Ex Machina (2015): A Smart Sci-fi That Will Creep You Out
Originally posted on phrasingcinema.blogspot.com on June 29, 2015.
I remember watching a 1958 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents titled Design For Loving. I was very creeped out by how the story develops. It’s a story of a man who buys a robot double of himself and ends up having his place taken permanently by the robot because it falls in love with his wife and wants to be living freely as a human being. That kind of story, which I’d like to name it “Humans vs Technology” or “Humans vs Their Creations”, is what I consider to be one of the scariest stories I’ve ever seen. And, Ex Machina has it.
Ex Machina tells the story about a young programmer, Caleb (played by Domhnall Gleeson), who’s got selected by his CEO, Nathan (played by Oscar Isaac), to spend a week at his private mansion. It turns out that Caleb is invited to do the Turing Test on Ava (played by Alicia Vikander), Nathan’s artificial intelligence, without knowing that it’s not only Ava that’s being tested.
From the very first scene of Ex Machina, I could already smell the tone of it; dark and creepy. I was thinking, “this is not going to be like those sci-fi films where we see spaceships and all those hi-tech devices and stunning visual effects that amaze us.” We don’t see those stuffs in it. You might remember watching sci-fi films in all bright colors, but Ex Machina stays in dark colors. I think it’s because of the story is also dark, and deep. The dark colors they use represent it well. This film doesn’t celebrate the advanced technology and science, thus it doesn’t show all the lights and bright colors. It brings sci-fi to a deeper level, and by ‘deeper’ I mean it talks about the growing technology and humankind in a more realistic, and intense way. It doesn’t need stormy fight scenes between humankind and machines as a reference to the possibility that our own technology might turn their back against us and “destroy” us. It just needs discussions. Yes, seeing this film is like listening to a lot of discussions about humankind, advanced technology and science, and how those two things need each other and try to win over each other at the same time. A lot of profound discussions, but still they don’t look like boring college lectures. We see Nathan and Caleb having a conversation with a bottle of beer in their hand, but actually there’s a deep discussion inside it. And it’s smart, that discussion. You might want to nod it, though. Thanks to Alex Garland for writing this smart script.
The other thing that’s smart is the acting. All the actors give absolutely astonishing performances. I was very impressed by the way Alicia Vikander plays a humanoid robot. The way she moves all of her body parts including lips, and the way she talks…., it’s all very robotic yet not too stiff. It’s perfect. Even her face expressions are very convincing. Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac are also spectacular. Their emotions, ingenuity, and chemistry look very real and natural. All the actors put such perfect emotions into each and every scene that it looks very intimate, and creepy. But thanks to Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow also for composing gloomy music score. The score was the first smart thing about this film that I discovered, though. And also one of the first creepy things I discovered.
This film is smart, yes. It brings the issue about “Humankind vs Their Technology” in a clever, truest way. It focuses more on the emotions that both human beings and robots are feeling, on the war they’re fighting with themselves inside their brains. Their fear of rejection and replacement. What they think about extinction, and how it might be coming towards them in minutes. Because the robots with artificial intelligence humans created, are getting better and better, and smarter than humans. Is it possible that one day those robots are going to take our place, doing all of our works we used to do by ourselves? Don’t look too far in the future, it’s already happening now, isn’t it? Ex Machina discusses it all, from the creation of robots themselves to the possibility of our own extinction. It’s very creepy, because it’s the fact we are and will be dealing with, it’s something that might be happening in the near future. It’s creepy because it stays simple, it stays true to the reality. It doesn’t exaggerate. The closer it gets to the reality, the creepier it looks.
Ex Machina gets creepier and creepier every minute, and the tension between the characters goes tighter as the film goes on. It’s like, it’s strangling you throughout the film without mercy. In fact, until the very last minute of this film, the tension doesn’t seem to get looser. You’ll never know who’s the villain and who’s the nice one. The discussion is still going on, huh? What a very fun and smart film to watch.
My final rating: 9/10.
