by Herbert H. Stein
“The first time I saw the film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, I left the theater with a particularly good, buoyant feeling.” I wrote that for the Fall, 2014 issue of the PANY Bulletin (and internationalpsychoanalysis.net) and added that a colleague later told me he had the same reaction after seeing the film. After seeing the film, Birdman, I wrote that I “found myself in rapt attention in a continual state of tension, anxiety, anticipation, even worry over what would happen next. When it was over, I texted that I had just seen it and didn’t know if I loved it or hated it.” I again left the theater with the mood of the film lingering.
Neither of those experiences was as striking as my reaction to Ex Machina. I saw it originally alone, and on leaving the theater, I found myself totally caught in the mood the film had created, walking homeward on familiar streets, but feeling oddly disconnected from the world and the pedestrians around me. I was totally conscious and aware of my surroundings. Cognitively and visually, my contact with reality was intact; but, my feeling state was as if I was still in the world of the film. The “real” people I was passing in the street were strangers, of course, but now they felt strange. A colleague described her reaction after seeing Ex Machina as being dissociated.
I decided rather than analyzing myself that I would try to analyze Ex Machina to better understand its effect.
If we are looking for elements that might lead to a sense of strangeness and estrangement, we may easily start with the setting. The body of the film takes place in an extremely remote area, a vast wilderness surrounding a closed-in, spare complex with a minimum of comforting images. The doors open to key cards and many are locked to all but the proprietor. There is little that is warm or familiar.
I am reminded of the enchanted isle of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which I saw in Central Park around the same time. Like that island, this isolated place is populated with strange creatures, adding to our sense of unfamiliarity. It is the living space of Nathan Bateman, a child prodigy who has chosen to live in this state of extreme isolation, pursuing his interest in the magic of cyberspace while living off his childhood creation, the world’s most powerful search engine.
This Prospero shares his island with his creation, in effect his child, an “AI,” artificial intelligence, named Ava. She has the face and the shape of a beautiful woman in a wire mesh and carbon body and a brain made of some sort of gel. Nathan also has a servant, an enigmatic, mute attractive Asian woman named Kyoko.
We, the viewers, are left on this virtual island in the company of an innocent looking young man, a computer programmer from Nathan’s company, named Caleb Smith. Caleb has won a prize of one week with Nathan. He is left by helicopter in the middle of nowhere and told to follow the river to Nathan’s “building.” The pilot has never seen Nathan, only dropped off supplies and people at a clearing. That pilot is the last normal person that Caleb, or we, will see for the next two hours.
Already thrown into this strange party, we are next given a task that pushes us to ques- tion the minds and motivations of its inhabitants. After getting Caleb to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which also gives Nathan access to all Caleb’s electronic devices, Nathan asks Caleb,
“Do you know what the Turing Test is?”
“Yeah. I know what the Turing Test is. It’s where a human interacts with a computer. And if the human can’t tell they’re interacting with a computer, the test is passed. “
“And what does a pass tell us?”
“That the computer has artificial intelligence.”
From Wikipedia: “The Turing test is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.” It is named after Alan Turing, the father of the computer age. Many of us saw him recently depicted in film uncovering the German code and facilitating victory in World War II. As Alan Turing conceived of the test, the rater does not see the subjects, human and artificial intelligence, so that the test is not influenced by the obvious physical differences.
The film presents us with a different type of Turing test. Caleb will meet with Ava, separated by a glass wall, and will attempt to deter- mine if there is anything about her mind that distinguishes her from an intelligent human being.
Immediately, almost at its outset, the film throws us into the task of trying to understand someone else’s mind. In effect, this variant of Turing’s test becomes an exercise in and a test of mentalization, the ability, again taken from Wikipedia, “to understand the mental state of oneself and others which underlies overt behavior.” Caleb, knowledgeable about such matters, questions this variation of the Turing test and is told by Nathan, “I think we’re past that. If I hid Ava from you, so you just heard her voice, she would pass for human. The real test is to show you she is a robot, then see if you still feel she has consciousness.” Nathan wants to see if Caleb will respond to the AI as if it was a human being.
Ex Machina will challenge our ability to make sense of someone else’s mind, something we as analysts are challenged to do daily. Already thrown into a very strange place with strange people, we are now going to try to solve a mystery, not of actions or events, but of motivations.
Caleb meets with Ava daily through a clear partition. She is limited to her small set of rooms. In some ways, these meetings have the structure of analytic or therapy sessions in that the interviewer knows about the other’s life only from their words. If we follow the analogy, this will turn out to definitely be a “two-person analysis.” At the first meeting, they both admit to being a little nervous at meeting one another. She explains that she has never met anyone other than Nathan. He tells her that he has never met anyone like her before. She tells him her age is “one,” that she never learned how to speak, which she knows is unusual, that she likes to draw. They agree that they’d like to meet and talk again.
In the second interview, Ava turns the tables. After getting him to agree that they are “friends,” she points out that their conversations have been one sided, in effect asking him to tell about himself. He talks about his background, his parents’ death in an auto accident. She asks if he’s single and he says he is. At some point, she turns the conversation to Nathan.
Ava: Do you like Nathan? Caleb: Yes. Of course. Ava: Is Nathan your friend? Caleb: Sure
Ava: A good friend?
Caleb: Well, a good friend is … We only just met. It takes time to get to know …
At this point, there is a power shutdown. We’ve seen one in the scene before. Nathan doesn’t know what is causing them. There is momentary darkness and then a dimmer light as the emergency power goes on. Before full power is restored, with Nathan’s ability to view them presumably cut off, Ava speaks to Caleb.
“Caleb. You’re wrong.” “Wrong about what?” “Nathan.” “In what way?”
“He isn’t your friend.”
“Excuse me? I’m sorry, Ava, I don’t know what you’re …”
“You shouldn’t trust him. You shouldn’t trust anything he says. Trust me.”
Power is restored. Ava resumes her seat and her former demeanor, continuing the conversation as if nothing unusual had happened.
As viewers, seeing this world through Caleb’s eyes, we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a dangerous triangle. Who do we trust? Who do we believe? Where do we ground our reality?
As we all know, films can give us a clear sense of a character’s intentions. But that is not the case with Nathan Bateman. When we first meet him, he doesn’t come out to greet Caleb on his entry into his home. Instead, Caleb comes upon him as he is ferociously punching a heavy bag on his terrace with bloodied fists. He then comes across warm and buddy-like, calling Caleb “Dude.” But we also see that he drinks heavily at night and can mock his own friendliness, as when he explains why Caleb doesn’t have access to the phones, “You understand. Given Ava. And you being kind of an unknown. I mean—a great guy, and so on. Instant pals. But … .”
Ava’s warning forces Caleb to make a decision, in a sense to choose between them. Nathan has been monitoring the interviews and has seen everything except what transpired during the break in power. Caleb can tell him what she said, betraying Ava, or lie to Nathan, betraying him. Sometimes, I suspect, the choice of action determines the trust rather than the other way around. Caleb lies to Nathan, in effect distrusting him.
I said that there was a fourth inhabitant, the servant girl, Kyoko. She is somewhat peripheral to the plot; yet, she plays a very important role in setting the tone and mood of the film. She appears without explanation on the morning of Caleb’s second day at Nathan’s compound. We see Caleb awakening in his room, apparently in the morning, as an attractive Asian woman enters his room to leave a tray with coffee and food. She says nothing and walks out.
Nathan later apologizes, “Hey. Sorry to send Kyoko to wake you, man. I just didn’t want too much of the day to slip by,” a moment later adding, “She’s some alarm clock, huh? Gets you right up in the morning.”
That last comment will prove telling. Kyoko, always silent, is seen first as an obedient servant, cutting food for their meal, serving food as they relax in the evening. When she spills some wine, Nathan yells at her. Caleb is upset at what borders on abuse. Nathan later shows Caleb that Kyoko is a good dancer, putting on loud music and watching her dance, then joining her. We see her lying naked in Nathan’s room, and then see him appearing to have intercourse with her. In all of this, she is eerie in her lack of emotion, the stereotypy of her reactions. Finally, we see that she is a robot, as she demonstrates for Caleb that she can remove sections of her skin, revealing a metallic surface.
At the same time, Caleb finds a series of closets with other robotic women, all inanimate. In a state of clear confusion, he seems to question his own identity, taking a razor and attempting to cut the skin on his forearm. As a viewer, not quite knowing the limits of the film I was watching, it crossed my mind that he, too, might turn out to be one of Nathan’s creations1; and, I was as relieved as he was to see human tissue and blood beneath the surface. My sense of the reality of what I was seeing was distorted as I immersed myself in the plot and tone of the film. But even this misses a dimension of the film. Part of the artistry of this film is that it presents images hidden in plain sight. We see Kyoko as a strange, seemingly automated creature, and eventually we learn that she is a robot. But we should distinguish between what we understand from the plot and what we see.
We see a powerful man, powerful in body and in position, abusing a female employee. The actual images are of a man screaming at his young female servant for spilling some wine. We see him turning on music so that she will dance with him. We see her lying naked in his room, seemingly waiting. We see him having sex with her, and she impassive. This is a clear image of an abuse of power, gender abuse, sexual abuse, and interracial abuse. We do not register it fully, but we cannot be immune to it. At some level, we react to what we are seeing rather than what we are being told.
And what of Ava? One of the complicating factors for this film is that it fails what I will call the reverse Turing test. When we look at Ava, we do not see a robot. We see a woman playing a robot. Again, there is a discrepancy between what the film tells us we are seeing and what our eyes see, what we inevitably perceive.
What we see is a man holding a woman captive. Caleb is able to steal Nathan’s key card when he is drunk at night. He goes on his computer and finds images of past AI’s, a series of attractive women that Nathan has created and discarded. Poignantly, one of these women pounds violently on the glass partition in a fury of frustration at being unable to escape.
We are easily reminded of images of an abusive home in which the man of the house plays God, controlling and using the women, a nightmarish scene that we sometimes hear about from traumatized children and adults.
It is in this context that Caleb decides to save Ava. He visits her the next morning. By this time, he has learned that she controls the power shutdowns that have been occurring.
Caleb: Don’t talk. Just listen. You were right about Nathan. Everything you said.
Ava: What’s he going to do to me?
Caleb: He’s going to reprogram your AI. Which is the same as killing you.
Ava: Caleb, you have to help me.
Caleb: I’m going to. We’re getting out of here tonight.
Ava: What? How?
Caleb: I get Nathan blind drunk. Then I take his keycard, and reprogram all the security protocols in this place. When he wakes, he’s locked inside, and we’ve walked out of here. I only need you to do one thing. At ten o’clock tonight, trigger a power failure. Can you do that?
When we enter a movie theater, we make a decision to enter the world of the film, temporarily, so that we may experience something that will move us, perhaps transform us. We know that we can act only through the characters on the screen, but how can we not respond to this rescue fantasy? How can we accept this abuse and allow this intelligent, responsive, emotionally sensitive woman to be killed?
In a prior meeting, Caleb and Ava had fantasized about going out in the world together, mingling with people, “a date.” Now, he is going to make that happen. And he does. Through duplicity and counter-duplicity, he allows Ava to escape her prison.
But not all rescue fantasies play out smoothly. We are witness to a violent confrontation in a hallway in which Ava charges the threatening Nathan knocking him down, only to have him gain the upper hand, knocking off one of her metallic hands with an iron bar he is wielding. As he stands over Ava, Kyoko stabs him in the back with the kitchen knife she has been holding for much of the film. He turns and knocks off Kyoko’s head, leaving her inert. Ava pulls the knife from Nathan’s back and stabs him in the belly as he turns to face her. He stumbles down the hall and sinks down against the wall. Ava pulls the knife from his belly as we see him dying.
This scene of graphic violence is given a slight remove by being set in this eerie, sci-fi setting. Earlier in the film, Nathan has speculated that this new form of intelligence would one day replace the humans that had spawned it. It is intended as an ominous message, a sort of warning to those who play God. But it is far less ominous than the message hidden in what we see.
What we witness here, transposed to a hall- way in an ordinary house or apartment, could easily be a final episode of extreme domestic violence, the battered wife’s revenge.
As she heads to prepare herself for her escape, Ava tells Caleb, “You stay here.” He remains where he is, recovering from a punch to the solar plexus from Nathan, while she replaces her missing hand and covers her artificial body with “skin” from the inanimate robots in the closets. Finally, she walks past him, opening a door with Nathan’s keycard and leaves the startled Caleb behind, trapped in the prison that she is escaping, presumably to die.
This last betrayal leaves us helpless, with no one to trust, perhaps feeling somewhat like the children born into homes of mutual abuse. For us, for me, it was a temporary state, one in which we cannot trust our own feelings of love and faith in another.
It was a temporary state, but it lingered beyond the limits of the movie as I walked my way home, briefly knowing what it is like not to know that I can rely on the humanness of other people. Examining it leaves me— momentarily because that is all I can tolerate—aware of another horror, that there are people who have endured enough abuse early in life that they experience most or all of the time what I went through for a brief period on an isolated evening.
- In fact, Caleb was severely injured in the auto accident- that killed his parents and underwent surgical repairs.
Originally published in the PANY Bulletin Summer, 2015