With Ex-Machina, Alex
Garland has written and directed not a great film, but a very good one. Among the cast, Alicia Vikander stands out, giving
her artificially intelligent Ava a very human quality.
Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a programmer in a highly
successful search engine company created by IT genius and now reclusive
billionaire Nathan (Oscar Isaac).
One day he finds out that he has won the first prize in a
competition, spending a weekend with Nathan on his estate. It does not take
long for Nathan to reveal that he plans to let Caleb in on his secret
Artificial Intelligence project: the creation of an artefact indistinguishable
from a human being in body and mind. Caleb’s job will be to spend time with Nathans
latest prototype, the lovely Ava (Alicia Vikander), to assess by interviewing
her to what extent Nathan has achieved what he has set out to do.
Artificial Intelligence is the theory and development of
computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence,
such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation
between languages. To this Nathan has added some abilities one might describe
as emotional intelligence and put it all in a very attractive package.
Artificial Intelligence as a discipline is already far advanced so that science
fiction films like this are visions of a potential not so distant future.
Of course, as we know since the legends of all time (Pygmalion,
the Golem) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein such beings tend to develop ideas of
their own. Two nerdy men and an artificially intelligent woman or two is the
kind of ménage- à-trois +, that gives the screen-play writer quite a few possibilities
– and Alex Garland has used them quite skilfully to create not a great film,
but a very good one.
Ex_Machina is an entertaining and suspenseful story about an
important issue that our children or grandchildren may very well have to address
in real life. The film works as a thriller but beyond that, raises important
questions about society and technology.
Not least the topical question of how nerdy internet billionaires will
decide to spend their sheer inexhaustible private resources without any
effective democratic involvement, checks and balances, let alone controls of
ethical boundaries.
Among the acting performances, Alicia Vikander stands out, giving
her artificial character a very human quality.
