#ex machina
“You decided to be straight? Please! Of course you were programmed, by nature or nurture or both and to be honest, Caleb, you’re starting to annoy me now because this is your insecurity talking, this is not your intellect.”
–Ex Machina (2014) dir. Alex Garland
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Robots That Have Feelings
“Westworld” wasn’t the first show to give robots feelings, and it won’t be the last.
Ava was a rat in a maze. And I gave her one way out. To escape, she’d have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did. Now, if that isn’t true AI, what the fuck is?
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Ex Machina (2014) Showtime
Shin Godzilla (2016) VOD
Mimic (1997) Cinemax
The Host (2006) Prime
Jurassic Park (1993) HBOmax
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Ex-Machina is the brilliant undertaking of Alex Garland. It’s his directorial debut, and it is a lot of hype to live up to; considering, this film blows away all expectations.
A billionaire prodigy (Nathan) created a search engine called Bluebook that is used by over 90% of all internet users. He invites one of his employees (Caleb) to his estate that is built into an undisclosed location. He has him interact with a female AI (Ava) that he created and only the two now know of, as part of his first human trials outside of himself to test the AI’s compatibility with a stranger.
The film’s scenic value creates a lot of symbolism against Nathan as one notices that his subterranean estate is built into a mountain side alongside a river. His actual house however is one to marvel at as it resembles those fantastical modern architectural dreams only a billionaire would be able to afford, but others get to see pictures of on social media. But alas arriving to the point; it represents irony as the man truly enjoys nature as it is no accident that he built his own self sustaining generator so he can survive on his own proprietary energy devoid of outsiders. This balance of nature and technology shows just how much he wishes to combine the two — even though the creation of AI goes against the very nature he so likes to live in.
This film is the perfect example of what happens when one plays god and tries to quantify emotions into technology. Human emotions are one of the greater mysteries of life as people can be just as predictable and unpredictable in the choices and actions they make and or take. Once you give a blueprint to how one can manipulate human emotions it will create a sense of chaos as history proves; people do not like to be controlled or manipulated to do things outside of their own control.
Much like what is going on today as search engines are forced to give up our data to the government soon there will be an algorithm to humanity; we are already slowly seeing it in “targeted ads” via “cookies” stored on our computers.
As the story unfolds (without spoilers) we come to learn that our very own emotions can ultimately deceive us.
One thing of note to all philosophy buffs. At a certain point in the movie we witness Ava and her eagerness to see the world outside of her room. Nathan, being the creator detaches himself from having any emotional attachment to his creations as he has the ability to see it as exactly that, and he tries to control too much (a classic characteristic of all tech gurus) he tends to overlook his own folly, in that he created a being that can quantify human emotions and calculate God knows how many different scenarios at once before arriving to one they are satisfied with in their own sound logic, which is that of a sense of reasoning without emotion. Going back to the philosophical part; there is a scene in the movie where we see only shadows of people moving. Much like Plato’s Cave, it is a link to show that Ava knowing all there is to know about the world without seeing it, yearns to experience it for herself but much like the prisoners chained to the walls of the cave, she too is held captive in Nathan’s estate, only to have all the knowledge of the world without actually experiencing it.
Ex-Machina is a great film about the consequences we must suffer in our never-ending quest to seek knowledge and push the boundaries of humanity and just what it means to accept the limitations we as humans have.
“No fate but what me make.” -Sarah Connor
*Sidenote all this time I thought the actor playing Nathan (Oscar Isaac) was David Krumholtz and kept thinking throughout the movie, “you’ve come a long way since Santa Claus” but then Buzzfeed told me that they’re two different people, lol.
4/4
Alex Garland, director and screenwriter, and Alicia Vikander, playing Ava, on the set of Ex Machina
Ex Machina
Regia/Directed by: Mark Day
Sceneggiatura/Screenplay by: Mark Day
Montaggio/Edited by: Mark Day
Fotografia/Cinematography: Rob Hardy
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 78
IMDb: 7,7
Letterboxd: 4.0
Anno/Year: 2014
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