Thursday, November 26, 2015

"Ex Machina" - Brilliant and Extraordinary

"Ex Machina" uses ideas the way cartoon movies use CGI and the movie makes an exceptional exploration of Artificial Intelligence.

All sci-fi requires the Hot Babe but they went a little more subtle with this one and instead went with the Irresistible Willowy and Guileless Babe, Ava, played beautifully by Alicia Vikander.

Domhnall Gleason played Caleb and Oscar Isaac played Nathan.  The dialog between them starts with the Turing Test and goes up from there.  They never get pontifical about it and Nathan alternates between flaming genius and an all-out drunk.  That dialog plays a substantial part of the movie.

The evolution of the relationship between Caleb and Ava is an exceptional story within the overall theme and it has a tenderness which goes far beyond computers.  The director makes his point by making you fall for her too; of course you do, she's irresistible.

Does she really love me is complex if only on human terms and any difference that has with Artificial Intelligence is resolved by the end of the movie.  The twists are fantastic but logical or at least reasonably credible to continue as sci-fi rather than fantasy.


There are special effects but to a deliberate purpose and there are no car nor spaceship chases for grandiose display.  To a large extent, the visual aspect is underplayed to keep a tight focus on the characterization.  This viewer found them highly convincing in their roles and they had to be because there are only four primary players.

"Ex Machina" revolves entirely around thinking and the nature of thought and the exceptional brilliance of the movie is making that discussion compelling and fascinating.

One of the best sci-fi movies I have ever seen.  If you're an Ithaka regular, you know I've seen a lot of them and I grade hard.  Example:  I thought "Gravity" was (cough) lightweight crap with large photography and little story.


Pedantic online teachers patronizing the hoi polloi annoy me as much as anyone but I wasn't clear enough on the meaning of Deux ex machina to clue into the title of the movie.  So, Google ...

Deux ex machina means 'God from the machine' and the oldest definition is of a god lowered into a play through some type of machine or literary device to resolve part of the story.  For "Ex Machina," the title has abandoned Deux and the remaining meaning is 'from the machine.'  Now it makes perfect sense as the definition of a machine becomes exceptionally difficult to discover.

The next incarnation of the term is through the view of God in the machine and this is what we have wrought.  The converse view is the machine created God in us and for more on that, see the movie.

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