One of the many interesting things about Ex Machina is how it achieves sci-fi on several levels while incorporating many aspects of contemporary society. Great sci-fi has this way of peering into the future while holding up a mirror to contemporary society. This film is incredibly referential, making countless allusions to philosophy, science, hi-tech industries, and even art, several of which I’ll address in my analysis.
Let’s start with the title of the film, Ex Machina. The Latin (derived from Greek) phrase deus ex machina means literally ‘god from a machine.’ In Greek drama it referred to a theatrical convention whereby an act of god emerges from thin air to resolve the primary conflict. Many films have made good use of this narrative device — a device the neorealists hated, btw, as I’m sure you can imagine. Even if we know the reference this title is making, what exactly it means in this film is up for interpretation. Think on it and feel free to share your ideas in the discussion that follows.
The opening is very brisk. Before we know it, it flies by and we’re riding in a helicopter with Caleb en route to his boss’s estate. In review, however, we can analyze it more slowly and tease out its meanings. Look at the following opening shots in sequence (with a few omitted, of course).
I think the opening’s briskness (and dare I say slippery surface level) itself is a commentary on the immediacy of the information age. The setting is Blue Book, the search engine company started by Nathan, Caleb’s boss. The name of this company instantly conjures in our minds Facebook, no question, but it also refers unmistakably to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose famous publication The Blue Book (1933) analyzes language, consciousness, and knowledge in philosophical terms. Without getting too in-depth, Wittgenstein conceives of language and knowledge in a number of ways that parallel how Ava learns and applies both.
The opening shots above also confirm for us how this film, from the very beginning, advances themes of surveillance, corporate online profiling, and privacy. In the first shot of Caleb we see the camera attached to his monitor. The shots, most of them wide-angle (ie, shorter lens, distorting), that follow reveal him to be highly surveilled — by his computer and phone. We learn later in the film that he was chosen for this role by Nathan himself, who had profiled his habits, preferences (even in women), and background. Sci-fi has long explored government surveillance as a possible threat, but this film really plunges into the highly relevant (and timely) terrain of corporate surveillance. With every click online we are being profiled, and debates on these matters rages in the classroom, on Capitol Hill, and in cafes and bars.
There’s something about this opening — and the film as a whole, too — that comments on Silicon Valley tech culture. Caleb seems to work on one of these tech campuses that encourage its employees to work any/all hours and use the campus as a home away from home (complete with basketball courts, endless food, gyms, showers, saunas, social events, etc.). (Remember, Caleb is targeted in part because he lacks a partner as well as a familial and social network.) Even Nathan (brilliantly played by Oscar Isaac) resembles in several key respects the prototype of the asshole-genius-inventor-entrepreneur. Think the late Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, whose brilliance matches their well-reported egos and mean streaks.
Without any hesitation, once Caleb is notified of having won the company contest, the film cuts to his chopper flying over his boss’s land.
The Garden of Eden is a key component of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. It is a perfect garden created by God and peopled initially by Adam and Eve, who are tasked with procreating and populating Earth with their offspring. Things go wrong, of course, when Eve is deceived by the snake into tasting apple from the forbidden tree. This opens the door to things such as shame, guilt, and sin.
Like one of its influences, Kubrick’s 2001, this film makes ample use of this creation story and its tropes. For one, Nathan is playing around with what some call “God’s work” and likens himself to a kind of god, able to create consciousness (or so he and Caleb want to believe). He creates Ava (Eve?) and crosses certain lines due to his god complex. Or think of when Ava exits the building in the end, “free at last” — all those shots of her reveling in the “garden” outside, before she is unleashed upon civilization. The unspoiled wilderness that surrounds Nathan’s high-tech compound/laboratory makes for an interesting tension between a technology-dependent civilization and the natural world threatened by it.
When Caleb finds Nathan’s complex and enters the building, he is immediately assailed by the flash of the camera identifying him. This continues the theme of surveillance and is one of many times Caleb is caught off-guard by Nathan’s house and scheme.
A few moments later, once he’s entered the house, he finds Nathan appropriately hitting his punching bag on the veranda. Nathan quickly reveals his acerbic edge, chastising Caleb for being too eager. When he gives his employee a tour of the facilities we start to learn of the reason for his visit. In Caleb’s quarters Nathan convinces him to first sign an NDA, which is convoluted and not pro forma. He persuades Caleb to sign it, however, without too much argument, pointing out that in a few years he’d regret not being part of history. (Maybe this comments on how we as consumer-citizens sign away certain things without thinking much about it, in order to stay current, high-tech, and ahead of the technology curve?) As they’re having this conversation about privacy and rights, the film subtly keeps intercutting to a sweaty Nathan sprawled out on Caleb’s bed, as if to visually point out that just as he is signing away all his rights, his manipulative boss is invading his most private space and soiling it with his sweat, no less.
Then Nathan starts spelling out his latest AI work and his interest in having Caleb enact the Turing test in order to see if his latest bot passes the test; that is, if she/it can be passed for human. I had you read about a similar experiment, the AI in a box experiment. In certain respects Nathan (and this film) is running his own version of the box experiment, whereby he programs Ava to try to woo, charm, and gain sympathy from Caleb in order to convince him to help her escape. The box experiment shows that 30-40% of robots convince their human captors to help them escape, even as the humans are aware of this plan. All of this raises the question of “god’s work” and what Caleb calls, “the history of gods.”
Like genetically modified crops (think: Monsanto) and “designer” babies, AI raises concerns that we humans are dabbling in ‘God’s work.’ The classic tale of Frankenstein certainly resonates here. There are ethical concerns, but also the matter of human survival. Indeed, a conversation between Nathan and Caleb and clearly references the idea of singularity.
singularity
Singularity theories posit that there is a moment in time when human innovations, namely AI, will surpass human intelligence and threaten to render us obsolete or even extinct. Even as Nathan seems to believe in this possibility, he continues down this path. Hubris? He does underestimate his bots, but also Caleb. Or maybe he’s just cynical enough about his fellow humans and wouldn’t mind seeing their downfall.
Kyoko is an interesting character that lurks in the background of this movie. She offers a compelling flash forward or two and raises other questions about stereotyping and sex trafficking.
In the first shot, the foreshadow is clear, given that she/it stabs Nathan in the back with this same knife at the end. (I wonder if he feels that his creations, whom he gave “life,” stabbed him in the back figuratively?) The second reminds us that Kyoko, more than anything, was programmed to be a sex toy. Here Caleb is trying to get information from her, but she/it starts taking off her clothes (perhaps prompted automatically by his touch). It’s an interesting choice to have the mute sex toy be Geisha-like in obvious respects. I have to think that the filmmakers are knowingly working through the Geisha stereotype here, making Nathan all the more exploitative and racist in his fantasies.
This raises certain questions about feelings and consciousness. I speak of Nathan’s construction and treatment of Kyoko as exploitative, but aren’t she/it and Ava just machines? Yet why do we instinctively refer to Ava as ‘she’ and not ‘it.’ Is it just because ‘she’s’ a character that looks human, or does it have something to do with certain likenesses raised in the film between humans and AI?
I wrote earlier that Caleb is rather duped in this movie, taken advantage of by both Nathan and Ava. He thereby fails the Robot in a box experiment, helping her/it escape and being left behind (to die, it seems) in the process. I wonder where we figure in all this? By simply watching this movie, are we taking part in the Turing test and box experiment? That is to say, do we fall for Ava’s seeming humanity as much as Caleb does?
The last act is full of surprises and leaves us with many thoughts and questions.
This comment flies by us, I suspect. Caleb and we hear it, maybe, but I doubt we trust it. Nathan’s a manipulative, egomaniacal (and worse) person, but when looking at this line in review, he does have a point. Caleb doesn’t know it yet, but he makes a fatal error in aligning himself with the robots over his fellow human.
A few years back Facebook had its AI team working on a project to improve their product. In the course of its work, two separate AIs developed their own language and were communicating together in ways that the human testers couldn’t understand or decode, lol. Facebook shut down the project. When it happened red alarms went off in people’s heads, but FB came out with a statement that there was no need for alarm, only that they required the AIs to work independently of each other, so the project was of no further use to them. Still, this anecdote illustrates what we see play out in this scene, where the two AIs communicate with each other, whether they were programmed to speak the same language.
Ugh! Again, we think nothing of this line when we first hear it. Soon we discover that Ava traps Caleb behind the security system, so that she/it may escape the compound without anyone the wiser.
There are several interesting pieces of art in this film. Earlier we hear Nathan discussing automation and creativity, order and chaos, with Caleb as they look at a Jackson Pollock painting. Here Ava walks by a famous Gustav Klimt painting, of a woman dressed similarly to Ava. Maybe the bot’s humanness is being reinforced by the painting? The plot thickens when we discover that the painting is a portrait of the sister of Ludwig Wittgenstein, he who philosophized of free will, the limits of consciousness, and systems of language and knowledge.
I love this shot of Ava leaving Caleb behind. She/it gives the slightest recognition that Caleb is left behind, trapped and with no way out. It’s done with intention and awareness, and maybe feeling. If Ava is ‘Eve,’ is it significant that she’s escaping not just a compound in which she/it was trapped, but also patriarchy itself? Is this a feminist ending? Is something like feminism possible without a “real” (that is, human) woman involved? Then again, what does it mean to be a “real” woman? In a similar vein, who is the protagonist in this film? Whom are we rooting for? Who is the protagonist in this film, if there is one? Do our allegiances shift when we see Caleb being left behind? Is it meaningful that we may favor a bot over humans?
After exiting the compound, Ava marvels at her freedom and the natural world she’s able to touch for the first time. She gets on the helicopter and next thing we see is an upside-down shot of people’s shadows on an urban sidewalk, which give way to a single shadow in the center that is clearly Ava’s. We then see Ava and then we don’t in consecutive shots. Fade to black.
These final shots visually resemble those from the film’s opening, whereby we see Blue Book employees as if behind a layer or two of glass or screens. There’s something about this style choice that is intentionally superficial in look, as if commenting on this web of surfaces and screens in our highly virtual information age.
I’m struck, too, by Ava’s disappearance in the final shot. Sure, this choice echoes sci-fi and societal anxieties about singularity and AIs on the loose. Films such as Blade Runner and this one ask, “When will we not be able to recognize if we’re interacting with a bot or a fellow human?” On a smaller, less dramatic scale, maybe we’re already there. How many times in our daily lives, when we’re online, on our phones, consuming things, driving our cars, etc., are we interacting with and being serviced and/or profiled by forms of artificial intelligence? How will that continue and evolve into the future?
There are multiple questions embedded in my analysis. Feel free to respond to any of them. Feel free, as well, to respond as you see fit to this film and to others making interesting posts.
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