Intelligent strife
More than the sum of its parts... EX_MACHINA OUT NOW DVD, Blu-ray
The title’s missing word, of course, is deus – deus ex machina being the classical tradition of ending a story with God coming down to Earth to sort everything out. In modern British sci-fi cinema, Alex Garland is rapidly fulfilling that role. As the screenwriter of 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd, he’s already been responsible for some of this century’s most interesting homegrown films. Now, with directorial debut Ex_Machina, he’s taking his divine right seriously behind the camera, too.
Garland builds his rich story world from a single location and a handful of actors, to create a sleek thriller-fable about the bizarre love triangle between an inventor, his robot creation and a newly arrived protégé. This is sci-fi stripped of needless spectacle and distilled to base elements of concept and character. Indeed, it often resembles a long-lost episode of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits or (more pertinently, given its fusion of timeless anxieties with Google-age concerns) Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror.
This isn’t a criticism, because Garland adds big-screen heft to these mainstays. Ex_Machina has ideas to burn about research ethics, the subtleties of what constitutes intelligence, and the gender divide. With so few characters, there is nowhere to hide, so it pays to have plenty to say – and this is certainly a writer’s film. Yet Garland avoids overwriting. There’s a no-nonsense attitude, personified by Oscar Isaac’s tech guru Nathan, a blokey savant who’d much rather get wasted (or dance) than give speeches.
Into Nathan’s lair comes Isaac’s future Force Awakens co-star Domhnall Gleeson as ambitious-but-naïve wunderkind Caleb; after Frank, it confirms Gleeson as the go-to guy for playing disciple to strange masters. Caleb transforms the film into a cerebral psycho-drama, whose every narrative chess move is mirrored by a brilliantly suggestive production design that offsets geometric shapes with a messy Jackson Pollock.
At the centre is Alicia Vikander’s robot Ava, instantly one of the great screen robots. The plot revolves around a Turing test – can Ava pass as human? – and Vikander’s expressive but slightly calculated glances expertly mine the ambiguity. Ava’s apparent subjugation throws the masculine world of creation into sharp relief, making this – like Spike Jonze’s Her – an unusual feminist tract about machine empowerment. The result is cerebral without being chilly, yet even as events tumble towards a violent climax, there’s a refreshingly British reticence at work: the aloof politeness of the action suits far better than the obvious temptation to go gung-ho.
Off-screen, at least, Garland’s god stays in control of the machine… if you discount the extras. With just 13 minutes’ worth of featurettes (Blu only), the occasional insights (Garland’s deliberate avoidance of “cold blue-light sci-fi” in favour of a more organic aesthetic) don’t atone for the lack of something more robust.