ava, while Nathan is monitoring their every move. He has surveillance cameras planted in every room so that he misses nothing. Ava wants so desperately to get away from Nathan’s laboratory that she turns Caleb against his boss. Eventually, Caleb learns that Ava qualifies as just another prototype in Nathan’s chain of robots. Indeed, This seals Nathan’s fate as far as Caleb is concerned, and he decides to help Ava find her freedom.
Before “Ex Machina” fades out, Caleb and Nathan are no longer friends, and Ava has acquired the upper hand, farther up than even her perceptive creator has imagined.
Garland insinuates enough fascinating dialogue into those exchanges to make them more than just loquacious chatter. The performances are robust, with Isaac and Vikander taking top honors respectively as the villainous Nathan and the deceptive Ava. Don’t mistake “Ex Machina” for a run-of-the-mill female robot actioneer.