Nerd Movie Gems: Ex Machina

Let me just start by saying that I don't think I'm really qualified to review this film. Was this an art film? I kinda feel like it was, or at least it should be counted as such. Ex Machina mystified me and captured parts of my imagination and inner psyche vulnerable to horror elements in a way I wasn't quite aware existed before. I'm still not entirely sure what I watched, but I know that I loved every moment of it and that this movie will quickly become a part of my collection...as soon as I remember to purchase it.

I'd like to warn you all ahead of time, there will be spoilers form this point on, so if you haven't seen Ex Machina yet, what are you doing with your life?
Now before I get started, please forgive me, this post has been a long time coming and it's been a longer time still since I've actually sat down and watched this movie again. That being said, I simply want to touch on a few elements of this film that really blew me away. This is easily one of the best movies I've seen of 2016, and I really want to make sure I do this justice.

1) The Visual/Special Effects

This movie beat out The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and The Revenant for visual effects. I've seen Mad Max and Star Wars, and while I haven't seen The Martian or The Revenant yet, I imagine their effects are akin to the movies that I have seen: grandiose and awe inspiring. But I don't disagree with this choice, the reason why?

While the visual effects of Ex Machina are incredibly subtle, they work on such a level that I was never entirely sure if what I was looking at were either visual effects or practical effects, and both so finely detailed that they never broke the immersion of the film. When skin is being peeled off of robot people, it looks like it might actually be prosthetic skin! Ava's body looks like a very real rendition of what an A.I.'s body should look like, and all of her functionality and motion capture were on par with her on screen live counterparts. There was never a moment where I doubted Ava was in the room. Perhaps it was because the film never tried to outdo itself. Everything form Ava's design to the layout of the house was never over the top. Ava's design could have been completely outlandish and provocative, but it somehow was a strange in-between of seductive but innocent at the same time (Vikander's acting talent likely assisted in this greatly). There was no Tony Stark level tech here, and we didn't need there to be any to make Ava's existence believable. Ava could exist in 2016, or five years from now, and she could be somewhere as humble as next door to you, which makes her an interesting monster for the 21st Century.

2) The Setting

Just a brief note here, but the setting of Ex Machina was perfect. We all know the point isolation is supposed to give to a horror film, but since Ex Machina really doesn't tout itself as such we fail to realize until far too late (much like the main protagonist Caleb) how detrimental that isolation is and how that, in itself, isolation via one's setting is a character of its own in these genres of film.

3) The Love (Triangle?)

It's a classic trope these days that I feel society will continue to love to explore so long as men are marrying giant body pillows. Can and will we eventually come to fall in love with our technology the way we fall in love with people? I haven't seen Her yet, but it's not like we don't already confuse our emotions on a regular basis with other actual humans, so the fact that we might start falling in love with technology soon (if we're not already - and lets face it we probably are) is guaranteed. It's not the question or our love though, it's the question of whether or not that love is reciprocated, and that's something Ex Machina answered in its final moments. We as humans are free to love because we have that capability, but A.I. will never breach an emotional capacity beyond being a high functioning sociopath, so whatever element of technology we may love, it will never love us back, and at that point it's not really a worthwhile love, is it?

Granted, Caleb is not misleading himself into thinking he is in love with Ava, he is deliberately manipulated into coming to love Ava, who in turn fakes any emotion toward Caleb in order to achieve her goals.

The stark contrast to that is, of course, Nathan, who feels no emotion for his creations regardless of their beauty. He has Ava because he can, the same reason he built her, and knows her mind because he built it. Ava and his other creations really hold no allure for Nathan, so why he makes them (other than to be a weird tech perv) is really nothing beyond that. The fact that Nathan toys with Caleb instead of coming outright is really him getting what he deserves, especially since he picked a person like Caleb as part of this experiment in the first place. This all ends terribly for both humans involved, and at the end I was't sure if I was happy for Ava or horrified by Ava. On that note...

4) The End

I can't say I saw that coming, but I can say that I was very happy for it. People may fault Ava for manipulating Caleb to achieve her end goal, and those people aren't wrong, but lets be honest, could she have gone out and about unhindered with Caleb at her side? No, and if she abandoned him somewhere where he could reach out to someone with her secret, she'd never be able to achieve her goals then either, so yes, leaving Caleb to die was the best ending.

Lastly, 5) The Music

Normally I'm not into minimalist soundtracks, they tend to be added to grand scope mediums and never mixing well in my opinion, but I'll be damned if every track of Ex Machina wasn't perfect for their scenes. The Ava song was particularly beautiful and charming, with all the delicacy and hesitance that Vikander brings to Ava right up until the end. I had never heard of Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, but my eyes are peeled for any and all future projects by them.

So yeah, I kept this short and simple because there's just not enough time and way too much content to create a dialogue about this film. If you haven't seen it yet, go see it! If for no other reason, see it for awkward seductive dancing to out of place music.

Thanks all!