Novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland makes a confident directorial debut with Ex Machina, a sleek, intelligent sci-fi thriller that explores the ramifications of artificial intelligence with far more depth and moral questioning than any film before it. Many sci-fi films feature the development of AI only as a sort of fundamental trespass, with any violent repercussions feeling almost deserved as a punishment for hubris. But Garland is more scientifically engaged and even-handed; as a character notes, the development of some kind of AI has been inevitable for decades, so the only question is how. But that tiny word, ‘how,’ contains multitudes of moral decisions. If scientists are creating the equivalent of a human intellect, who governs their conduct towards these intelligences? What rights do AIs possess? Ex Machina is the first film to face that moral quandary straight on.
Domhnhall Gleeson stars as Caleb, a talented programmer working for a Google-esque search engine giant, who wins a lottery to visit the remote home of the company’s mysterious, brilliant, fantastically wealthy founder, Nathan (Oscar Isaac). Caleb is astounded at his luck and even more thrilled after he travels to Nathan’s estate, a fortress seamlessly integrated into the Northern wilderness, and learns that the lottery wasn’t for a vacation, but to pick someone to give a Turing Test (testing the viability of AI) to Ava (Alicia Vikander), a highly advanced AI that Nathan has spent years developing. But Caleb’s excitement begins to curdle into suspicion towards his omnipotent host, especially when Ava uses a rare moment of privacy to warn him, “he’s not your friend.”
For all my talk of AI and science fiction, Ex Machina doesn’t always feel like a sci-fi flick; its emotional claustrophobia owes as much to classic novels like Rebecca or Jane Eyre, tales of naïve outsiders entering the homes of powerful hosts with secrets. Gleeson capably plays the audience surrogate, but his two co-stars steal the show. Isaac’s Nathan is unforgettable – brilliant, but also somewhat vulgarly masculine, a heavy drinker who spends most of the film bare-chested in sweats, with a blunt demeanor that hides more than it reveals. With Ava, Garland and Vikander have created a unique AI character that will surely be remembered with the great movie robots; she’s coy, sensitive, and may or may not be falling in love with Caleb. Ava has more raw intelligence than Caleb does, but is also stunted from having never interacted with the outside world.
Caleb is caught in a highly secure, highly remote compound with a man he doesn’t trust and an AI he might love (though she was created by Nathan). Ex Machina cleverly exploits this scenario for both suspense and emotion, distilling decade’s worth of scientific anxiety over AIs into one of the best films of 2015.
