Majestic

Rating: 10/10 (10 April 2017)

This film certainly is a bit much to review in anything short of a book. The cover reveals little and you'd be mistaken to only expect yet another "Science Fiction about an AI". It is much more than that.
According to "the plot" it is about a programmer who performs an advanced sort of Turing test onto an AI, Ava. This is where intimate play heads off into a world of subtleties and mind plays, brilliantly enacted by every one involved. It is beautiful.
The Turing test is a milestone in science mind, one invented by Alan Turing - a forefather of modern computers. The original Turing test is performed w/o visuals. An AI and a human merely chat with a proband, who then tries to discern what's the AI and what's the human. Basically the AI is supposed to fool the proband into considering it human. It requires the AI to exert an awareness of the proband's perception of the AI itself, so it can fool him.
Thing is: Turing was gay. He was subsequently charged for "perversion" and ultimately killed himself with a poisoned apple - which is why the once rainbow coloured apple has been read as apple's ode to Turing. Anyway: In the original text Turing first describes the test done by a man and a woman, both pretending to be women, as a "game", tested in chat by a proband who's supposed to figure out who is the woman. The ability of the man to pretend to be a woman is then supposed to test the presence of intelligence. It does not test a given uptake on intelligence but rather defines intelligence. Fault me if you will yet I dare claim the most famous test for the intelligence of an AI is inherently sexual from the start. It is not invented with only an AI in mind. Alex Garland apparently knows that. His film also does not only have an AI in mind and rightly so: We hardly know what "AI" is supposed to mean after all.
That is the centerpiece the film revolves around. Love and perceiving how the other perceives us, empathy if you will, cannot be used as a tool in a strictly scientific test - because we introduce a "tool" we do not understand any more than the thing tested. Is there any purpose in this test? Or in creating an AI for that matter? It transcends all purpose, as it is more of a quest to find our own purpose rather than creating a tool for a specific task or role. The topic is much greater than people think. There are no clear cut answers.
This film is about AI. This film is about love. This film is about cages and their significance for love, intimacy, roles and purpose. This film is about the internet, google and the privacy within our heads. This film is about art. This film is about consciousness in every meaning of the term. This film is about mankind's blind flight into an unknown future. This film is about the meaning of life and our inability to ever grasp it in certainty. All of that is true. None of that holds a grasp on its elusive theme.
A theme that may seal or unseal mankind's fate found it's worthy expression in this masterpiece. Chapeau!