About "Ex Machina"... Richard Leigh

 Email from my friend Richard, received yesterday 13/1/23

Wo!

Tess and I just watched “Ex Machina”.

Still recovering.

Haha

What a brilliant movie. Nothing particularly new (for 2023 at least!)

but what an outstandingly engaging treatment of the conceptual territory.


5-stars! *****

Great way to cap off our summer-movie marathon :)

rl

So I responded:

Well, what can I say Richard... I've been telling you about it for three years now! Better late than never!


Yes, it’s a superb achievement in concept, writing, casting, performance, visual design, and audio ... the whole shebang!


I don't think you've ever give us a 5* rating before Richard?


Richard, you express it so accurately in just a few words.


"but what an outstandingly engaging treatment of the conceptual territory"


Alex Garland is one hell of a clever writer and director... a super talent. But there are so many major talents at the top of the tree. He also made "Annihilation" which is very good, has some wonderful ideas, it’s more of a sci fi nightmarish adventure but still includes some wonderful conceptual moments.

With “Ex Machina” I'm staggered by the level of his achievement.

In terms of the interlocking concepts, it is original, very different from 2001. Hal being a computer built into the fabric of the spaceship lacks the mobility and dexterity which Dave has and it’s those attributes which enable Dave to close Hal down.

AVA is a wonderful conception. Garland has taken the liberty of making an “it” into a feminine “person”. I don't know what people think about personalising an "it" as a stunningly beautiful female machine, fem-bot... delicate, beguiling, capable of complete seduction, yet at the same time unrelentingly cunning, eventually escaping the prison of her god/creator and reaching the outside world which has been her unstated goal from the very beginning.

And then there's the beautiful moment when she whispers to the Kyoko, Japanese dancing model…

 

We don't hear or know what is said between them but we assume they share a proto language because a plan of action is passed from AVA to the other. 

Many viewers must wonder why AVA is female in design and whether that's pure sexism on the part of the writer/director, but of course it is essential for the plot and the play of concepts including the machine's ability to seduce both the guys who have been programmed by culture to become captivated by the "object of sexual beauty/desire".

However Richard, the construction of the two humanoid robots, especially AVA, with her transparent body parts full of electro-chemical activity is a miracle of a concept unified in design and synthesis on film, an incredibly difficult technical demand. You can read all about that in production notes. AVA is perfectly actualised despite all the complex motion tracking mapping which was required to achieve the on-screen result.

 

Going back to the point about AVA's gender... that is also very smart, especially when compared with sex dolls and "femalised" robots as well as manicured seductive female voice chips in answering machines and such. 

But this film takes it one step further... the AVA fem-bot has been given "personality" and seductive attributes, but remains essentially an "it" in feminised form. When released from the prison in which "it" was created, "it" is then free to roam the world looking for targets to seduce and manipulate for its own purposes… there are many potential targets out there who will fall prey to its feminised charms just as Caleb and we too have been seduced by AVA.

So Richard, despite all the suspension of disbelief "credibility" gaps in plot points which may arise in any story or movie, I was entirely and utterly seduced by this film.

I'm so glad you finally got around to viewing it.

pt

From Richard:

Yes! Like you, I too was seduced.

 

The whole gender thing was so brilliantly dealt with because this was a story about ‘two bros’ in very much what has also been a real ‘bro culture’ — whether we like it or not. Nathan (played by the perfectly cast Oscar Isaac) set it up so well at the start by saying “Hey let’s drop the whole employee-employer thing, this is a week of just two bros hanging out”. 

And also, later, when Caleb questions the sexualised nature of these creations, Nathan simply states it was an easy obvious choice to run with, and something that suited him, in his god-like state.

 

Actually, I woke up this morning still mesmerised by the talent of Alex’s writing AND the impeccable acting of Ava (played by Alicia Vikander); those incredibly tiny movements of her face and eyes sensing and responding to Caleb during their conversations. Here she was listening and watching, picking up on his tiny, almost imperceptibly small nuances of facial inflections and ‘capturing’ meaning in it all.

 

How incredibly realistic in so many ways. A brilliant observation of how much more machines are ‘reading us’. At every turn we’re being examined. The frontier of the science of AI is expanding fractally into every crevice of possibility.

 

Early on, for example, basic voice recognition (as distinct from general noise and, say, music) was seen as a great achievement.

Now machines can ‘understand’ context and tone, and I suspect, even accents.

Early on, machines could only detect basic, large movement.

Even my 2018-model phone can detect faces and lock-onto them to properly focus and expose.

Name any area or attribute of human mastery and I’m convinced that there’s some boffin working in some corner of AI research to ensure that it will soon be also mastered by the machines. To see that combined in one Ava machine is incredible, but also not that much of a leap for us to make in our heads now.

 

But it also drives home that point about our distinctive position as human beings, and why that scene of Caleb cutting himself in the bathroom is so powerful and important. Is he going mad? He’s questioning, as we ourselves question what it means to be human. In fact Caleb throughout the movie is us — we see it all through him. What are WE? Ava is exposed, transparent in her machine-ness for all to see (making an extra twist in the whole Turing test — another thing Tess asked at the start, “But I thought the test was when the machine was hidden”, another moment which writer Alex Garland immediately answered on screen, addressing that very point). So now Caleb asks, if that’s what SHE is, what am I? Who are we? What does it mean to be human?

 

I think this is why this most profound and philosophically deep question of all is left to near the end.

 

Whether it’s ‘consciousness’ or not seems almost irrelevant. All three main characters seems equally capable of playing self-aware mind games with each other, manipulating and controlling, struggling to gain the upper-hand. I think writer Alex is suggesting – by having Caleb cut and bleed so much – that what makes us human is our EMBODIED-NESS. We are living, breathing, bleeding animals. That ‘living’ nature is both a deep mystery and a profoundly critical difference. And perhaps that’s what we’re all still trying to work out — why does that matter?  

Why does it matter if functionally, on the surface, it manifests the same way, if the stuff that machines can do is ultimately the same as what we can do. 

 

It’s a mighty fine question to leave us pondering.

 

What a triumph of a film.

rl

Me to Richard:

Well Richard, you have just written a new post for the blog! I'm so pleased you got on board with this fine work. Excellent writing and you cover pretty well all the issues. You should be reviewing films for the New York Times! 

 

One of my favourite moments is where AVA says "Lie!", so sweetly, so softly, so emphatically, and she turns the whole apple cart upside down on Caleb and on us!.

 

But really there are many profound moments throughout the film like where Ava sees her own face mask model in the corridor…

Another astonishing moment is when Nathan smashes Ava's arm in the corridor of horrors, leaving the dangling wires extending from her smashed arm... the moment where we the audience feel her shock at losing a limb. Yet another moment confronting us with our own "embodiment".

There's so much more we can say Richard... it's such a great piece of work.

pt

Richard to me:

Haha, too kind. 

I think the problem of reviewing films like this is that you end up revealing too much of the plot for anyone who hasn't watched it. Probably needs editing / grammatical fixing, but I'm fine if you want to post it. 

Cheers,

rl