Review of Ex Machina (2015) by Bradcheng — 11 May 2015

I was anxious to see “Ex Machina” as soon as the trailer made it’s appearance on the Web. It seemed a dark film. Foreboding. The stuff of heady sci-fi. Would it deliver the kind of punch to the groin that the great cautionary tales of the past like “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” “1984,” “Metropolis,” “The Andromeda Strain,” and “2001” mustered?

There’s always been a kind of thoughtfulness and restraint that accompanies classic science fiction. It’s both clinical as a white lab coat — asking that you listen intently to the theories being sermonized — and stodgily respectable as a tweed-fitted professor. I’ll admit I was anxious to sign up for the lecture “Ex Machina” promised, as it dangled the fascinating subject of AI and the singularity as its subject: the stuff of Golden Age dreams and worlds of wonder.

But, alas, as the film rolled, the podium stood empty. In place of learned professor someone had rolled up a TV monitor and tired Betamax machine, apparently supplied with the wrong cassette, paper bagged and quietly pulled from beneath a counter. As “Ex Machina” played on, my heart sank as I realized the tale was to be less Asimov and more servo-driven de Sade. Despite occasional snippets of debate on what it means to be human, “Ex Machina’s” story is little more than damsel-with-pneumatic-limbs in distress melodrama. It’s more akin to a creaky gothic horror story than a glimpse into the future. The transcendence of artificial intelligence and it’s implications are hardly touched upon and instead “Ex Machina” focuses on a story as hoary as any bodice ripper that’s been penned.

A slightly mad (and hungover) genius programmer with a Net tycoon’s ten-figure-bank account (Oscar Isaac reprising his tough-kid-from-Brooklyn persona from “Inside Llewyn Davis“) has secluded himself on an impossibly large piece of real estate, a surprisingly claustrophobic piece of architecture, despite a presumed love of the great outdoors. In his private bunker, Isaac’s has created a Bluebeard’s (the name of his company is Bluebook) high-tech boudoir of female automatons that he keeps prisoner in pursuit of — presumably — the perfect companion. The young visitor who knocks innocently at the imposing door of his castle (Irish-actor Domhnall Gleeson, mimicking the boyish lilt of Matthew Modine) — like a naive traveler from a Poe tale, or soon-to-be-drained Jonathan Harker — suddenly finds himself inexplicable drawn to an eerie, yet comely young maiden (Icelandic waif Alicia Vikander), who may or may not be a prisoner. The lord of the castle has tasked this young traveler with determining if the maiden is indeed worthy of human devotion, because she is, in fact, yet another mechanical sex toy he’s cobbled together. It’s almost like the set up to a dirty joke. And there’s a cloying tawdriness that permeates the film and its story of a sweet-faced robot held prisoner by her Google-Age Doctor Frankenstein.

Gleeson’s and Vikander’s behind-glass-walls relationship — the centerpiece of the film — is half-Times Square peep show, half speed dating, and, unfortunately, where the science fiction gets swallowed by pulp fiction. For a young programmer with an interest in logic, Gleeson seems to soon abandon his. Despite being charged with administering a test of intelligence, Gleeson fails his own miserably. Even with the knowledge that she’s more Linux than Ligeia, he lets her chipset of charms fool him into thinking what she needs is a white knight and not a hard restart. Instead of probing the workings of Vicander’s mind, he spends most of the time talking to her like he’s in a slow dance at the high school prom. And speaking of dancing, the one of the film’s most remarked-on scenes is an impromptu, perfectly synched disco number between Isaacs and a lithe Asian android he’s put on mute. While undeniably fun, that fact that it’s about the only scene to raise”Ex Machina” out of its numbness, portends badly of the film having less of a real pulse than its heroine. Fresh ideas in are scant supply in “Ex Machina” and whether or not Garland was intentionally channeling his tale of lust for nuts and bolts from Olympia in “The Tales of Hoffman,” Maria in “Metropolis,” or the uber-sexbot Kris from “Bladerunner,” its lack of invention keeps the film badly grounded in its pseudo-grindhouse scenario.

Garland’s locked-in-a-dungeon script, coupled with a plentiful tableaux of supple artificial flesh, eventually feels less and less like a exploration of the new millenium’s scariest possibility than a peek into a folder of inappropriate Victoriana. That’s why as I science fiction purist, I felt myself increasingly pulling away from “Ex Machina.” About 20 minutes into the movie my hopes sank for seeing a smart little sci-fi film, when realized I wasn’t going to be treated to speculation, but titillation.