The plot: As a result of a company raffle, programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is invited to the private estate of his employer Nathan (Oscar Isaac) to be part of something great. Nathan wants Caleb to administer the Turing test, a means to determine if an AI is equivalent to a human, to his latest creation: An android called Ava (Alicia Vikander). Over the course of seven days, Caleb will interview Ava to determine if Nathan has indeed developed a sentient robotic lifeform.
There’s a trend that keeps popping up with certain
filmmakers that clearly shows that some directors genuinely feel more
comfortable as a writer than as a director. I like to call it
‘scriptsploitation’: Word-savvy filmmakers who primarily focus on shooting what
are essentially filmed conversations between characters, pretty much making a
film that would work just as well as a radio play or even as a novel. Not to
say that this is automatically bad: Some of my favourite filmmakers like Kevin
Smith and Joss Whedon operate primarily in that style; it’s just something I’ve
noticed. This is also a main reason why directors like Smith and Whedon do end up taking the director’s seat:
Because who better to handle how a script is delivered and realised than the
person who wrote it? Well, a good
script, at least? In this capacity, Garland does exceptionally well at the helm
of this film.
Going just by the dialogue here, I can only assume that
Garland has watched a lot of bad sci-fi in his life. Specifically, the kind of
bad sci-fi that is riddled with plot holes and doesn’t end up holding up to
scrutiny. What brings this across is how the characters actively question what
is happening around them. If a plot hole exists in the film’s framework,
particularly involving the whos and whys, the film itself addresses it.
However, that’s not to say that the film will just apply the brakes to give
exposition. Instead, it waits until it is appropriate for the characters
in-film to realise it and, considering this film is all about asking questions
in the first place, it feels disarmingly natural as a result. Hell, it even
gets to a point where the question crops up long in advance of being
acknowledged but, when it’s answered later on in the film, it doesn’t feel like
the script is failing to catch up with its audience. When we see scars on
Caleb’s back, it doesn’t immediately cut to a flashback where we learn how he
gets them as an ordinary film would do; instead, we learn the causes of those
marks through natural conversation when a suitable line of questioning is
brought up.
What makes the near-constant questioning about the nature of
AI and humanity not only work, but work brilliantly, goes back to my running
theory about Garland learning from the mistakes of his predecessors. With certain
sci-fi writers, especially those who are overtly positive of their own
intelligence, what characters end up saying comes across far less like
conversation and more like drug-addled naval gazing, e.g. "Yo, what if, like, we
were robots but, like, didn’t realise it, you know?" Here, the espousing and
musings about the line between computers and humans come across in dialogue
that feels like what would come up in actual
conversations about the subject. This is helped by the actors, as Gleeson,
Isaac and Vikander are all fantastic at delivering the lines they are given.
Caleb’s slow growth of understanding about his surroundings and his
circumstances is conveyed very well by Gleeson, Nathan’s egocentricity as well
as his intuition about human emotions are done expertly through Isaac’s
delivery, and Vikander shows Ava’s knowledge concerning her environment as well
as her own identity fantastically.
At this film’s core is the need to have the audience
unconditionally invest themselves in the events taking place, as if they were
actually happening. It’s an old-school rule of science fiction that creators
have one impossible thing that is clearly made-up, yet surrounded by so much
believability that the fact it is impossible becomes irrelevant. Aside from the
acting and sharp writing, the overall production is determined to make you
believe it exists and does so amazingly well. The effects work done for the
robotics is phenomenal, with Millennium FX, Milk Visual Effects and our old
friends Double Negative well and truly selling the idea that we are watching an
android on screen. It’s a little wonky when it comes to showing blood, but
considering this was done with Rotoscoping and camera tracking, this might go
down as some of the best CGI I’ve seen full stop. Beyond the computer effects,
the set design feels futuristic without needing to make it obvious, i.e. the
inclusion of useless doo-hickeys that serve no other purpose other than to look
futuristic, and the music features downtempo electronica courtesy of Ben Salisbury
and Geoff Barrow of Portishead fame that not only sets the tone and mood of
each given scene, but can legitimately bring intensity when it is called for as
well.
All in all, this is the kind of film that SF geeks like
myself live for. Its brand of sci-fi builds on previous ideas, both good and
bad, and delivers some genuinely provocative ideas in astoundingly smooth ways.
Great dialogue, great acting, great set design and animation that all go
towards selling the smart ideas it presents? It’d be inhuman to not recommend this movie; hell, I’d even
recommend it to non sci-fi fans because it’s just that damn good.
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