Directed by:
Alex GarlandScreenplay:
Alex GarlandCinematography:
Rob HardyCast:
Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander, Sonoya Mizuno, Corey Johnson, Claire Selby, Symara Templeman, Gana Bayarsaikhan, Tiffany Pisani, Lina Alminas (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
Alex Garland, writer of 28 Days Later and Sunshine, makes his directorial debut with the stylish and cerebral thriller, EX MACHINA. Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), a programmer at an internet-search giant, wins a competition to spend a week at the private mountain estate of the company's brilliant and reclusive CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). Upon his arrival, Caleb learns that Nathan has chosen him to be the human component in a Turing Test -- charging him with evaluating the capabilities, and ultimately the consciousness, of Nathan's latest experiment in artificial intelligence. That experiment is Ava (Alicia Vikander), a breathtaking A.I. whose emotional intelligence proves more sophisticated -- and more deceptive -- than the two men could have imagined. (A24)
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Reviews (17)
As a matter of fact, the premise is pretty simple and builds on the psychology of two characters and one android. It is nice that films like this one get to be filmed these days, but the more of them there is, the more critical I am towards them and here everything stands and falls by the premise, which is not bad, but it is a base for a rather small-scale film. At least the ending made everything pretty clear.
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A nod to a future sci-fi classic. A beautifully intriguing, disturbing, unpredictable and decently suspenseful intelligent thriller that throws in a decent twist in the last half hour, although I had already read the final one, but I still have a positive impression. The film may have a slower pace, but it also lures the viewer's attention with very impressive interiors and a decent soundtrack, at times almost horror-like. Too bad they didn't push the bar at least two notches higher at the end, I would have considered five stars then, still a decent hypnotic cinema experience. 80%
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Ex Machina is not a film for everyone. This genre is usually associated with the expectation of a grand spectacle with action elements, whereas this film is an intimate conversation piece, an emotionally charged love triangle, and a clever cat-and-mouse game. Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence is touching, 2001: A Space Odyssey is monumental, I, Robot is action-packed, and Her is melancholic, but Ex Machina is primarily clever. True, the resolution lacks originality and cleverness, but let's face it - if it had those, the film would probably lose its connection with a significant portion of its audience. A film should not be smarter than its viewer, as otherwise, it risks commercial failure. Ex Machina may not be as expensive and epic as American sci-fi films usually are, but for a less affluent European production, it certainly was a big treat. While the sentiment of the acclaimed film Her completely missed the mark for me, I was completely captivated by Ex Machina. It is heading in the right direction, asking exactly the questions that I consider important, and it works on an emotional level as well. Playing god is not worth it, and Ex Machina strongly warns that artificial intelligence is not just a challenge with enormous possibilities, but also (and perhaps especially) an ethical problem and a great risk. Overall impression: 95%.
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If Alex Garland put as much effort into elaborating the psychological and symbolic aspects as he did designing the environment and pretending to be witty, this would certainly be a very complex film. Unfortunately, this is something I call hipster sci-fi - a film focused on looking good and giving a strong first impression. As soon as you take his game seriously and start a discussion with him, you will find that he is saying semi-apathetic and nicely formulated phases, whilst pretending to be revelatory. Sure, in front of Pollock, every conversation sounds a little smarter and the female beauty near Klimt hurts even more, but Ex Machina is much better at dancing disco, showing great macho poses by Oscar Isaac and presenting the murderously fragile sex appeal of Alicia Vikander (when she is mass-produced, I will marry her), rather than amazing through the somewhat funny tactile details and mannerist backlights, which importantly tell us that Ex Machina is not just fun history. But it's really nothing more. Joseph Kosinski goes indie, for better or worse. [70%]
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A gender chess game for four players. Eight years after its premiere, and in the context of Garland’s two subsequent films, Ex Machina has proven to be not only a shining directorial debut, but also a curse. Based on this film, Garland, who served as both director and screenwriter, has been inappropriately pigeonholed in the sci-fi and fantasy genre. As in his later films, however, the genre is merely a stylistic framework not for reflections grounded in science fiction and fantasy, but for interpersonal and relationship contemplations. Garland is fascinated by artificial intelligence as a field that mirrors gender issues, particularly in the sense of consciously and unconsciously stylised performance, as well as the observation, adoption and use of roles or codes that underlie most human interactions, even though they are artificial and unnatural at their core, or rather they are not inherent to our unique personalities. At the same time, Ex Machina examines the objectification of women and the extent to which we perceive the real personality on the other side of interpersonal interactions between members of the opposite sexes or, conversely, whether we merely project gender codes and patterns onto the other’s personality. It’s actually not surprising then that, on the one hand, the film is enthusiastically embraced by geeks who see themselves as Nathan, even if they are rather Caleb, while on the other hand, some paradoxically accuse it of sexism and objectification based on an interpretation that is equally limited and blind in principle.
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