Occam's Razor

Ex Machina

In January, we saw The Imitation Game: the story of Nazi code breakers. Its principle character, Alan Turing, introduced the idea of the Turing test: a machine so sophisticated that when you interact with it you can’t tell it from a real human being. A lot of very wise people are quietly freaking out that we may be close to an era where we will be controlled by the machine. In Ex Machina we get to see what a machine that might pass the Turing test would look like and what it might mean. “She” is Ava (Alicia Vikander), the creation of mega billionaire Oscar Isaac (Nathan Bateman). Isaac created the next Google search engine and became so rich that he created a house and laboratory for himself so remote that even Verizon can’t reach it. Its location is unclear, but it appears to be in Alaska. One of Oscar’s employees, Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) is invited to Oscar’s remote location to be the second person to meet Ava. At the end of the week he is supposed to make a judgment on whether Ava passes the Turing test.

Ava is pretty obviously a machine because much of her frame is transparent. The 26-year-old Caleb though quickly finds her mesmerizing, although they cannot touch each other. They interact through a glass partition. However, her programming is obviously top notch. Caleb has a hard time not thinking about her, although their daily sessions are relatively brief. While Ava seems real enough to him, there are some unexpected glitches in their laboratory. It suffers from occasional power outages. During this time Ava is unmonitored. Like Ava, Caleb is pretty much a prisoner in this weird estate. His keycard will get him into certain rooms and won’t allow him into other rooms. During power outages he is locked in his subterranean room. He talks daily with Oscar, who tries to be something of a distant buddy to him. Oscar may be a genius but he also has human frailties, including binge drinking.

This is a movie with hardly more than a handful of characters. It’s clear there is something else going on but it’s unclear what it is. Oscar is a bit of a control freak and Caleb is perhaps too intelligent for his own good. During power outages, Ava tells Caleb that she wants to escape from her room. Caleb eventually plots a way for them to escape together. I won’t spoil the ending but it does indicate if Ava passes the Turing test.

The movie is creepy without feeling like it is out of an Albert Hitchcock movie. Director Alex Garland’s greatest achievement might be the technical wizardry that shows that Ava is actually a machine. She is mesmerizing to watch with her blue tubes pulsating with artificial life. Yet she is not the only android on the premises. It’s unclear at first but Ava is but the latest version, and Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) who does the cooking is another one. In fact there are a whole lot of robot parts in the closet.

This is a tightly focused movie that should keep you engaged and curious. It’s not exactly Oscar material, but it is a good use of your time nonetheless. 3.2 out of four stars.

Tomorrowland

I was expecting Tomorrowland to be a different movie than the one I watched. I was expecting this Disney movie to be saccharine, but it wasn’t. It starts out that way when twelve-year-old Frank Walker attends the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City. The fair is pretty much Tomorrowland from Disney World, but Frank is there to impress the judges with his version of a jet backpack. Unfortunately it has some technical flaws, but he at least catches the eye of Athena (Raffey Cassidy), a mesmerizing freckle-faced young girl who we will later learn is a robot.

Athena senses in Frank a wild-faced optimism, not atypical of its times. In the early 1960s our future looked a lot like The Jetsons, and it was mostly filled with well adjusted and happy white people. Tomorrowland is at least faithful to that naïve way of thinking. Following Athena while at the fair the young Frank stumbles briefly into a real Tomorrowland, or at least its slick representation.

Fast forward to the present. We are quickly introduced to Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), another incurable optimist in an age of climate change. She spends her evenings sneaking into the Kennedy Space Center to prevent a famous launch pad there from being disassembled. This helps keep her father (Tim McGraw) employed but everyone sees the writing on the wall for the pad and for the end of human spaceflight. Casey is like a somewhat older version of Athena: she is mesmerizing to look at and full of positive spirit. Being an optimist she believes that global climate change can be averted and that the future will look like something out of The Jetsons. This also makes her of interest to Athena, who surreptitiously provides her with a token from the 1964 World’s Fair that takes her to this future, at least while she is touching the coin. It works great when she isn’t running into walls or ending up in the muck. And apparently its battery is not an Eveready.

What Frank and Casey have in common is Athena. They are destined to intersect, but Frank has aged fifty years and now looks suspiciously like George Clooney. This Frank is a cynical one who understands the forces pitted against a happy future, and these include David Nix (Hugh Laurie), the leader of Tomorrowland. Nix’s Tomorrowland bears little resemblance to the slick advertising that a younger Frank and Casey encountered. In fact, human life is about to end very abruptly on the planet and its end is certain. Just watch the countdown clock.

With Casey’s arrival though, the probability of this happening mysteriously drops from 100 percent. Athena eventually connects Casey and Frank, and a series of improbable adventures starts that forms the heart of the movie. Can somehow at this late date the future be changed for the better? It will take a lot of optimists and the time is very late.

So Tomorrowland was a bit of a surprise, both for the quality of the acting and the slick way director Brad Bird puts it altogether. Somehow the lovely Disney optimism is woven around the truly depressing reality of what mankind is doing to its biosphere. It makes you want to click you heels three times and find yourself back in Kansas. The depressing reality is that we are already victims of climate change and it will only get worse. Still, while this movie entertains its real mission may be to introduce to mass audiences the very serious problem of climate change. And if it is to be fixed it will take the masses demanding action. Given our general inability as a species not to look much beyond tomorrow, I am not hopeful, but perhaps if we were filled with less adult cynicism it would be otherwise. At least Disney is doing its part in describing the magnitude of the problem, while likely reeling in profits for shareholders for doing so.

I think Uncle Walt would be proud of what his gang did some fifty years after his passing.

3.4 out of four-points.