REVIEW: EX MACHINA

In the coming weeks this film will be considered a major disappointment by most viewers. They will say "yeah, it was alright," or "I thought it would be better." Do yourself a favor and don't listen to these people.

I know this will happen because I was a little let down as I walked out of the theater. But when I couldn't really put my finger on why such an amazingly acted, beautifully shot, delightfully twisted (and funny) film left such a "meh" taste in my mouth, I realized that the problem didn't lie in the film, but with my expectations. I expected another Sunshine. I thought it would get darker. Weirder. That there would be robot fighting. I don't know. But it doesn't go there, and it doesn't need to.

It's like a Kubrick film, just way less complicated. You can tell it's brilliant and immaculately constructed, it might even get you to feel an emotion or two, but you don't get that climactic rush that we've come to expect near the end of the film. We can't consume it like a "normal" movie, and that makes us want to disregard it or say "yeah, I thought it was pretty good I guess," and drop the topic altogether. It's really the biggest problem with the movie-going audiences today, which is of course symptomatic of the majority of the films that are being shown to us.

The climax here doesn't send a rush of blood to the head or anywhere else. Instead it's extremely uncomfortable. Even baffling. It's hard to explain without giving it all way, but suffice it to say that it requires just a tad more thought to comprehend, or get behind, than your average ending. Just a tad more. This is not a complicated film, but it is complicated in how it expresses fully its universal themes in so minimalistic a way. In many ways, almost every way in fact, it's retreading ground that science fiction has been stomping on (and lately beating to death) since Metropolis. But this film nails it, with a twist.

*LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD*

It's safe to assume that many people have guessed from the trailer that the character of Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the programmer of the A.I. named Ava, is not all right in the head. In fact, he's pretty fucked up. And of course, the big problem with that is that his character is essentially God.

And this, of course, isn't new. Movies have been portraying the creators of A.I. like narcissistic power-drunk jocks since I don't know when (with the exception of Chappie, which was really just upending the trope to be cute and didn't really have a clue why it was doing what it was doing. If that sentence makes it seem like I hated the film, well, good. I hated the film. Moving on). But never has a film portrayed it's god-like character so darkly. Delightfully so, in fact. A guy you would grab a beer with, but who is definitely depraved, and even worse, thinks everything he's doing is all good, yo. The irony is thick here. He creates A.I. because he accepts that it's the next step and because he has the necessary abilities, but he must distance himself from his creation in order to perfect it. He creates life but cannot fully appreciate it. It's the artist's paradox, dilemma, tragedy, what have you. Just a little more fucked up.

And then there's the Turing Test, the test an A.I. must go through to prove that it is indeed a consciousness. Here, Nathan's test of Ava, which includes Caleb, is an allegory for creationism. That's right, the test, not the simple act of making an A.I. (which is where many films are content to stop) is the allegory. Here it's all about the implications of the process of perfecting an artificial consciousness. The implications(I've been watching a lot of IASIP recently), meaning if there is actually a God, this film would say that that God is not divine, but evil, for that God would have created conscious beings akin to rats in cages, eternally testing their creation to determine whether it's smart enough to "get out." And yeah, that's all pretty evil and messed up. And expressed fully in this film with precise minimalism.

And finally, there's a film that understands that an A.I. wouldn't be solely interested in exterminating humans, but would most likely just want to live amongst us, in secret (hint hint). Which ties into another interesting point: if human-like A.I.'s weren't a secret, the world would go to hell in a hand-basket regardless of what A.I.'s decided to do with their power. People would go insane with paranoia (suggested in one haunting scene with Caleb). There would be A.I. rape (bet you never thought of that), A.I. crime, anarchy, and probably just a whole crap-load of really messed up stuff. Finally there's a film that says, definitively, that making A.I. (at least A.I. automatons) is a very, very bad idea, simply because they would exist.

Like I said, it's not a terribly complicated film, but it's brilliant in it's simplicity, has a solid point of view, and some pretty nuanced things to say about the future of technology, all while being fucking gorgeous (the special effects alone are chillingly realistic) to look at, and yes, even funny. Oscar Isaac is one hell of an actor.

ON THE RUBIK'S CUBE THAT IS "JERRY MAGUIRE"

So recently I started writing in a notebook. By recently I mean January 1st, 2015. In the first entry of this notebook I made a promise, to myself and the notebook, that I would write something in it every single day. The following is more-or-less a word-for-word transcription of today's entry. What began as a few sentences turned into several sentences, then dozens of sentences, and then a couple pages on the mystifying film Jerry Maguire. Enjoy.

1/2/2015

Well, it's technically, or literally, 2:41 a.m. on January the 3rd in the year of our Lord 2015, but I'm going to count it as the 2nd anyways. I made a promise to myself and to this notebook, and I won't let actual circumstances get in the way. A quick internet search tells me that it is still the 2nd of January literally nowhere in the world. That can't be right.

I watched Jerry Maguire tonight. Boy what a long movie, one which is clearly about something but it's hard to say what exactly. Is it about how people can change if they realize what they're taking for granted? Or is it about how people actually cannot change but sometimes know what is wrong with them and so they do their best? [Or is it about something else entirely, related but better phrased?]

My favorite line: "My need to make the best of things and your need to be responsible...if one of us doesn't say something about it now, we could lose 10 years being polite," spoken by Renée Zellweger in what must be the 5th act of the film. How true this feels to me now after a few more years of experience under my belt and a few more pounds over it. Jerry is a man striving for authenticity but one who cannot find it in himself or in anyone else, the two exceptions being Ray (the kid), and Rod (his "wildly charismatic" client. And of course his marriage with Marcy). These two pieces of his new life scream sincerity and so they make him feel. The only missing link is Dorothy, and he wants that link to connect so badly that he marries her, hoping it will be his saving grace (and knowing deep down that she is his last hope). But the real link missing is within himself.

And so we are back to square-one of the 6 or 7 squares in this film: Does he change? Or more precisely, does the film believe that he changes? Or want us to believe he changes? [The follow-up question being does he truly love Dorothy?]

As I watched the famous "you had me at hello" scene again, a scene that I once thought so unbearably saccharine, I realized that it's actually, well, a bit weird, and it's meant to be a bit weird [I didn't even bother going into detail on the significance of the onlooking divorced-wives club]. Here's a guy telling his wife, his wife of several months, that he's been taking her for granted, that he finally realizes he misses her. [Here I start to ramble...] And she's the type of sap who is ready to fall head over heels because she has been through so much already and, in her words, "is the oldest 26 year old on the planet." [I didn't go into this, but this line is also puzzling. There's clear irony there but it doesn't really play that way.] Nobody else but her would have given him a chance. Nobody else did give him a chance when he made that grand embarrassing exit. And nobody else but Rod would have stayed with him, and did stay with him (as Rod himself points out). [Jerry] is a man with something-like-heart who is incapable of showing it and so eventually becomes dependent on the few people who are able to see through his "surface" and give him a second chance. As Jerry says in that final speech, "we live in a cynical world." But is Jerry one of those people on whom he depends? Does he ever once give someone a second chance or see through their "surface?" The answer is no. Is this just a result of the particular circumstances that surround him? Or is the film trying to make a point with this?

Honestly, it's so very hard to get a true read on what is going on (and maybe there is no true read) [or maybe I'm just an over-tired Neanderthal], what the film's "God" (Cameron Crowe) thinks the message is here. Is it that if you put your true self out there, become your "father's son" like Jerry does with his "mission statement," you may lose a lot of so-called-friends, but gain a select few friends whose company will be infinitely more fulfilling? So, I guess, the cynical world may twist all of the heart out of you, so hang onto that one brief moment of madness you get, say, at 3:28 a.m. on a Saturday morning, because days like that don't come around all that often, and it could very well be the one moment that changes the rest of your life?

Well that's all well and good and neat. Great, even. Maybe Jerry doesn't change fully before that last "hello" speech, but he had another brief moment of madness. Another small sliver of heart that burst through for an instant when he saw Rod, happier than ever, talking on the phone with Marcy, lamenting the fact that she wasn't there with him to share the moment in full, and so again he hung onto that feeling for dear life, unsure of what would happen if he did but sure that he needed to because it was real.

So maybe the message is that change, inner change, takes time -- approximately 7 or 8 acts worth of time -- but change will never happen if you don't hang onto a passing feeling, seize a burst of inspiration and hold on for as long as you can without fear of where it might take you. You will drown in cynicism, become a lost soul, become another Sugar (his rival agent) in the world, if you don't. And worst of all, if you don't seize the brief madness, you may never know what you have become or what you have lost, because you will be lost. That is the definition thereof.

Well, damn. That sure seems like the message, but again, does Jerry really love Dorothy? Is his brief madness symptomatic of his true, as-of-yet undiscovered, love and appreciation for her, or is it simply indicative of his deep-seeded need for love and appreciation of any kind? The eternal question. One only difficult to answer in this case because the film is so utterly ambiguous on this exact point, almost infuriatingly so. Is this film purposefully a life-canvass on which we are meant to paint our own subconscious emotional needs or truths? Is that part, or the whole, of it's genius? I think it may be. The tone is so noticeably different from anything that's come before or after it that I think I can be satisfied with this answer. [And after 9 or 10 acts of film and at 4:30 a.m. I am more than ready to.] But maybe, in a few years time, I'll watch it again and see a completely different film. Or maybe I'll experience it differently but come to the same conclusion. Maybe this is the film's message, which, like any great film, worked it's way into its MO: that it is within our most brilliant moments of madness that we make our own truth, which happens to be the only truth that matters.