![]() No sooner have they welcomed the heroes into their fold than they reveal themselves as domineering monsters who want to strip the tomboyish women in the group of their autonomy and groom them as concubines and breeders in frilly dresses, in a skewed version of "traditional" society. The final section of "28 Days Later" is set in a makeshift army base where soldiers have taken up arms against hordes of infected citizens. Starting with Danny Boyle's " The Beach," based on his novel, and continuing through two more collaborations with Boyle, "28 Days Later" and "Sunshine" and the remake of " Judge Dredd," Garland has demonstrated great interest in the organization of society, the tension between the need for rules and the abuse of authority, and the way that gender roles handed down over thousands of years can poison otherwise pure relationships. "Ex Machina" is a beautiful extension of Garland's past concerns as a screenwriter. The movie maintains a scientific detachment even as it brings us inside the minds and hearts of its people, starting with Caleb (an audience surrogate with real personality), then embracing Ava, then Nathan (who's as screwed-up as he is intimidating), then finally Kyoko, who is not the cipher she initially seems to be. This is a classic nerd fantasy, and there is a sense in which "Ex Machina" might be described as "Stanley Kubrick's Weird Science." But despite having made a film in which two of the four main characters are women in subservient roles, and making it clear that Nathan's realism test will include a sexual component, the movie never seems to be exploiting the characters or their situations. Nathan is an almost satirically specific type: a brilliant man who created a revolutionary new programming code at 13 and went on to found a Google-like corporation, then funneled profits into his secret scheme to create a physically and psychologically credible synthetic person, specifically a woman. These sections are interspersed with scenes between Caleb, Nathan, and Nathan's girlfriend (maybe concubine) Kyoko (Sonoya Mizono), a nearly mute, fragile-seeming woman who hovers near the two men in a ghostly fashion.ÄĞecause the film is full of surprises, most of them character-driven and logical in retrospect, I'll try to describe "Ex Machina" in general terms. Caleb's conversations with Ava are presented as discrete narrative sections, titled like chapters in a book (though the claustrophobic setting will inevitably remind viewers of another classic of shut-in psychodrama, Stanley Kubrick's film of " The Shining"). ![]() The story is circumscribed with the same kind of precision. Many of its rooms are off-limits to Caleb's restricted key card. This modernist bunker with swingin' bachelor trappings is sealed off from the outside world. The story is emotionally and geographically intimate, at times suffocating, unfolding in and around Nathan's stronghold. The scientist, Isaac's Nathan, has brought the programmer Caleb (Gleason) to his remote home/laboratory in the forested mountains and assigned Caleb to interact with a prototype of a "female" robot, Ava ( Alicia Vikander), to determine if she truly has self-awareness or it's just an incredible simulation. But even as the revelations pile up and the screws tighten and you start to sense that terror and violence are inevitable, the movie never loses grip on what it's about this is a rare commercial film in which every scene, sequence, composition and line deepens the screenplay's themes-which means that when the bloody ending arrives, it seems less predictable than inevitable and right, as in myths, legends and Bible stories. Frankenstein-type ( Oscar Isaac) and slowly learning that the scientist's zeal to create artificial intelligence has a troubling, even sickening personal agenda. ![]() It starts out as an ominous thriller about a young programmer ( Domhnall Gleeson) orbiting a charismatic Dr. "Ex Machina," the directorial debut by novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland (" 28 Days Later," "Sunshine"), is a rare and welcome exception to that norm.
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