A strong, confident debut.

Rating: 9/10 (27 April 2015)

Artificial intelligence is not only a possibility at this point—it's an inevitability. With people screaming at their iPhones for Siri to get them directions to the nearest steakhouse, it might as well already be here. Yet in between the films that show the advent of A.I. as a doomsday scenario (think Terminator), or those that show it as opening the doors for potential comedy (think Chappie), few think about the philosophical implications of such a moment.
What happens when an artificial consciousness is created? Does it seek freedom to make its own choices? Does it desire to be human, or to advance itself and make itself obsolete (unlike organic creations, machines are designed to be refined and bettered, so this sort of fabricated, accelerated evolution will inevitably spell doom for the first A.I. just when it seeks to propagate itself)? Can an artificial being genuinely love . . . and if it can, can it also fake it?
These are the questions posed by Ex Machina, a sleek, sensual cocktail of Pygmalion and Frankenstein written and directed by Sunshine scribe Alex Garland. Set in the painfully near (it might as well be next week) future, an A.I. has indeed been created, but before its existence is announced to the world, it needs to undergo a Turing test (as fans of The Imitation Game will recall, that is the examination one gives to a machine to determine if it can successfully pass as human). So the A.I.'s uber-reclusive creator decides to bring in a third party to administer this test. Enter Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a shy, introverted—aren't they always?—coder who works for the creator's company in Initech-esque anonymity until his name is plucked from a lottery for a one-week jaunt to the boss's jungle compound.
When Caleb arrives (by chopper, no less; meeting the boss is like traveling to Jurassic Park), he has no idea what his role is . . . especially when he meets the mogul himself. Nathan (a bald, bearded, deliciously scene-stealing Oscar Isaac) is Steve Jobs mixed with Howard Hughes and juiced up by a laissez-faire frat-bro persona. Nathan's a fascinating character; he lives in seclusion with only a mute Japanese housemaid (an alluringly riveting Sonoya Mizono) for company, and yet he is the sort of guy you'd love to kick back and hang out with. His heavily extroverted presence is definitely at odds with Caleb's awkwardness; that is quickly mitigated when Nathan meets Ava.
Ava, by the way, is the A.I. Nathan has constructed. Rather than an OS voice like Her's Samantha, Ava is a full-body construct, played with powerful sensitivity and fragility by Alicia Vikander. At once a natural beauty and at the same time clearly artificial (several parts of Ava's body are stripped of skin, revealing the fascinating intricacies of her android innards), Ava knocks Caleb for a loop. Caleb is to have seven sessions with Ava, in order to see if she passes the Turing test. Throughout the week, he spends time with Ava, bonding with her, trying to see what makes her tick. Before long, however, it becomes less about trying to find what she is and more about who she is, and Caleb begins to wonder if perhaps the test is less about her and more about him. He begins to suspect there is more to this experiment than just a simple Q&A. Despite Nathan's beer- swilling and backslapping, Caleb can't shake the feeling that something is off about the whole thing . . . and, of course, he starts to wonder what will happen if Ava fails the test.
Garland, whose screenplay history include two of Danny Boyle's best films, lends a much more stately approach to his directorial debut. The film takes its time, finding the vulnerabilities in its characters without feeling the need to frame them in claustrophobic close-ups. Indeed, part of the pleasure of Ex Machina is the loving care the film takes with its cinematography. The lush exteriors of Nathan's jungle Shangri-La, the gentle hues of its electronic walls and floors, all of it feels so pleasant to the eye without feeling intrusive and showy. The compound is as much of a character is its four inhabitants.
Speaking of, all four of our characters are perfectly cast. Gleeson's scrawny melancholia is a stark contrast to the muscular, overpowering energy Isaac brings to the show. Mizono, who never utters a single word throughout the piece, drifts through the film like an ethereal spirit who nevertheless speaks volumes with a single stare. And then there's Vikander, whose hushed baby-bird performance belies something much more serious at play. If Ava can reason, then she should know what happens if she were to fail the test— and Ava reasons that if she passes, that does not necessarily spare her from that fate (machines, after all, always have a few bugs to be worked out).
Ex Machina has a few hiccups along the way. At one point, a character has a crisis of self-identity and carves into their own arm to ensure they are flesh-and-blood, rather than mesh-and-circuit; while interesting in its own right, this moment comes out of nowhere and leaves without any sort of believable build-up or payoff. It would've made for an interesting directional shift, but the film doesn't take that route, and so we're left with a potential scene that feels like a path to an alternate ending that is quite jarring. But for the most part, the film keeps on its steady course, building up to an ending both fantastic and frustrating.
Ex Machina feels very much like a Philip K. Dick novel if someone wiped away the grunge. It's tactile, sterile . . . and at the same time, gentle.