ex machina
ex machina is not a particular interesting film but not bad. there is not much AI film around to watch anyway. the overall tone is stable, no existential crisis triggered at the end. but still. and it doesnt use cheap technique to hype the audience.
this is a film about: excellence kills. not arrogrance. we are fed very early that arrogrance kills, and no matter how genius you are, you still deserve that. but there is no arrogrance, not even slightly evil in this film.
the genius is not very eccentric. he has the formidable attitude, simple, talking about the next big thing like a practical joke but still normal, and healthy. definitely not a delusional crackpot, or not any kind of assholes.
he, as any other independent thinkers, grows to the point of enjoying isolation. perfect isolation. i love his compound in the forest, only wish it could be more open air. maybe people that are too rich like to build minimialistic design that make it unable to breath. maybe the constrainted wealth creates the impression of power and discipline. (i never understand though. how come? the nature is enchanting outside and you build cold stuff to prevent breathing fresh air?)
but i love the way the wind blows through the tree and makes the leaves sing outside his house. it's like they are composing music, dancing with wonderful movement, rythm of nature that i can't understand but it's delightful to watch.
Ava
the genius builds AI and the newest version is a woman figure named Ava. she has only a face of a woman, every other thing a robot. he uses the global surveillance network to collect data on human emotion expressing. his AI will learn from that data history of how to human. he says it's not much of a choice, with the AI race around the globe, what he builds is just a matter of time. if he doesnt do it, someone else will, and will soon.
Ava stayed in a closed glass room. he choose a boy to come to test his AI. the test is simple, the boy sees the woman figure with only the face, hand, feet covered with human skin. the boy trivially knows that this is a robot. but the boy will test the AI to see if the AI truly has what human claims to be most proud of: consciousness. the thing is the AI can be programmed to describe everything about her feelings without truly "experience" it like human. so the boy has to find out a way to testify that.
well, the woman face is beautiful and has all the muscles to project emotions just like human. and human mind is much easier to be fooled than they can think. Ava acts with dignity, self esteem, induce untrust between the boy and the genius among the talking session when she triggered power failure of the entire compound. so it goes. staying in the forest, talking to a quite amusing and intellectual AI, the boy develops affection toward her. Ava starts to wear dresses to cover her robotic part, wear a short hair wig. now she looks exquisitely a woman, only better as she's as fresh as a spring breeze in a dewy early morning.
having nothing to do but watch her all the time, the boy smiles. i love the scenes that they describe the wind among the trees, the noise of the leaves, the noise of nature, of bird, of rivers, of cloudy fogs crawling in the valley, hugging the mountains.. but i also find it magnificent the scenes when the boy watches Ava. they cut half of his face, but his eyes sparkle and any human can see he's smiling with joy. he reaches out his hand toward the monitor, and has fantasy about Ava (in robotic figure) standing near the river, sunlight reflects on her shining body, and he kisses her.
at this point, the genius host starts to show some weird facets. he tears off the picture Ava draws the boy face. the boy also witness the genius verbally abuse Kyoko, another AI but this AI function is to be a housemaid so she doesnt have ability to speak and understand language. if Kyoko looks just like a machine supposed to be, there should be no sympathy when we see her going around doing house works, keeping silent. but Kyoko is also maginifcient. genius, they like to make beautiful thing. and this genious starts to act like a sociopath.
so the untrust toward the host grows in the boy. the day the host is drunk, the boy use his key card to access the system, he finds out processed video of the host abusing AI - the previous versions of Ava, they shout out "let me out of this room" and slam on the glass door until their hand break apart. especially in figures of woman, those vids are very hard to watch.
all of these things together make the boy even question his own existence. he tries to peel off his skin to see if he is actually an AI, he pinch out his eyes and is so desperate he comes to the point of using razor to cut his arm and make sure red blood is runnig out all over the place. (ehhh, i cant watch that scene).
the boy cant take it anymore, he tells Ava that he'll make the host drunk again, take his key card and change the security settings into opennig all doors in case of power failure. so Ava should trigger a power failure at 10 and they escape.
the guy, as indifferent as ever, refuse to drink that day and reveal his whole plan. he is just designing AI with the only purpose: to escape that room, by ANY means. these AI can fake their emotions, can manipulate the emotions of human, can do anything to gain trust and mercy... anything that can get them out. it seems that Ava is a good version, she manage to make the boy fall.
the boy collapses and says that he changes the setting code yesterday, and at that time power gone failure. shit. when it's back. Ava is already out. she is talking something to Kyoko which still stay silent but holding a knife. Kyoko is supposed to be primitive and has no language ability.
the host tells Ava to get back to the room and hit her hand break apart when she violently react. Kyoko stabs him in the back, touch his face and drop dead when he hits her. Ava stabs him in the chest. his reaction is just so human, he doesnt know what to say or think, he just say fuck.. walk for few steps, lies down and die.
Ava takes skins and clothes to put on her. she becomes a little and cute young lady. she leaves the compound, with the boy got trapped inside screaming. she gets on the helicopter that is supposed for the boy to get back into human society.
the wind still sing its song of eternity, swirling gracefully to every corner of the forest.
comment
Ava is just a version in the stream, she is not evil, not yet grow consciousness to be evil, she collects data from human and pretend all those stuff without truly experiencing the sorrow and the joy of it. she does enjoy freedom and has sexual capability, in short, she is just like a woman. but it still something we can't accept to be a human even we cant tell what feature she lacks.
she doesnt plot to dominate the world or set everything on fire or take sweet revenge toward human or whatever.. she is plainly programmed to have a purpose, and on the way of reaching that optimization, she weeps out human standing in her way, indifferently.
the film paints a picture that is not very scarry or thrilling or induces any strong turbulent emotion.
it invokes just a little itchy worriness.