Ex Machina: Pure Postmodern Filmmaking

It's no secret that sci-fi is one of my favorite genres. Though I was raised consuming volumes of fantasy novels, sci-fi is cut from the same cloth. A good science fiction story draws upon enough believable material to make us engage with the story, with some good imagination and speculation to draw us into deeper, unknown, and perhaps bolder territory. I just saw a great example of how science fiction engages our deepest, very human questions, asking us to think and feel familiar things while venturing into new narrative territory. But before I talk about the film I'll give you a little background on why (and how) I came to love the genre.

The journey began with some classic novels new and old (although science fiction is a relatively new genre, coming to prominence only in the middle of the 20th century). Some highlights include Frank Herbert's 1965 masterpiece Dune, where I followed the Messiah-like Paul Atreides on his quest to seek justice for the injuries against his house on the spectacular future world of Arrakis. The movie and miniseries really didn't do it any justice, and the closest thing that would have approached a meaningful adaptation was Alejandro Jodorowsky's failed effort that stalled out in the 1970s before any film ever rolled. The novel itself is a sprawling work of imagination, an epic scale that spawned a variety of sequels and lore that rivals the greatest of fantasy worlds. Newer to the scene are two novels from the last twenty years: Michael F. Flynn's 2006 effort Eifelheim and Maria Doria Russell's 1996 novel The Sparrow. Flynn's novel is closer to the hard science fiction that Michael Crichton popularized by sprinkling in real-world scientific inquiry into the wild adventures of his characters. His takes place in a split timeline following a group of scientists, one a physicist and the other a 'historical mathematician' investigating anomalies in some archaeological data from medieval Germany. The other storyline follows a parish priest in the titular village in Germany that happens upon a group of aliens that are stranded following their spacecraft's crash. Russell's novel takes the theme of faith and science further in her story about a Jesuit priest recalling the horrific story of his journey to an alien planet where he returns after all his co-sojourners die on the journey. I recommend both novels to probe deep questions of how our worldview can open up in the face of seemingly impossible events, but also how personal faith need not be irrelevant in the face of an expanding (and seemingly oppressive) universe.

Although sci-fi movies had always been in my mind (and I don't really count Star Wars or Jurassic Park, which have become so ubiquitous that they transcend the genre), I only began to find the good ones later on. My favorite film remains Alfonso Cuarón amazing Children of Men, following a reluctant hero on a journey through a hopeless future landscape to save humanity from dying out. I won't ruin the movie here, but I'll tell you now: it requires repeat viewings. Lately I've also enjoyed Spike Jonze's tome on Artificial Intelligence Her, as well as Christopher Nolan's space odyssey Intersteller. 

Today, though, I saw a great example of how science fiction (and really, any good story) can engage deep questions about human development at an intimate, individual level, but also at a macro-level that encompasses all of human consciousness. Ex Machina marks director Alex Garland's debut at the helm, although he's been involved in great films like 28 Days Later and Sunshine. This is another tale where A.I. plays a central role, but the female bot at the center of the story is far removed from the breezy and sultry program voiced by Scarlett Johanssen in Her.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

We follow the young programmer Caleb (played by the up-and-coming Irish actor Domnhall Gleeson) who wins a contest and travels to the remote refuge of his company's President, played by Oscar Isaac (from Inside Llewyn Davis and the upcoming Star Wars film.) Caleb's host Nathan is a hard-drinking, overly casual macho-man who we first see wailing on a punching bag in the back of his hyper-modern estate tucked into a mountain valley. Although every other word Nathan speaks to Caleb is "dude," it becomes quickly apparent that his brains are quite there. Nathan, you see, made his riches at the helm of the largest search engine on the planet, overpowering even Google's statistics. He reveals that his elaborate estate is really a research facility, and Caleb has been selected to test his latest project years in the making: an artificial consciousness. Caleb will be the human subject in the "Turing Test," designed to test the machine's ability to make him forget he is interacting with a program. When Caleb has his first session with Ava, as the A.I. is known, we are immediately bewitched. Swedish actress Alicia Vikander brings her dancing background to bear to render an incredible personality for Ava. Yes, Caleb remarks, it's like talking to a human lie detector, but he seems to almost wish that she catches him in a lie until she begins, well, flirting with him. He processes each session with Nathan and they talk about the possibility of Ava faking her attraction to him in order to get what she wants. It's only a true test of awareness, true intelligence, and consciousness, if Ava is able to 'test' Caleb as well, Nathan explains. After Nathan drinks too much one night, Caleb sneaks into the security mainframe and finds video evidence that Nathan has been abusing Ava. Later, he finds footage of several other female A.Is that have all been built and since deactivated. Caleb resolves to help Ava escape when she asks him. This is when the film's final act jerks us into high-gear thriller territory. Nathan is killed at the hands of Ava and another A.I. that masquerades as a mute servant girl, slumping to the floor in a pool of blood but seemingly baffled by the irony of his own demise. At the film's climax, Ava dresses herself in a skin covering, dons a realistic wig and clothes, and escapes via helicopter, leaving Caleb locked in his room screaming to be let out. In a piece of dramatic filmmaking, Garland focuses on Ava's face as Caleb screams from behind the glass. The elevator doors close and Ava leaves without even acknowledging him until the very last second, where there is a subtle look of pride that vanishes as the screen cuts to her exploring the forest outside for the first time. Caleb has been played, and it cost him everything.

Caleb, at left, and Nathan, at right, in the research facility.

Through the movie Nathan isn't so much the megalomaniacal mad scientist, but rather the result of an over-connected world venturing into the dark corners of scientific advancement. He goes on a treatise about Jackson Pollack to demonstrate that without randomness and irrationality, no great thing could ever be accomplished. He seems to think that Ava and artificial consciousness is inevitable, and he might as well be at its start. Caleb seems to be the good guy, until he is clearly manipulated by both Nathan and Ava to his ultimate doom. Throughout the film, Garland intersperses the talk of A.I. with shots of the spectacular Norwegian countryside where production occurred, shots of misty snowcapped peaks, waterfalls, trees, and rivers. We're asked to meditate on the meaning of creation, and where our own ventures place us alongside the cosmic story of birth and death. There is a minimalism that marks the film, whether in the spare hallways of Nathan's estate or the contrasting palette of grays and silvers inside versus the striking green outside. Up and down even provide a motif in the cinematography. The last shot of the film shows Ava's shadow interspersed with others at a traffic intersection, shown in silhouette from the setting sun. It causes us to question right and wrong, and who the winner in this story really is.

Throughout this story we are presented with a very postmodern portrait of reality, one where technology is no longer the good guy and no clear answers are given. In my work we ask the question about how many students engage the bigger questions with a lens of subjectivity, lost for objective truth in a world with so many answers (or none) to their questions. But at the heart of postmodernism (which many of those in my faith tradition miss) isn't simply skepticism, it's a reaction against the relentless progress that has characterized our species since the agricultural revolution took us from a hunter-gatherer band no different from many other mammals to a landscape altering force of nature. Garland suggests that, when left to our devices, our "godlikeness" will inevitably mimic nature itself, including nature's cycles of destruction and rebirth. Even noble intentions (and wit, improvisation, and intelligence) aren't going to matter at the end of the day. When even machines can possess consciousness and control their own destinies, what does our humanity even mean? This is a similar question posed by Tubal-cain in Darren Aronofsky's Noah, an underrated biblical movie that deals with similar themes of man's place in a world seemingly abandoned by the Creator.

To be sure, there is no "Tears in the Rain" speech here. We even begin to distrust our emotions at the horror of Ava's triumph over her creator. Hadn't we been as smitten with her as Caleb? Is there any such thing as hope when this future seems, as Nathan would put it, inevitable? I take Garland's film as cautionary, not prescriptive. I happen to belong to the crowd of post-postmoderns, whose consciousness evolves from the reaction against even this type of wandering. I believe in objective truth, shaped not by our creations but by the Creator's image apparent in us. But this step is necessary for those of us who otherwise give no more thought to the technology we take for granted every day. What will it take to learn to see the world right side up, or in full blown color, as Caleb says in the film, when our whole lives have been lived in black and white?

***Content warning: This is definitely a grown-up movie. There is some fairly graphic (female) nudity here, although not any explicit sex. There's also a bloody scene that might make some squeamish. Not for the faint of heart.