"Ex Machina" (2015)

is one of those movies after watching, it sits really heavy on you. The story blends a lot of elements from other movies. “A.I.” & “THX-1138” come to mind. But is an example as to using a very overused idea and making it your own.

The story is of a programmer who wins his company’s “lottery.” The prize is to analyze a robot who has artificial intelligence. It was created by a fictitious yet very familiar mega-brain who is also an alcoholic in training. Or to stave off boredom he uses booze, since his brain works at high levels. The programmer has six days to figure out if this robot has the capacity to function as a normal human being. In other words, interact with it to see if it can be human.

These types of movies have always struck me as heady. Nerd arguments are based on this. But it’s not a nerd’s film. What is the point of making artificial intelligence act like humans when humans are what you’re trying to replicate.  So they can excel in what? Living longer? Why? Breaking the boundaries of technology? What’s left after human “essence?” To me, it seems to trickle down to the negative. Which is what “Terminator” was about. If robots can think like us, then what is our purpose then?

This would be a great compendium to “Her’ in that it fulfills a lot of why people are fascinated by artificial intelligence when it comes to romance. Love and flirting are something innate in animals. How would a database ever figure out what that means? To analyze that information , process function back to us its meaning is unique. Something a computer could potentially grasp, but if man created the ability to fall in love, where is the part of us that believe it to come from the spirit and not from some program? In other words, say I created a woman to love you, I made her love you, and so you don’t feel the love the way you should. Because it wasn’t by free will or choice. Or could it be? This is the nerd-gasm aspect of creating someone to love you (or in some cases lust after you).

To a cynic, we are a lost cause. Humanity is a shell of what the future holds. If you stop to consider how limited we are, as it sometimes states in the movie, we are no better than how we see our predecessors. But that’s not what we’re completely dealing with here. This movie tackles a form of love we have with technology. And how, using random responses based on data, the new computer has to capacity to be beyond all our bullshit. Humanity lacks a lot of core logic. But in its fragmented state, we are gifted with putting sense to it. To me, that is worthy of our arrogance. Or is it?

It’s a dark movie to be sure. But, what I LOVED about it, is that it reaffirms a love of filmmaking. Yes, it is filmmaking despite my disgust with digital originating storytelling. This convinced me there is a place for digital. It is for something as clinical as this movie. The fine edges. The seemingly plastic quality to the story. The digital texture adds to the artificial construct of the environment. It all adds up to a cerebral study of man surround of nature, but trying to conquer it.