A riveting, intelligent, and thought-provoking film

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2015)

Is consciousness simply a name we use to group together the brain's activities under a general and abstract heading, or is it something independent of its functionality?" Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick reflects the scientific consensus when he says that a "person's mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make up and influence them." Others question, however, whether the brain actually produces consciousness or simply reflects the source from which it springs. British director Alex Garland raises the issue of the nature of consciousness and whether or not it can be created artificially in the science-fiction thriller Ex Machina, his first feature film.
The title reflects the Latin phrase deus ex machina, which refers to the idea of man playing God (or perhaps just being himself). In the film, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), the CEO of Blue Book, the world's largest search engine, has created an operational female robot known as Ava (Alicia Vikander). With a sleek, mechanical body fitted with transparent wires, Ava is possessed of an all too human face marked by a graceful beauty. When Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a highly intelligent Blue Book programmer ostensibly wins a lottery at his job, he is invited to spend a week at Nathan's isolated Alaskan research facility without a clear understanding of the purpose. When he arrives, he is met by a bearded, slightly sinister-looking man going through his workouts with a punching bag.
The facility is a complex maze of mirrors, doors that look like bank vaults, and the overall feel of a claustrophobic military compound which Nathan says contains "enough fiber optic cable to go to the moon and lasso it." After telling Caleb to consider him his friend not his boss and calling him "dude," Nathan tells him that he will be the first outside visitor that Ava has interacted with. His task will be to administer the "Turing Test" to Ava to determine whether or not she can think and feel with real emotions. Issues such as whether AIs can have an actual experience of awareness or just talk about it are not raised. Neither are the questions: If Ava passes the Turing Test, will she be aware that she has passed the test, and is self-awareness the same as answering questions intelligently? The conversations between human and machine are the defining moments of the film. As the interviews begin, Ava is in a glass-walled observation room that Nathan can witness via closed circuit cameras. One of the first things she says is, "You can see that I am a machine," something he did not need to be convinced of. As they proceed with the interviews, it becomes less and less certain as to who is the one being tested. As Ava appears to become more and more human with each session, Caleb is not immune to her charms, especially when Nathan tells him she is capable of having sex.
A shadow of mistrust falls between him and Nathan, however, when Caleb learns that he was preselected for the job instead of being chosen in a lottery and senses that his host may have a hidden agenda. This uneasiness is reinforced when he watches the intimidating Nathan abusing Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), a servant whom Nathan has suggested is silent but who understands his commands. When there is a power outage and they believe that he can no longer overhear their conversations, Ava tells Caleb not to trust Nathan, that he is "not your friend," a piece of information that ups the tension and suggests Ava has fears for her survival, an all-too-human trait.
Superbly rendered by cinematographer Rob Hardy and production designer Mark Digby, and supported by an unsettling score by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, Ex Machina is a riveting, intelligent, and thought-provoking film that plays on both our hopes for the evolution of mankind and our deepest fears. Though Garland does not see the film as a cautionary tale, it does suggest that, regardless of our cutting-edge technology, if we are still bound by ego-driven patriarchal power games that lack a moral imperative, the achievement could be counter-productive. While the film rightly suggests that we can envision a future where intelligent machines with a capacity for reason can reshape the world as we know it, it may behoove us to first understand what consciousness really is before trying to induce it.