Menacing, Stylish And Provocative

British screenwriter Alex Garland somehow manages to twist strands from previous science fiction films about artificial intelligence — “2001,” “I, Robot,” “A.I.” — into his directorial debut, “Ex Machina,” a stylish, eerie film with a predictable, yet compelling, sense of inevitability. It’s as if the quiet foreboding of Kubrick has met the darkness of Coppola.

Garland has toyed with science fiction before in “Sunshine” and “28 Days Later,” screenplays he wrote for director Danny Boyle. But here he creates an armature on which to mold a slight story into something beautiful and increasingly menacing. If the structure creaks, sometimes, the ultimate question of what makes us human is never less than fascinating.

Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a geeky coder working for Bluebook, the world’s largest search engine, wins an in-house contest to spend a week alone with the firm’s founder, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), at his enormous private research facility, where he lives with a silent Asian woman, Kyoko. From the relentless sound of the helicopter flying Caleb to Nathan, we somehow know at the outset this trip will not end well. The film’s soundtrack is a prescient mix of eerie, ominous, even pounding sounds that become natural parts of the action on screen.

Nathan tells Caleb that his job over the next week is to meet Ava (Alicia Vikander), a state-of-the-art robot, and test whether he can distinguish her conversation, behavior and reactions from human ones. The film then unfolds around seven Caleb-Ava conversations — each is labeled, white on a black screen, “Ava: Session 1,” and so forth — that begin awkwardly.  Slowly they become less banal and more erotic as Ava dons white stockings and a dress for each meeting, then languidly undresses, seeming to know that Caleb can see her on a closed-circuit screen in his bedroom.

While the porno-sexiness of Nathan’s creation is surprising only if we do not want to believe a robot can embody all human characteristics, it is still shocking. But there is more to come as Ava seduces Caleb’s libido and his mind, tells him in blood-red moments of power outages, which she claims to have caused, not to trust Nathan. Clearly she must be saved and let out into the real world, and Caleb sets about doing it. But this is science fiction, and nothing is as it seems. We may know how the story will end, but it still hits with the impact of a future turned upside down. 

Gleeson, who appeared in Harry Potter movies along side his father, Brendan Gleeson, is a fine actor. In “Ex Machina,” his geeky gullibility is just right. Isaac plays Nathan as if he stepped out of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” like a god come down to earth. (Indeed, Nathan likes being called a god by Caleb.) But the film belongs to Vikander, the gorgeous Swedish actress who moves from pixie to seductress with the ease of a perfected computer program. She is nubile, icy, vulnerable, mysterious, dangerous and, ultimately, luminous. She is a real woman.

“Ex Machina” is a stunning movie to watch. The landscape and interiors are beautifully lit and photographed; the composition of frames, impeccable. This is a film for adults that makes us think. It is one of the best so far this year.

“Ex Machina” is in wide release. It is rated R.