Eva machina

Ex Machina was a film puffed in the course of the recent New Scientist conference (see reference 1). One of the lecturers there was, I think, a technical consultant for it. I think he also said that he found his stint as a temporary member of the filmies' world fascinating, which is just as well, as I was unable to finish the resultant film, at least so far. Half way was about as far as I could manage the DVD, for which, for once, I paid full price at Amazon.

I don't know why but I found the whole thing rather pretentious and irritating. Perhaps the take-home (a phrase they liked at the New Scientist) is that I should not go to, or even watch, films about things that I am actually interested in, in this case, when might you consider a robot to be a fully fledged person and what, if you do so consider, you ought to do about it.

The film was well made, in the narrow sense, that the story was interesting, the acting was OK and the sets were realistic and appropriate. It also contained lots of well ironed tropes, which, as a serial consumer of costumed detective dramas on ITV3, I can hardly complain about.

The nerdy computer programmer.

The super-nerd who had made a lot of money and goes to live, more or less as a recluse, in an expensive and largely underground hide away in the woods. A hideaway with all the electrical gadgetry that money can buy. A super-nerd who, against type, likes doing booze and likes doing press-ups. I found him much more creepy than the computer programmer and I dare say that this was the idea, but my idea is that you should portray creepy without actually being creepy. It can be done.

The slender young lady who runs around dressed up either in her underwear or as a robot. People from the US seem to have a taste for slender ladies in underwear in science fiction films.

The story so far revolved around nerdy getting to know slender, with super pulling the strings in the background. A love story set in a hide away. Perhaps this was supposed to pull the ladies.

Perhaps the shadowy government conspiracy, another well-loved trope from the US, was to come. To give a bit of zest to the second half. Perhaps I should try to come up with a few story lines to test against the actualité, should things ever get that far.

A fair amount of gratuitous bad language. A seasoning of F words and P words which I found tiresome. I dare say people from the US and people in TB do talk like this in real life, but I would rather they did not on film.

The mixture as baked did not work for me at all. Perhaps it is just as well that I tried it when BH was at the Odeon, at the ballet, as I can't imagine that she would have like it any better. It rather makes up for all those excellent DVD bargains struck at charity shops and at Hook Road car booters.

PS: an older lady that I talked to at half-time at the conference loved the film. So perhaps the aforementioned pull does work for some of the fair sex. So much so that I was pulled into buying the thing.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/new-scientist.html.