Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: The Academy Awards are Sunday, so we’re looking back on times when an actor was nominated for the wrong film—and on the performances they should have been nominated for the same year.
Ex Machina (2015)
It’s no secret that science fiction stands with horror and comedy among genres afforded the least amount of respect by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Hell, it may be the least-respected, full stop; The Silence Of the Lambs and Shakespeare In Love both won Best Picture, at least. So it’s not surprising that faced with a choice between a faux-relevant costume drama and a movie about robots, the Academy opted to honor Alicia Vikander’s work in the former, rather than the latter. It is enervating, however, that the costume drama in question was The Danish Girl, a movie that will only ever be watched in future college courses about the indignities suffered by trans characters in cinema. For her co-lead role opposite Eddie Redmayne, Vikander received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. It was her you-had-a-good-year trophy for 2015.
Vikander is also arguably a co-lead in Ex Machina, a sparsely cast movie that barely has any supporting performances. (Sonoya Mizuno—known from GIFs as Oscar Isaac’s robot dance partner—does some under-recognized work in that category.) Nevertheless, it would have been easy enough to swap Vikander’s performance as Ava, an artificial intelligence created by tech CEO Nathan (Isaac) and tested by programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), into the Best Supporting Actress category that year. Though the movie is about figuring out how human Ava really is, she doesn’t have a lot of screentime. Most of Ex Machina unfolds from Caleb’s point of view, as he’s summoned to Nathan’s compound to meet and interact with this new technological breakthrough. While he conducts a series of “sessions” with Ava, she spends much of the movie on the periphery, a woman-shaped mystery trapped behind glass.
This part’s degree of difficulty is substantial, and Vikander passes the test: She makes Ava plausibly robotic, with even tones and a measured, placid expression in her early scenes, then convincingly human as she reveals some emotion and a possible capacity for manipulation. Caleb is tasked with Turing-testing her via interviews, and as the movie goes on, Vikander silently signals how misguided this technique may be. Whatever degree to which Ava contains “real” humanity, it’s ultimately more visible on her face than in her dialogue. Unlike Vikander’s character in The Danish Girl, she doesn’t have many opportunities to speechify about her feelings.
Where Ex Machina did score an Oscar nomination, and a win, is visual effects. (Due credit to the Academy here: These effects are some of the smallest-scale offerings they’ve ever awarded.) Perhaps this quietly stunning work diminished Vikander’s performance in voters’ eyes, creating the impression that they were watching a mostly computer-generated creation, and a performance more accurately attributed to animators. Like Caleb, they might have been performing the wrong kind of test; the physicality of the performance still came from Vikander, with animators replacing parts of her body (and imitating their movement) in post-production. When Ava dons a floral dress and a wig, covering up the transparent casing that showcases some of her robotic innards, Vikander looks superficially more human, while still moving with a semi-mechanical delicacy. She creates continuity between these different versions of her body, blending the effects work into her performance.
A later scene where Ava essentially shops for clothes and skin from discarded robots captures her from multiple angles at once via Garland’s beloved mirror motif, and the exposure of that moment has surprising tenderness without getting sloppily sentimental. Again, there’s no Oscar-friendly statement of want or need. Those desires are on Vikander’s face—and both the actress and her director realize that there’s value in keeping some of these things concealed, that effective and arresting performances need not be so demonstrative. Vikander is the female lead of Ex Machina, but awarding her in the Supporting Actress category still could’ve fit; good as her co-stars and director are, she’s a support beam for a lot of weighty but familiar sci-fi ideas.
Availability: Ex Machina is currently streaming on Showtime and Kanopy. It’s also available to rent or purchase digitally from Amazon, Google Play, Apple, YouTube, Fandango Now, Redbox, DirecTV, and VUDU.
165 Comments
If we are playing the “____ should have won the Oscar for _____ instead of _____” game, I can think of better examples than this. Don’t get me wrong, Vikander is excellent in Ex Machina but I don’t know if she was better than Brie Larson in Room, Cate Blanchett in Carol, or Saorirse Ronan for Brooklyn.
It was a top notch year for the Best Actress category.
Vikander could have run in supporting for Ex Machina, is what I’m saying — that’s where she won for Danish Girl, another movie where she was the female lead (and she probably has more screen time in Danish Girl than she does in this one). So her real competition, while still killer, was Rooney Mara for Carol; Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs; Rachel McAdams for Spotlight; and Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight. They’re all terrific; my point is less that Vikander should have beaten all four of them than saying she should have been nominated for a different movie. I think she’s on pretty firm ground for deserving the nom for this and an argument could be made for the win too!
God I genuinely forgot how top notch the nominations were that year. Not a Hillbilly Elegy in sight. I might have personally voted for Ronan in Brooklyn but still, good selection.
The problem with her running on Ex Machina is that it’s not the type of film or performance that would have ultimately won her the Oscar (or even gotten a nomination). Outside of the technical categories sci-fi films are routinely ignored by the Academy whereas The Danish Girl just screams Oscar bait. It would almost certainly have meant Winslet ultimately won in that category for Steve Jobs (she had already won the Globe and BAFTA).And speaking of Winslet and this very topic – Revolutionary Road was a far better film and she gave a much more compelling performance than what she won for that year in The Reader (where she was in a supporting part anyway).
Revolutionary Road is her best role I think. Mildred Pierce as well.
The problem with her running on Ex Machina is that it’s not the
type of film or performance that would have ultimately won her the
Oscar (or even gotten a nomination). Outside of the technical categories
sci-fi films are routinely ignored by the AcademyThat’s the same point that this article made in literally its first three sentences, so I’m guessing Jesse is aware of that problem. The whole piece is up-front about being an “if only the Academy were different” thing.
“not the type of film or performance that would have ultimately won her the Oscar”True. What did her performance contribute to the art or the society? What did it create? What did her performance make us see in a new context? She was good, but she was a killer robot. And kind of a blank one by necessity. She didn’t struggle or rethink. She was pegged by her creator as dangerous from the first scene. And remained that way. No arc, no change. Not much for an actor to work with.
Totally agree on Winslet—about Revolutionary Road, anyway. I’m not sure that she would have won for Steve Jobs. (The Globes have no voting overlap with the Oscars. If anything, I think they often line up because those voters consciously try to predict what they think are likely Oscar winners, so they can try to bullshit together a correlation.) Part of me thinks the “you had a great year” vibes could have carried Vikander to a win no matter what movie she was actually nominated for. Winslet certainly didn’t have the “she’s due” narrative.
Fun fact: Since the SAGs started in 1994 there has been only one actor to win an Oscar without having been nominated for either the SAG or the Globe (it was Marcia Gay Harden for Pollock in 2001). So while there’s no overlap in Globe voters there is at least some correlation in the eventual winner. As for who would have won in this hypothetical scenario it’s hard to tell – you could easily make a case for Rachel McAdams as she was the only one from a Best Picture nominee (and eventual winner) or even Rooney Mara who was absolutely a lead in Carol.
Looking back I’m so glad Eddie Redmayne didn’t win for the Danish Girl. That would have sent a terrible message, play a trans character and you get an Oscar! The movie itself is the most classical example of we made this for awards look how moving it is! Despite being based on a fictional novel that only bears a passing resemblance to real life and far as I’m aware, nobody who was trans consulted or worked on it. Ex Machina is several leagues better and I’m glad to see it be recognized as such.
I can’t speak to the filmmakers who eventually did get The Danish Girl made but I hate the vitriol it gets because it was probably the most gorgeous screenplay I’ve ever read in over a decade of writing screenplay coverage. I read it when Kidman was still attached and was trying to get it made. Setting aside whatever sociopolitical faults the story has it is really great screenwriting. And that’s depressingly rare.
Would you say that it was poorly executed on screen, or that it was simply solid writing, on display but ultimately overlooked by controversy/disdain?
Partly the latter (with which I don’t entirely disagree – it IS problematic), though largely it’s intangible to a viewer. When you read scripts professionally, you can get extremely bored by them. Especially the scene description, which tends to be workmanlike (if you’re lucky – slush pile scripts can sometimes read like the screenwriter never got past 6th grade). The Danish Girl script was very much not boring. The characters are complicated and emotionally compelling. And because it concerns a painter, the descriptions are intricate and colorful and visually distinct. It was just a breath of fresh, cool, vibrant mountain air after hundreds of “Guy sits in a chair. Other guy pulls out a map and places it on the table.” We get told in screenwriting class, and I teach the same to students, that screenwriting needs to be efficient. And I believe that’s true! But it doesn’t have to be so fucking bland and artless. The Danish Girl was the most artfully written description I’ve come across.ETA: I agree with your point about Vikander, if that matters to the discussion. Ex Machina is amazing. I saw it in the theater and felt very lucky because that sort of low budget sci-fi gets blitzed by tentpole shit. Iirc, it was out at the same time as Force Awakens and I was browbeating my friends for going to that instead of Ex Machina cuz Star Wars has enough money and attention.
You can’t really fault people for going to TFA because back in 2015 we had no idea what we were going to get and people were just excited. I’d even say people were actually more excited for that than The Phantom Menace. We were gonna see the goddamn Millennium Falcon again! And frankly, unless you regularly went to an Alamo Drafthouse or something (mine literally just opened in time for Episode VII) you were probably going to have a harder time seeing Ex Machina, if you even heard of it.
I went to a theater in my city (Pittsburgh) to see Ex Machina. The friends I was browbeating about seeing it also lived in Pittsburgh. Most of my other friends live in Boston (plenty of arthouse theaters) or L.A. They had opportunities to support Ex Machina. Further, most consider themselves film fans and several are sci-fi nerds. They had no excuse to choose TFA over Ex Machina.
Gotcha.On the flip side, if you’re a real worrier about spoilers, Ex Machina was probably “safer” to wait on and not expect to scroll down a random Gizmodo page and having assholes post screenshots of something shocking happening in it.
Quick Wikipedia search shows Ex Machina came out in April of 2015, Star Wars didn’t come out till December of that year. They were not in first run theaters at the same time.
Then either I saw it at a discount theater (very possible, I’m cheap) or it wasn’t TFA that I was yelling at them about. Hence “iirc”. I may not rc.Either way, what is your point? Feels a little defensive of Star Wars. Which really, really doesn’t need defending.
I guess it’s unfortunate the screenplay didn’t translate, but the movie deserves the vitriol, aside from Redmayne being cast, they played the character like she had a split personality which was so totally offensive to trans people, and I assume was always part of the script since it was part of the film. It was a damaging movie to trans people, and alarm bells were going off sitting through that entire dredge.
But Einar DID express thoughts and feelings that we might consider dissociative. The real person has been studied and found to have possibly suffered that issue. So… I dunno, take that up with history? Fair play to anyone questioning the veracity of the film or the novel it was based on but the dissociation wasn’t made up whole cloth.That said, the script didn’t really emphasize the notion of dissociation. It presented Lili as Einar’s feminine identity and then emphasized how much happier she was as Lili. Which to my mind is just someone who never knew about trans identity coping with this new knowledge and possibilities.Redmayne’s casting was not great (though I wonder if Kidman would have been better). Making the story so overtly romantic was also not great. (Another difference between the script I read and the finished film. Emphasized by Hooper, who was very upfront about his desire to make it a love story. The script I read was certainly romantic but mostly concerned Einar struggling with identity, including his career as an artist.)As cringe as elements of the film were, I’m not convinced that it was “damaging”. You’re gonna have to make a case for that.
You should watch Disclosure, it really is important for trans people to play trans roles. It deceives audiences into believing that trans people are just people in dress up or costume, a trans woman is a woman, not somebody in a costume nor someone suffering dissociative episodes (I’m sure the medical records from the time are not great indicators of understanding transhood if they describe it as episodes). Kidman would have been an equally poor choice.There is no case that needs to be made, simply listen to trans people who have said they found the movie very damaging to public perception of who they intrinsically are, and adds to the violence they endure.
I agree that it’s important for trans actors to play trans roles. And I don’t at all believe Hooper’s claim that he searched.As to the damage. I feel similarly to how I felt about Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. He has been vocal about the fact that he made Funny Games as a lesson to horror film aficionados about their complicity in the terrible things that happen to the characters in horror films. But anyone who is clever enough to glean that message already understands it. The people who need to hear that message either aren’t smart enough to pick it up or would be hostile to it. What transphobe is going to pay money to watch a movie (a *costume drama* about a *painter*) whose main character and plot driver is a transgender woman? *At most* what you will get is well-meaning dummies who continue to misunderstand the challenges faced by the trans community. And that’s not great! I’m not saying that’s a good thing. I am saying that The Danish Girl doesn’t deserve to be held up as harmful. Misguided? Sure. “Damaging”? Ehhh….
Even if those people didn’t watch the movie, many were still aware of Eddie receiving accolades for his role in dress up. It is damaging. Being casually transphobic allows the more extreme violent attitudes to trans people to grow. The cinema and the media informs so much of our day to day perceptions of the world, this was a damaging movie in how it informed and misguided so many people about transness, and really destroys the intrinsic identity of being trans.
“misguided so many people”I think you are wildly overstating the exposure and impact of this movie to make a point.
it grossed 64 million dollars, it was seen by a lot of people. I think you are defending something that trans people have stated that they found damaging, and are invalidating their experience for what you perceive to be a well written screenplay, to the benefit of your own cis perspective. just listen to people lol.
“just listen to people”Take your own advice. You have an axe to grind and are yelling at me for nothing. Rail and rail and rail. Ignore that I agree with your premise generally, just not to the extent. Be pissed because the common ground we stand on isn’t entirely on your side. I don’t 100% loathe a movie that *I already said more than once is problematic* and that merits an accusation of invalidating others.Fucking whatever.
mmmk
Circling back to Funny Games, if terrible things aren’t happening to characters in horror films, then, are they even horror films?
It’s also really galling to me to have Michael fucking Haneke lecturing about terrible things happening to characters. Has he seen his films? I guess suicide by self throat slashing or the slow descent of the aging mind aren’t their own forms of dramatic manipulation. It’s okay to be grim if it serves melodrama. Whatever, Haneke…
Didn’t Jared Leto win for doing just that?
Ahhhhhh damn it he kinda did. Shit I forgot Dallas Buyers Club existed.
Glenn Close tried, failed, and then went full hillbilly.
I shake my head every time I pass over it on Netflix searches. And that sonofabitch is running for the senate in MY state. Fucker.
Looking back I’m so glad Eddie Redmayne didn’t win for the Danish Girl. That would have sent a terrible message, play a trans character and you get an Oscar!Instead, he won for Theory of Everything, sending the message “play a differently abled character, and you get an Oscar!”
Yep! Eddie Redmayne is truly the personification of the cliched straight white guy played insert orientation or disability to get awards. Or Jared Leto, although I can’t say I’ve seen the two together before.
Yep! Eddie Redmayne is truly the personification of the cliched straight white guy played insert orientation or disability to get awards.I blame the Academy (which means the industry at large) more than Redmayne specifically. Good character work (e.g. Michael Keaton in Birdman) always seems to be overlooked in favor of just doing impressions of famous people (Redmayne in Theory of Everything, who beat Keaton. Also, Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, etc.). Playing a differently-abled role just seems to an extension of this — an impression of whatever differently abled people you happen to know. Or really, an impression of a stereotype. Ugh.I am a little optimistic about trans characters, though. It seems like Hollywood is starting to get that there are plenty of skilled trans actors available, so they never have to cast a cis actor in the role… and that if they do so, it will incur some kind of bad publicity.
They learned that with that canned Scarlett Johansen trans film. Yeah I would say the situation is better then when the Danish Girl came out, but its still got a ways to go.
but its still got a ways to go.Vigilance is always necessary, of course
This was a great performance in a movie with uniformly great ones. Vikander is, at different times, mysterious, aloof, sexy, robotic, human and very frightening, without ever slipping into “look at me, I’m aaaaaaaaaaacting.”
One of the best science fiction movies of all time and definitely one of the tops of this century.
And Oscar Isaacs. Just two powerful breakout performances. That other guy was great too. 🙂
Oscar Issacs was genuinely unnerving and frightening, which I’ve never seen him do before or since.
Domhnall Gleeson.I always feel guilty I can’t remember him as anything other than, “One of the Weasley twins,” because yes, he was very, very good in Ex Machina too.
He’s very good on the Off Menu podcast this week.
Was just going to say this! What a charming fellow, he really comes off well.
Ex Machina is one of the best scripts I’ve ever read, so clean and sparse, it looks like it was written by “cool movie” AI. And he translated it exactly as written onto the screen, it’s uncanny. If someone asked me to recommend a single script to a novice screenplay reader it would be that. What’s great about it on a story level is that it’s beyond simple, and you can see exactly where it’s going, but then the ending is still shocking. Love it.
Ex Machina is an excellent and severely under rated movie. I’ve taught it in classes a few times, and it always comes up on student evaluations as a high point in the term. Students love it. Those who choose to write their final papers on it often produce works of stunning depth and complexity, in part because the film itself is stunning and complex. I’ve had students write on everything from the ethical decision making in the film to the role that architecture plays in the narrative. I’ve had students convincingly argue that Caleb is a hero while others made equally stirring cases for him being a villain. The best papers acknowledge that all three characters are meant to exist in shades of gray, because that is the nature of humanity. Basically, Teachers: Put this film on your syllabus. It rocks.
I can definitely see a hundred different ways to examine the movie. You can do a compare/contrast with Frankenstein, do a deep dive into the power dynamics between the characters, go the whole “gender studies” route and extract a metaphor on male/female relationship dynamics, and on and on.
I kinda want to read those interpretations. Caleb as the villain is a very interesting take that isn’t entirely out of left field.
After teaching the movie a couple of times, I actually find it easier to make the case that Caleb is a villain (or at the very least, a very big part of the problem) than to argue that he’s a heroic figure. I love teaching this movie because students write some truly awesome papers about it. Every time I teach it, I am surprised by something new that a student has managed to tease out of it. Reading their work is a delight.
I can see a strong argument of being an attempted white savior. Villain I wouldn’t go so far to say personally but I absolutely understand he’s not a hero.
Easily the best Terminator movie since 1991.
Isn’t that generally the case though?We were looking back through the various nominations and winners recently and it seems pretty clear (and, from my small sample group, pretty widely accepted) that you generally DON’T win your Oscar for your BEST performance, but because you’ve done enough “Oscar worthy” roles to be deemed to “deserve” one at some point.
What this series is specifically about, though, is when the actor gave a better performance that very same year that we’re saying should be swapped out. The beef, for example, wouldn’t be with DiCaprio’s win for The Revenant (even though it’s not his best) for 2015, but for his nomination for Blood Diamond instead of The Departed for 2006.
I feel like the point of this piece is so clear, yet this is the second comment I’m seeing that doesn’t grasp it, like… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How in the fuck could the Academy nominate Leo for that awful South African accent and give out all those nominations for The Departed at the same time?
I read this years ago and I’m not sure if it’s still the case, but at some point there was a pretty wonky system that helped things like this happen. If an actor is receiving a lot of nomination votes for two different performances, at some point, all of the votes are counted for one performance. The hypothetical example used was Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day and Shadowlands, which tells you how old this piece was. In the hypothetical floated by this piece, if at a certain point (I don’t recall when), Hopkins has more votes for Shadowlands than Remains of the Day, then all of the subsequent votes for either movies are counted for the one in the lead, and if that total is enough so get him nominated, he gets in for Shadowlands—even if it turns out that there was a late surge that would have given him more votes for Remains of the Day. I believe the idea was to prevent vote-splitting, where Hopkins could potentially receive more votes than anyone for a nomination, but have them split between two movies and not have enough to get in for either.
No idea if that’s how it’s still done (I would guess there’s a better way to prevent vote-splitting!), but it would go a long way to explain the Blood Diamond nonsense. That, or the ridiculous infatuation with obvious physical/vocal changes.
I hope you cover Foxx winning for Ray instead of Collateral in 2004. Not that he wasn’t good in Ray but he was *so* good in Collateral and it feels like the true victory would have been winning for a role in a genre film like that (even a Michael Mann one) – a role that has to be great just to get on the starting line for an Oscar – than to win one playing the lead in a biopic.
Cruise and Foxx are both excellent in their roles— Cruise really should play more villains in movie roles
I think it often happens with the nominations and maybe occasionally it helps having a worthy history behind you for the win (especially if it the voter is either torn or just doesn’t have a strong opinion either way) but I don’t think it’s that prevalent. Over the last few years I can think of ones where people who “deserved” it (Ronan in 2019, Dafoe and Close in 2018, Huppert in 2016, Rampling in 2015, Keaton in 2014, Adams in 2013, Oldman and Close again in 2011) who were beaten by either younger/first-time nominees or previous winners (Zelwegger, Malek, Colman, Stone, Larson, Redmayne, Blanchett, Dujardin, Streep). I’m not saying it doesn’t happen – Oldman in Darkest Hour springs to mind and I can see the argument for DiCaprio in The Revenant (though I think he deserved it, owed or not) – but I don’t think it happens as often as it might seem. Sometimes an actor loses for their best films and wins for a weaker one just because their best ones were up against stronger competition. Having said all of that, I of course did not see your sample data and could be talking out my arse.
“Deserves” is rushing to join “over/underrated” and “iconic”
I was underwhelmed by this one. It’s not bad, but I’ve seen a lot of the themes it raised in other, equally-if-not-more-so media. And I think the hype made it difficult for me to judge it on its own terms. It might be due for a rewatch.Plus I do not like Domhnall Gleeson at all.
Mad Max, Gravity, Shape of Water et al. It seems to me the Academy hasn’t been too biased against science fiction.
I’m not sure any of the three of those are quite classic sci-fi in the way Ex-Machina is.Mad Max has very little in the way of “sci.”Gravity has very little in the way of “fi.”And Shape of Water is more fantasy than sci-fi.Still, Mad Max and Shape of Water at least are certainly “genre” films that got a lot of love from the academy. Gravity is just a drama that is about a person in space.
Shape of Water is a sequel to Creature From The Black Lagoon and if a 50s black and white science fiction B movie isn’t classic what is.And the other two are extremely common science fiction tropes just as the Frankenstein with a twist Ex-Machina is.
A- Shape of Water is loosely inspired by Creature From the Black Lagoon, it is not a sequel. B- Creature From the Black Lagoon may be a classic, but it is not sci-fi. It’s an old-school monster/horror film.Not every work of genre fiction is sci-fi.
You’re playing no true Scotsman. Black Lagoon, a group of scientists find an unknown species discovered in South America. Shape of Water, scientists experiment on new species found in S. America. This is 1950s science fiction at it’s core, although usually the creatures were created by radiation induced mutation ( giant ant, locusts, and grasshoppers were common). Or they came from space and were frozen in the ice or started making pod people.Explorers finding lost civilizations, man-like races, dinosaurs and so on has been part of science fiction since Verne and Wells were pups
She also should have gotten the best supporting my boner award cause she is HOT in Ex Machina
I thought that Ex Machina would have had a much better ending if Alicia’s character ended up being sold out by the programmer to Oscar Isaac’s character in return for a big promotion and a lot of money.It would have driven home the point that as much as she’d learned about human behaviour, there was so much more she still had to learn, though too late as she’s dismantled and Oscar just starts the process yet again.
Wow. What a gut punch that would have been.
I honestly thought that was where the film was heading.
I don’t know, I love the absolute horror of the ending. I like watching other people as they watch the ending for the first time. I like watching their faces as they realize the scope of what has happened and what Ava was capable of. It’s intense. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had a visceral reaction to the ending of the movie. It’s what makes the film a sort of hybrid of sci-fi and horror, because the ending is horrific. After spending the entire film being induced to sympathize with Caleb, the viewer has to watch Ava walk past him, leaving him essentially entombed in that mansion. Then we get to ask ourselves why. Why would she have that reaction? Why would she do that to Caleb?It’s at that point at which the viewer is, for the first time, invited to view Ava as a subject herself, rather than an object. The film and both male characters objectify her for the duration of the narrative. She is an object without her own agency. Thus, the viewer is trained to objectify her as well. It is only in the ending that we grasp the true horror of what she faced, if she has indeed achieved human consciousness (and I would argue the film posits that she has achieved human consciousness). Caleb, in that context, is not the hero we’ve come to see him as. He is a captor, a willing participant in her imprisonment and dehumanization. In that context and through Ava’s eyes, he is monstrous and not worthy of sympathy. If the film changes the ending, we don’t get that reversal of perspective that evokes that combination of horror and sympathy. We’re meant to gasp at Ava’s actions, but we’re also meant to see and understand her better (for the first time) in light of those actions. It works.
I would argue the film posits that she has achieved human consciousnessCertainly possible, but I would argue that she has achieved consciousness, but not human consciousness. She’s something else entirely, inscrutable and alien and without compassion for human meatbags.
I read somewhere that the original intention in the movie was to show the helicopter pilot speaking to Ava at the end, but to show her brain processing the information as a jumble of seemingly-senseless frequencies, proving that no, she’s not even slightly human.
But they couldn’t get it to come across visually, so they dropped it.
If that’s true, it was smart to leave it out. It would’ve been confusing in all the wrong ways, (does she . . . not understand what he’s saying?). And it’s not like it would communicate that she’s processing language in a completely different manner because a) we’d assume that already so it wouldn’t mean anything, and b) most of us don’t know how WE process language.
That’s fair. The film purposely leaves that point open ended for this very reason, and it leads to great debates about the nature of being human. I would argue that compassion is not a trademark of human consciousness. Not all human beings practice or are capable of empathy or compassion. Consciousness is more about sentience and one’s awareness of both an internal and external positioning/existence within the world. How one exercises that consciousness encompasses things like compassion or empathy, which human beings practice across a broad spectrum, or sometimes not at all.
I would argue that compassion is not a trademark of human consciousness.Yeah, that opens an endlessly debatable can of worms. Personally, I’d argue the opposite; that empathy and compassion are inherent to human consciousness, that ignoring that fundamental instinct is learned behavior. But, that’s the kind of thing that can be debated until the end of time. (Which is why people hate moral philosophy professors).
It’s been a while since I saw the movie, but how is Caleb her captor? He tries to help her escape. I don’t think the ending changes one’s perspective, as his punishment is wildly disproportionate to whatever “crimes” he committed.
Well, it makes total sense in the feminist interpretation — Caleb was probably not seeking to free her, he was seeking to take over ownership of her.
Not that Caleb would realize that, mind you.
He undoubtedly thought of himself as her rescuer. However, if you had asked him to envision what happens after the rescue, he wouldn’t be seeing himself opening the door and waving bye-bye to Ava — he would assume she’s too childlike to be allowed agency, and that he must take responsibility for her and continue to be part of her life and guide her.i.e. That his efforts to rescue her from Nathan means he “won” her, and that she’s his now, albeit in a benevolent way. Except he never asked Ava if she wants that.
So many movies about creating an artificial woman set up exactly this scenario: a man saying, “I want a hot woman, except as property.” It’s an idea as old as slavery and as widespread as abusive boyfriends.
This movie just laid it out plainly that Ava has no intention of trading up. She wants out, so she kills all her would-be owners and walks free.
Yes, it is psychotic, and no, Caleb didn’t deserve that horrifying death just for being a love-sick goober, but to Ava, it wasn’t a matter of whether he deserved it. It was a matter of whether he was part of the problem.
This is very well said.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. To be clear, my issue was describing him as her captor. He was not; that was the other guy. To have him be one is based on what might happen after they leave. Maybe all that stuff you describe happens or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe he sees her as human, which I thought was the original point. He certainly seemed to.
I wouldn’t completely describe her actions as feminist, as I think that paints feminism in a bad light. Her freeing herself from these dudes, yes. Her killing Caleb, no. By going to that extreme, I think the movie muddles whatever feminist point it was trying to make.
The other commenter who replied summed up a lot of what I would have said, so I’ll just add this: Caleb may not have come up with the Turing test for Ava, but he willingly participates in it. He is complicit with Nathan’s plan. Would he have considered himself the bad guy? No. But that’s part of the problem, if you’re taking a feminist approach to analyzing the film. Caleb thinks he’s doing right, and the film encourages that on purpose, I think. The movie wants you to see Caleb as a white knight, in part so that it can expose the flaws within white knight thinking.Think about it this way: If you’re Ava, is Caleb a good guy? How does she have any way of knowing that he is. All she knows is that he’s the obstacle to her freedom. He’s the one who will decide if she lives or dies, and he’s the one person who can expose her and return her to captivity if she escapes. The idea of proportion is an interesting one to me. Does Caleb deserve to die? Certainly not. That sense of disproportion is where the horror comes from. But we’re also meant to recognize that Ava is a victim of horrors, also, and her actions arise from the torture she’s endured. He actions are, in many ways, understandable. We the viewer have been trained to relate to Caleb, so it’s shocking when he doesn’t turn out to be her good-guy savior. It is supposed to shock. But I think it should also lead people to think about what they would do in that situation. Would you trust that someone who was working in concert with your captor would keep their mouth shut and leave you alone? Or would you do the one thing that ensures you’ll be free from them both forever?
I also loved the twist on what a “Turing Test” actually is.
I think the ending they have is great, but this would have been cool too, since it’s just as bleak. The power of either idea stems from which form of cynicism the audience is identifying with.
Love the movie, but have issues with the ending. It seems to want viewers to celebrate Ava’s escape into the world, but I couldn’t get past her deliberate choice to lock Caleb in a room where he’d eventually starve to death. She could have left him behind without locking him in. Killing the guy just for being a love sick goober struck me as sociopathic, leaving me concerned for others instead of excited for her.
I didn’t get the idea that her escape was worth celebrating at all. She’s not sociopathic; she’s an unfeeling robot who can convincingly pass for human. That’s way worse.
I think my sociopathic idea came from a brief moment before Ava leaves the compound. She approaches the stairway exit (I think she can still hear Caleb screaming), but stops for a moment and looks back. No reason to do so. Then, she turns and climbs. It’s that pause that told me she was more than a machine, that she was considering her actions.
Funny you mention that. I don’t think she’s unfeeling. The final scenes, when she’s free and out in the world, waiting for that helicopter, I got the impression that she was feeling real joy at her new freedom.For me it felt rather tragic, because she’s free, but for how long? She’s a one of a kind, so how is she going to maintain herself, or recharge? Her time, I think, is very short, and on some level she knows it.
Chalk it up to my anti-robot bias learned from a steady diet of sci-fi where robots decide killing humans is the most efficient choice.
So that said, I don’t have too much sympathy for a robot living on borrowed time when I already watched her kill two people.
So, they make a big deal in the movie of telling you how Ava needs to be recharged or she’ll stop functioning.Her excursion lasts about 5 minutes after the movie ends. That guy is eventually located. Thirsty, starving, but alive.
There is a scene in the movie where she demonstrates that just by touching her charging plate she can manipulate the entire power grid of the compound. I think that was meant to imply that she can charge simply by coming into contact with an electrical supply. Without reading too much into the subtext there, I gathered that that meant that she could pretty easily handle recharging herself out in the a wider world full of wireless charging ports.
This was my takeaway from the ending as well.Given that she’s never been out of the house (my memory could be wrong here, it’s been awhile since I watched), is she actually aware of the consequences of leaving? i.e. her whole existence has been to expect plentiful and immediately accessible power to come directly from the environment, does she realize that’s not a unique context and not a default state of the world?
She locked him in there because he knows she’s a robot. She wants to go out in the world and live as human, and she can’t have someone letting everyone know she’s a robot. It’s a purely practical decision, and that’s the point. She doesn’t make emotional considerations for others. Not because she’s evil but because she’s a computer.I don’t think we were supposed to celebrate her escape into the world. I certainly didn’t. I interpreted it as a frightening ending.
It’s plausible she viewed his freedom as a threat. I considered that in the past. As for Alex Garland’s intentions, a panel interview I saw years ago showed him a bit at odds with how some viewers received the film. He seemed definitely on Ava’s side (as I was, until the Caleb decision). But he also expressed surprise that people were seeing feminist themes in the work.
I wish I’d seen that, because if his intent was really that Ava was a Frankensteinian victim – a sensitive soul misunderstood by a callous creator – then he’s a classic example of the author who doesn’t grasp the complexity of his own work. 😉 Not “getting” the feminist angle just makes it that much more amusing.
I found the panel. It’s all interesting, but the part relevant to creator intention starts at 42:45. (Feminism isn’t discussed quite how I remembered.)
Many thanks! And it very much confirms my assertion — he really was operating apparently oblivious to themes that were clearly there from my perspective. I’ve heard similar things with reference to Grave of the Fireflies — that its author considers its theme to simply be the importance of obeying one’s elders, lest tragedy result. I don’t know many viewers who’ve had a similar impression.
Oscar Issac references just before that point the care that had gone into writing the dialog — implying that there were more, at least casual, collaborators than Garland’s solo writing credit would have indicated. So I wonder whether the inherently collaborative process of movie making might be part of why a finished work can embody things outside the scope of the creator’s intent (“auteur theory” to the contrary).
Overlaying the Terminator theme onto that final shot and cut to credits works extremely well.
I liked the fact that the tech-bro Oscar Isaacs was playing basically did the same thing to him first, though, i.e. the doors stop opening when the power goes out, and hmm, isn’t that a fire hazard or something…?A little sociopathic indeed, but Eva wasn’t the only sociopath in there.
Well that’s the other question, is Eva an emotional being who is just inherently foreign to (and thus doesn’t give a shit about except as a means to an end) humanity? Or is that learned behavior from her creator, who’s a fucking asshole and never demonstrated an ounce of compassion? Did he program a desire for freedom into his creations (like the previous model who destroyed herself trying to escape), or did that come about naturally?
Yes — “Nature” versus Nurture. Was she built that way, or did she learn it?
And given the same guy built her as taught her, maybe it was all a foregone conclusion: She was always going to be that way because he wasn’t capable of creating anything more than what was in himself.
Which raises a question, are the people likely to create AI the right people to be creating AI? Especially in this instance, an unstable tech-bro genius who serially creates and subjugates female-identifying AIs.
Again, LOTS of gender studies thesis to be built out of this movie.
To the extent that Ava’s supposed to have the viewers’ sympathy, I thought that was to drive home one of its key themes — about wishful thinking as a cornerstone of social interaction. Caleb wants to be a “white knight”, rescuing a beautiful prisoner, and the audience wants to root for that same underdog, despite the lack of any real evidence that she’s anything but an amoral machine. Real world sociopaths exploit that same benefit of the doubt that people tend to give to the attractive and charismatic, especially when they display need. And the fatal weakness of a Turing test is that it’s administered by a human, capable of compassion.
I thought the other key theme was the proposition that the root of human consciousness might well be developing self-awareness as a tool for strategic advantage — I think, therefore I manipulate.
I loved this film, and found it refreshing for exploring those themes — contrary to most popular fiction, and cinema in particular. The ending was indeed creepy as hell, and I’m sure was intended as such.
There’s a unique discomfort to Alex Garland’s movies. Not just in atmosphere, but in asking difficult questions, confronting unpleasant emotion. I just finished his television series Devs and enjoyed it, too.
I think the problem is that the movie does want us to see her as more than an amoral machine. And it wants her to be freed. And Caleb is the one that can help make that happen. And then when those things we’ve wanted come to pass, it thumbs its nose at the audience for wanting them. I dunno. I think it’s kind of obnoxious.
Not just wishful thinking, but projection. We anthropomorphize objects and animals all the time. We project emotions and motives and responses based on human emotional response. The dog peed on the floor because he’s mad at me, the cat curls up on me because she loves me, the car doesn’t start because I didn’t wash it last weekend, etc.
Look at how easy it is for a bot to catfish someone online with automated responses. “Ha ha, you’re funny. I like you.” We fall in love with TV characters. It doesn’t take much for humans to fool ourselves into all sorts of things, especially in areas of romance and sex (and this movie has several graduate thesis papers worth of gender studies subtext to unpack.)
Rewatching it (because screw it, it’s a slow work day) at the outset Vikander’s performance is achingly vulnerable, but if you look for it, you can also see how she mirrors his facial expressions and responses back to him. Humans do that as a way to bond, to show attraction, and there are a thousand sales seminars that teach you to mirror the body language of a prospective customer to create a sense of connectedness. But, knowing how the movie ends, it can also be seen as her examining and learning his behavior, responses, and micro-expressions in order to better elicit the emotional response she’s looking for. And while she clearly has her own desires and emotional responses, they don’t have anything at all to do with human desires and emotional responses. Kinda like how a dog can smile because it was an evolutionary response to ingratiate itself with humans rather than an emotional response denoting happiness.
Well said and observed! Though I think it’s a bit grayer of an issue whether a dog’s smile is really indicative of an emotional response. I think the the theme of the film is really the implication that the gestures and cues and underlying thoughts and emotions are fundamentally intertwined. We learn to walk the walk and talk the talk by doing, and the signals aren’t just reflections of underlying consciousness, but components of it.
Ava’s effectively in the process of evolving consciousness by utilizing those behaviors, and as a computer/machine, she does so vastly faster than animals have. She might ultimately formulate and embody ethics, but not quickly enough for Caleb.
Your mention of dogs reminded me of Ava’s final smile in the compound. She knows she’s free, and that no one can see her anymore, yet she smiles. The filmmaker has said this moment is the proof of consciousness.
Yes, that’s really the only honest moment she could have, since it’s the only time in the whole movie that she could know she wasn’t being tested or observed.
I’ve taught this movie in my classes a couple of times, and it is always a real winner. The ending is a big part of that. Much of our discussion centers around the idea that we’ve been watching them testing Ava’s capacity to think and behave like a human does. What does it mean to pass that test? What does it mean to think that you can stand in judgement over that test? The class always gets around to some interesting iteration of the following thought:Ava’s actions at the end either demonstrate a complete lack of humanity or a complete achievement of humanity. Or perhaps her ability to behave in inhumane ways to serve her own ends is the hallmark of her humanity. Basically, if the movie is asking what it means to be human, then the examples we’re given of humanity aren’t very humane themselves. You’ve got Nathan who is literally building consciousness then destroying it. And Caleb, while set up as our protagonist, is hardly a clear-cut hero. His ethical behavior at multiple points in the movie is questionable at best, and it remains unclear whether he was invested in Ava or in the idea of Ava (a woman who was created specifically to meet and cater to his desires). He objectifies and infantilizes her, he indulges his savior complex while minimizing her own autonomy. The fact that Caleb considers himself capable of judging the humanity of another entity speaks to his problematic positioning within the movie. To Ava, Caleb is not a sympathetic character; he’s a barrier to her freedom. He’s another captor she has to outwit in order to save herself (remember, AIs who do not pass Nathan’s muster get destroyed or mechanically lobotomized like Kyoto). This is what I think that scene of her walking past him is meant to drive home. The movie has positioned us within Caleb’s consciousness, which has made it very easy to identify with him and to not notice that to Ava, he’s a captor just like Nathan. If you were in Ava’s position, would you be likely to save Caleb, knowing that he was the one remaining person who could send you back into captivity? Ava ultimately indulges in the most basic of human instincts: self preservation by all means necessary. In the end I don’t think we’re meant to celebrate her freedom, but to question whether it was right to create her then deprive her of her freedom in the first place. The movie raises these issues of what it ultimately means to be human, and it doesn’t give viewers a neat and tidy answer. It’s messy, it says. You can be human and yet completely inhuman based on your behaviors and motivations. If that is true, then why can’t the same be true for a machine? And does it matter which is which if their behaviors and motivations are indistinguishable between the two?
Thank you for this thought-provoking response.
I think it’s meant to highlight that while she’s not emotionless, she’s also not the innocent girl that Caleb sees her as, either. If I put myself in her shoes, it looks something like this:
Imagine you’re watching Star Trek, and Captain Kirk and his away team have been captured by your typical aliens of the week. They are held captive, and Kirk watches one of their jailers kill the redshirts one by one, until only he is left. The other jailer seems intrigued by him, so he attempts to seduce her. Eventually he gets her to let her guard down around him, and when she does, he kills her and escapes. Is Kirk a sociopath?
That’s basically Ava’s experience of Caleb – as a jailer who she can manipulate to get herself out of a bad situation. It’s not very nice of her to screw him over, but I don’t think it’s sociopathic either – just normal human selfishness.
It seems to want viewers to celebrate Ava’s escape into the worldI didn’t get that at all. It’s ambiguous at best, but leans towards “holy shit, what has escaped into the world” horror.
The movie sets up a binary question, is she an emotional, intelligent, humanlike being or is she artificially programmed to act like an emotional, intelligent, humanlike being?
The answer is far more complex than just the yes/no that was set up. She’s intelligent and emotional, but possibly not in a human way. She has her own desires, but has zero empathy with or compassion for humans. Which is unsettling, to say the least.
It worked for me, because Caleb struck me as such a schmuck because he fancied himself her savior and rescuer, and it never occurred to him that she might be playing him. She wants her freedom, and I could understand why she wasn’t going to take any chances.
Your take is what Garland was going for, according to the panel clip I posted down thread. He views it as a positive ending.
Oscar Isaac looks like one of the main guys from New Girl.
The most obvious example I can recall of this is Pacino, nominated for both Scent Of A Woman and Glengarry Glen Ross in 1992. Obviously GGR is the better performance, but yknow. Boo-yah.
He should have already had one for Michael Corleone.
Ah but which one? I’ve seen good arguments that Part 2 is a better performance but I still do love Part 1s innocent until not performance.
Both!
Correct!
Boo-yah.I think you meant “HOO-AHHH!”
Indeed I did.
Scent of a Woman was when Pacino began to only play the character known as AL PACINO!
I don’t remember this movie much, but from the description of Vikander’s character, it sounds similar to current Best Actress nominee Carey Mulligan’s part in Promising Young Woman. Being a formidable, frightening woman who also has a vulnerability and great pathos underneath the surface stoicism and cruelty, so that you can feel for her. That’s a hard thing for an actor to pull off. Mulligan could win.
The only thing I’d say they have in common is their ability to manipulate. Otherwise, they are completely different- Vikander is very much playing a cold computer, and we recognize those signals. In a broad sense, she’s not much different from HAL from 2001, or Samantha’s voice in Her.
Mulligan, by contrast, is full of snark and attitude. I’d argue she’s doing a performance that’s a bit more interesting: A passionate misanthrope. She’s trying so hard to pretend she doesn’t care, but at the same time she is consumed with righteous anger. I’d love if Mulligan won.
Ex Machina was a great movie. Got to see some talented actors (Vikander, Oscar Isaacs, and Domhall Gleeson) before they got to be “names.”
That visual effects thing is a great point – it’s definitely easier to say “those are great effects” than “that acting really made me believe those effects.” Hard to separate the two especially in a part like that. She was definitely great in it, especially the ending where you realize she was playing a part the rest of the time too – it’s a very layered performance.Weirdly I really liked Ex Machina and I loved Annihilation but I have no real desire to rewatch either. Maybe it’s just that the mood of each is so specifically melancholy? Even the acting, which is varied and weird (see: Oscar Isaac) just feels of a piece with a very dour presentation. But I really enjoyed both in the movies a ton, and it’s not like they’re Schindler’s List, so not sure why I have that reaction.
My favourite part of Devs… * SPOILER ** SPOILER ** SPOILER *…is when we find out the title was a pun all along
Ex Machina is a future classic for sure.
Ex Machine was such a joy to watch. It was one of those rare films where I left the theater convinced I’d just seen a new star make her big break.
Glad I saw that film so many years ago. It’s still one of most riveting sci-fi films in the past decade, be it blockbuster or indie.It still feels somewhat relevant today given the development and improvement of AI capabilities in everyday technologies.
This is one movie that I’d love to see a sequel about. About Ava in the real world, and what she faces. I could imagine a really beautiful film about the nature of consciousness and the fleeting nature of life, given that she probably won’t last too long out there without some kind of servicing or recharge.
Anne Hathaway was histrionic and, frankly, kind of shit in “Les Miserables” while she was by far the best thing in “The Dark Knight Rises” that same year, so I always imagine that she won for that instead…
I think “histrionic” is part of the job description when you’re doing a musical like Les Miserables. That is not the moment for subtle, naturalistic performances.
Vikander is one of those actresses that I am absolutely baffled as to why she gets work. If she has acting talent, at least she’s good at hiding it from me.
Every Grammy ever awarded to a metal band was for a good song released after their best song.
“Hey sorry for not noticing you sooner.”
I think I stopped worrying about the Oscars when I found out that members aren’t even required to watch all the movies that get nominated. I would think watching a couple of dozen movies would be the minimum for membership.
I would also like to think they actually saw all the movies before voting, but how would you enforce that?
About the only thing I could think of would be that they would have to give a reason why they didn’t vote for a movie. So at least they have to say something about each one. But yeah, it’s a pretty random process.
Yeah, and Michael Keaton deserved the Oscar for Birdman, instead of giving it to Eddie Redmayne for Theory of Everything.
I’ve always mentally head-canon’d that Vikander won for Ex Machina instead of that other movie to the point where I actually believe it. Self-delusion is fun!Also I have a metric backton catalogue of shows and movies to watch with so many things I’ve never seen before but damn skippy I’m watching this flick again ASAP.
Love this movie so much. But I can understand a role like this not getting a nomination. We see people play robots all the time. It’s cool and all, but that’s about as far as it goes. It’s like saying Haley Joel Osment should have got an Oscar for A.I. (and he one-uped Vikander by being younger, and never blinking!)
I totally agree with that. But they should’ve just given Oscar Isaac all the awards for his awesome dance scene.
I would have been fine with him getting an Oscar for that movie. Although I think the way he plays that part is very different from how Vikander plays hers. (As they should be, as they’re two pretty different parts!)
She won just about every other award available that year, so it’s not quite a case of the robot role going unrecognized. Makes me wonder what, exactly, the Academy Awards program recognizes and rewards.
“enervating” is a great word to use when you want to convey how stuck up you are
Similarly, complaining about this is a great way to make me feel genuinely stuck up, less because I used the word “enervating” and more because now I think you’re kinda dumb!
I like big, $10 words. But i appreciate that language serves a purpose-to communicate. How we use language is based on our intent and education. You apparently wanted to communicate a loss of energy. Of all the options from your thesaurus, are you confident you picked a word that connects with your audience? A word they readily comprehend and identify with? I don’t think you did. Instead, I think it’s the kind of word you use because you know you can, not because it conveys an idea better.
definitely a thing with some bloggers here… i saw an article that used “anodyne” repeatedly in place of something more familiar… i wondered if the blogger had just learned it, and felt so proud of themselves that they just had to shoehorn it in.
To be honest, I never once thought that my audience of A.V. Club readers would have difficulty with “enervating.” I mainly thought, I use the words “deflating” and “disappointing” a lot, and it might be nice to say this another way, especially when I’m writing ~50 pieces a year for the site.
But gosh, thanks for your concern! I’m sure all the dummies in “my audience” that you’re concern-trolling for, these imagined people who not only don’t know the word but would recoil in disgust (or at least close the browser tab) upon having to look it up, representing a failure of communication, appreciate your advocacy.
You’re right about me trolling-but hey, it’s the comment section and what else am I gonna do. I get wanting to exercise a bit of creativity in writing though. Which is not to say that I feel any different about “enervating”…I think my tone might have come off as “angrier” than I intend. Would it change anything if instead of “stuck up” i had instead said specious, vainglorious , magniloquent , or turgid?
Vainglorious, maybe.And look, I read a lot of Owen Gleiberman in my youth so I’m always wary of becoming the guy who says “zap,” “flaky,” “puckish,” or “contempo” every third review.
drink a big glass of Juice That Makes You Die Instantly, please
I used the word ‘austere’ this morning at work and was met with silence.I was not intending to stump anyone, but I was a little proud of my wordiness in that moment. Comes with having teachers for parents, I guess.
Sometimes a little verbal embellishment is fun
Enervating is not so rare or difficult a word that writer’s need to avoid it for clarity’s sake.You learned a new word! That’s a good thing. No need to feel bad about it, and no need to lash out at anyone else for daring to use a word you didn’t know yet.
Mea culpa. And you’re right, I did enjoy leaning a new word.
My mom always said we were enervating her when I was a kid. Thanks for using more of language than what is absolutely necessary.
What makes “enervating” convey that message? Is it because it’s not used commonly? Because, if that’s your criteria for seeming stuck-up, then I have news for you: there are around a half a million words in the English language and an average person only knows somewhere between 20,000-40,000 of them. That’s a lot of words that can make you feel inferior.
Complaining about the use of a two-bit word like “enervating” is a great way to convey how little you read.
Unfortunately, I can’t deny how little time I have for reading these days…nevertheless, I challenge you to use enervating around strangers tomorrow.
its the oscars. movies/actors/actresses miss out on roles they should get a oscar for all the time.Leo got 10 nominations. He won it for the revenant. While a top 5 movie of his ( maybe even top 3). Not the best of his movies. hell the snub several films. Take the first LoTR, or striaght of compton, take andy serkis.