In the science-fiction thriller “Ex Machina,”
Domhnall Gleeson (“Unbroken”) stars as Caleb, a young
computer programmer for BlueBook, a Google-esque tech corporation. As the film opens, Caleb learns
that he’s won a company-wide raffle to spend a week at the remote estate of BlueBook’s founder, a reclusive genius named Nathan Bateman
(Oscar Isaac, “Inside Llewyn Davis”). But once he
arrives, Caleb learns that he’s actually been selected to administer a Turing
test on Nathan’s latest creation, a robot he’s dubbed Ava (Swedish actress
Alicia Vikander). The goal is to confirm whether
Ava’s mind is indistinguishable from that of a human’s, but things are not as
they at first appear, and the motives of all three characters are quickly called
into question.
Raising intriguing ideas about artificial intelligence,
consciousness, and humanity — all in a sleekly entertaining package (you can
read Dayna Papaleo’s full review here) — “Ex Machina” also marks the directing debut of British novelist
and screenwriter Alex Garland (“The Beach,” “28 Days Later”).
City recently spoke with Garland by phone about his new film.
An edited transcript of that interview follows.
City Newspaper: How long was “Ex Machina”
kicking around in your head, and what first interested you in centering a story
around the idea of artificial intelligence?
Alex Garland: I’ve been reading up on A.I. and human
consciousness for a long time. I mean, probably at least 10 years in sort of an
earnest way. But the actual idea as a film — as a story — came to me when I was
working in pre-production on the movie “Dredd.” We were out in Africa getting
ready to shoot and I was reading a book about it while I was out there and it
came to me, and I just quickly got it down.
The story’s robot, Ava, looking very much like a woman is
obviously deliberate, and a lot of the projects you’ve worked on have this
underlying examination of societal power structures and gender roles. Do you
gravitate toward projects that contain those sorts of ideas, or is that
something that you find yourself injecting into them?
Well, the way this stuff works with me is I’ve got a bunch of
things going through my head and the stories I end up writing at that point
reflect those things. And in this movie, I know what’s playing a part in it is
that I’ve got two children and one of them is a daughter, and I’m aware of the
kind of influences that exist and are beginning to emerge. It can start to play
a role when children are surprisingly young. So some of it comes out of that,
but also some of it comes out of just talking with friends and the things that
are going on in their lives. I’ve got one friend in particular who’s very
committed to gender issues, and it’s a big part of her life. She’s a friend of
mine and we talk about it, so it sort of entered into my perspective as well.
I wanted to talk a bit about the design of Ava; she’s so
striking visually, and her appearance is such a key part of the character. How
much of a hand did you have in her look?
Well, I was a part of the team of people that were designing
her. Initially the design was being done between me and a guy called Jock. He’s
a comic book artist — also a friend really — and we got to know each other when
working on “Dredd.” We worked very well together, so actually the first person
who got brought into the filmmaking team was Jock. He was literally the first
one on the payroll. So me and Jock would kind of bounce ideas backwards
and forwards and try to figure out what Ava looked like, and initially a lot of
that had to do with what she didn’t look like. Avoiding references and things
that looked like they belonged in other movies, like “Star Wars.” You know, if
there was gold metal on her, or white plastic to avoid “I, Robot” and stuff
like that. And then the task was partly to make her look like a machine, and
make it very clear she was a machine so that there’s no doubt within the logic
of the story that she isn’t a young woman dressed up as a robot. And that’s the
trick of the story. Also then once you establish she’s a machine, to give her
elements that are more feminine. She has this mesh that follows the contours of
her skin, or specifically the contours of Alicia Vikander’s
skin, so that you get a strange sense of something that’s a machine but also
has an intensely feminine aspect to it.
How much was practical and how much was digital?
Well, if you can roughly imagine what Ava looks like in your
mind, she’s got this kind of missing sections of body and then she has other
sections that are like a suit with a mesh overlaid onto it. So you get that
grey solid section in her shoulders and chest and hips. That solid section is
practical and when we were shooting it, she was wearing a full body suit like a
grey, webbed, mesh Spider-Man. And then what the effects guys did was swap out
the midriff, arms and legs, and the neck and the back of the head with the
visual effect component. So the practical effect is the grey mesh and the
visual effect is everything else. And of course her face is a practical effect.
It’s the actresses’ face, but it was a prosthetic around it to create that sort
of mask.
I read that Alicia has a background in ballet. When you
were casting, were you deliberately looking for performers who had that sort of
physicality?
No, no that was a total bit of fortune really. I’d seen
Alicia in a Danish film called “A Royal Affair” and was really impressed by
her. It was a really stunning performance. As a very young actress she had a
lot of power and a lot of authority. Clearly very, very talented. I didn’t know
she was a ballerina until I’d already decided I wanted to offer her the part,
so that turned out to be just a really fortunate discovery.
Without giving too much away, there’s a dance sequence in
the film. It’s so unexpected and hilarious, and particularly with where it
falls, it has the effect of throwing you off guard when you’re watching the
film. How did that scene come about? Was it always in the script?
It was always in there, yeah. Well I say it was always in
there, but it wasn’t in the first draft. But it was in the shooting script. It
came from various things. Partly because I’m looking for sort of playful ways
that this character, Nathan, can bully and intimidate the character Caleb,
played by Domhnall Gleeson. So it’s partly just for
that and partly the strangeness of it and the humor of it and the weirdness of
it. But it’s also because I think you learn as you’re going along in your
filmmaking life, if you’re lucky to be able to make more than one, there’s
things you get wrong in the earlier movies that you then hopefully manage to
figure out. There’s a film I’d worked on a few years ago called “Never Let Me
Go,” where there was a kind of monotone. It fit the tone [of that story] really
well, but then we didn’t vary from that tone. And in some respects “Ex Machina” is kind of similar to “Never Let Me Go,” but I
wanted to make sure that I was more aggressive with the tone and I mixed it up
a bit. So I was always hunting for ways to kind of jangle it and create
spikes.
And I have to imagine that was fun to shoot.
It was great. It was really, really enjoyable. I mean the
whole shoot was really fun, but I remember that day the crew and everybody just
loved it. Because we had this fantastic track blasting out and we could all sit
around watching Sonoya Mizuno and Oscar Isaac do this
fantastic disco scene. It was great fun. A lot of people turned up that day to
watch it as well. People who wouldn’t normally be on set, but were connected
with the production in some way. They all knew we were gonna
be shooting it, so they all mysteriously turned up that day to watch.
This is your first film in the director’s chair. How was
the shift going from screenwriter to director for you? How did it compare to
the transition from novelist to screenwriter?
The transition from novel writing to screenwriting was very
big. I had a massive learning curve and that was a substantial shift. From screenwriting
to directing was essentially invisible. It hardly existed. Also, I think I just
sort of see this stuff slightly differently than I sense we’re supposed to. I
don’t place a huge importance on the role of the director. They’re just one of
the people making a film. I’ve been working in film now for 15 years, and I
don’t think there’s one thing that I can point to and say here was this major,
big deal that arrived because of directing. Every film I’ve worked on up to
this point has been a group of people working together to make a movie. And
this one was a group of people working together to make a movie. It’s pretty
much the same thing.
All the films you’ve been involved with have fallen within
a spectrum of the sci-fi and horror genres. What is it about those genres that
appeals to you, and do you ever see yourself making a more straightforward
drama?
I’d do whatever, really. I’ve written different kinds of
stories — non-science-fiction stories — as novels. And I kind of think you just
do the thing that’s fixating you at that moment. But that said, there are
things about sci-fi I really love. In particular what I like about science
fiction is the kind of permission it gives you. There’s a lot of freedom
working in sci-fi: you’re allowed to have big ideas and people aren’t
embarrassed by them. It often feels like people are kind of embarrassed by big
ideas when they’re in dramas or action movies. It’s sort of like people feel
they’re inappropriate or sophomoric or that kind of thing. But in sci-fi they
actually want it, and they seek it out.
This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2015.
