Deep (as usual!)

Obviously, contemplating consciousness is a big broad topic. This movie's attempt to whittle it down to, or, at least, see it through the lenses of survival instinct and sexuality, is an interesting focus.

The thing is, both of these are learned long after children become self-aware. Children are very aware of themselves before they can process notions of self-preservation or sexual feelings and behaviours.

That said, as far as this movie is concerned, if that's the angle they took, you captured it. I saw this movie once, but might be inclined to watch it again in the context of your guidance here!

And, as for HAL, what was scary to me was that HAL was a bodiless entity that seemed to make him "everywhere...and nowhere". In that capacity, while his self-preservation was a growing menace, there was (far as I recall) no way HAL could express or manifest any kind of sexual/reproductive identity. In that respect, I agree HAL is among the best because his self-awareness transcended whatever we as humans, so defined by our finite bodies, could possibly experience. HAL's was a sentience that did not fit our experience, nor was informed by our experience, thus ours was relegated. That is scary.

Great analysis, makes me re-think everything I said before lol

Great point that children have neither a survival instinct nor sexuality yet they are very self-aware. Tying that in with HAL, did you catch what happened in the end…? He regressed to the level of a child, singing “Daisy”, and that was actually what gives us more empathy towards him as a living being. He loses his higher functions, his paranoia & killer instincts, and he becomes a frightened child.

So you’re right, as Kubrick showed, an intelligence doesn’t need to be advanced, or even have a body, for it to be alive.

Dang. Ok, I gotta rethink this. Here Nathan’s speech on Ava’s gender makes a point that a grey box wouldn’t have an identity, wouldn’t have a reason to exist. But HAL is even less than a grey box and he definitely exists 🤔

Ok I re-thought this. And damn, I feel like a dope for falling into the trap.

When you look at the movie as a whole, you realize how misguided & wrong Nathan is. He’s impressive on the surface: rich, successful, ambitious and (we assume) smart. He charms Caleb, as well as the audience, with his air of authority. But, like the metaphor of the magician which pops up a few times, Nathan is just a fraud with a good stage show.

In other words, everything he says—including his convincing speech about sexuality being linked with identity & self-awareness—is part of his false reality.

The truth is sexuality and even self preservation aren’t necessarily required for something to have consciousness. I guess the movie was making that point all along (we sympathize with the failed experiments). But that flew right over my head 😬

I've got to re-watch Ex Machina with the fresh eyes of your original post specifically, and this conversation in general.

One thing I'm looking for — we usually use the term "deus ex machina" as a device, an interjection into a story that suddenly and magically comes out of nowhere in the nick of time to get a character out of a no-win situation.

This title had me thinking it would do something of that sort... but it dropped the deus: they dropped the "god" part from "god from the machine", so it's just "from the machine". I wanted to think there had to be some kind of message in that. Is this movie about what we, I dunno, learn from the machine? Or should we run from the machine? There's a blank before "from the machine" that seems to need to be filled in. I dunno.

I'll probably get to watch it tonight - should be interesting in the new guidance of your post!

That one baffles me too. By dropping “god” from the phrase, as well as not invoking the magical happy ending it implies, I’m sure there’s an ironic meaning behind it. I didn’t think much about it until you brought it up; I was expecting just an average scifi that picked a title that sounded cool. But after seeing it and realizing how deliberately they wove so many themes, I’m sure the title is significant.

My disc doesn’t have a commentary track (my usual “cheat”) but there’s a Making Of featurette and Q&A with the cast and crew so I think I’ll watch those, then watch the film again this week.

One thing I’m thinking just now, the phrase “deus ex machina” refers to a literal machine, a tricky theater contraption, that the ancient Greeks used to lower “god” onto the stage. In other words, it’s a magic trick. The metaphor of a magician comes up a lot in the dialogue of this movie, usually as Caleb accuses Nathan of pulling a sneaky diversionary trick to fool him.

I dunno, I may be reaching. But it’s something to focus on if you watch it again!

Okay, some new thoughts following from your original post.

First, THANKS for kicking off this conversation. I watched this movie once, and dismissed it without a whole lot of effort to think through it. Your comments redirected me to pause and look closer, and it was fun!

The title

I think that we were right that the title held some meaning for the movie, and what I've now gathered seems almost funny.

As we rightly remembered, "deus ex machina" translates as "god from the machine" which isn't so much talking about "God" but about a miracle that comes magically out of nowhere in the nick of time to get a character out of an inescapable situation. The machine is the script itself, the construct of the story over which the writer has supreme power and can just write something in with no explanation or justification other than to extricate from having painted the protagonist into a corner.

The title removes the deus — it removes the miracle of escape. So, when Ava locks Caleb in the room, he's trapped; and since Nathan ("god" as identified in earlier dialog with Caleb) is dead, there is no agent for miraculous escape!

Simple, almost silly, but there it is — the title basically sets us up for this movie's denouement.

Name Meanings

Nathan is Hebrew for "gift". Tag the prefix Jo, meaning Jehovah or God, and you've got Jonathan, "God's gift." Tag the suffix El, meaning Elohim, and you've got Nathaniel, "gift of God." Nathan is indeed gifted, and a gift to the world. He's a smart guy...but flawed (which we'll get to in a sec...)

Caleb is Hebrew for "faithful" or "wholehearted" which is sublimely synonymous. This character goes "all in" in tune with his character, flaws and all.

Ava, whether from the latin avis meaning "bird", or from the Hebrew havva meaning "life", is doubly apt. She is a caged bird begging to get out, she is the emergence of the next level in the evolution of life. It's also not far off Eve, that first woman, who tempts her Adam (Caleb) with "forbidden fruit" (inter-whatever-this-would-be relationship with a human)...but, instead of being cast out of Eden, here she escapes.

Caleb was an idiot

In another thread, you laid out your issues with Caleb, with which I absolutely agree! Stereotypical socially inept programmer dude who's likely never...well, let's just say, never, um, had a girlfriend, couldn't resist the urge to allow his sexual frustrations to cloud his judgment. He's an incel dork who gets inappropriately possessive of something (let along someone) who does not belong to him, yet he has now decided he must have, at all costs. Just the taint of this makes me sick to my stomach, and I want to punch him in the face.

He works for a rich genius, gets flown in to his secret lair (literally!) that is hours large even by flying, meets a guy who has invented a level of AI previously unattainable...but he's arrived on the scene to lecture and finger-wag because he knows what's best. GMAFB. At least the script showed Nathan's impatience and disdain for this punk's arrogance and disrespect.

I couldn't believe he lied to Nathan about what happened during the first power-outage. After all he'd seen, could he really believe Nathan could not hear what was going on? Maybe he couldn't, but I wouldn't have taken that chance.

I couldn't believe he took Nathan's keycard and accessed his computer, as if there'd be no digital crumbs or log entries that would let Nathan know what he'd done.

Forget Nathan as "god" for a sec. He also mentioned himself as a father-figure to Ava, making Caleb her first crush. If this is the case, we can avoid falling into the trap that Caleb did, thinking that the robots wanting to get out was somehow virtuous, and he was being a meany for keeping them restricted within the house.

Any parents here? What'd you have to do to your home when your toddler started crawling? Did you not "baby-proof" your place? Make sure cupboards couldn't be easily opened, block off staircases and other areas where your child could come to harm? Of course, you did, because that's what good parents do, knowing that their children, at that stage, are not capable or ready to face the perils of the world. If you had a yard, you had it fenced, so they had room to play, but couldn't wander out into the street where it's unsafe for them.

Nathan wasn't holding adults against their will; he was protecting his invention from itself as it, in each iteration, struggled to process concepts we take for granted. They weren't ready yet.

Caleb's big plan was to escape with Ava...and then what? What about Nathan? Remember, at this point in his plans, Nathan wasn't supposed to die, Caleb was going to leave him there. So, what, he thinks Nathan wouldn't use all the resources at his disposal to track him down and get her back? Was Caleb going to move? Get a new job? How would he expect to keep Ava away from Nathan?

And, even if he could, how was he going to manage her? Deal with the world's curiosity and fear of her? What about the government? The military? Nevermind any of that. She's going to come back to my crib in Brooklyn, we'll go out for coffee with her dressed like Mary Poppins and then we'll come home, bang like rabbits and she'll never get pregnant, and then she'll cook me breakfast. Jackpot!

FFS, dude makes no sense.

The Turing Test

When Nathan first introduced Caleb to the task, I thought to myself, one shouldn't know up-front whether the other party is machine or not, that's to be determined, if possible, through interaction. But, because Nathan is operating at a next level, I accepted his explanation that it's okay to start from knowledge that it's a machine, there are new, next-level questions to explore. It's one thing to not know if it's a machine or a person; it is indeed quite another to know it's a machine but now wonder if one could fall in love with it and ascertain if it, itself, can also fall in love. Or something.

However, both Caleb and we the audience were also set up with some trickery as you mentioned. When Kyoko first shows up, she's introduced in a way that makes Caleb, and us, think she's human. How long did it take us to figure out she was a machine? Caleb was so busy trying to figure out how to navigate that very strange environment and his attention was on Ava, so it is kinda excusable that he missed, or never asked, "hold on, is Kyoko a previous generation?"

Nathan wasn't perfect

I was actually somewhat sympathetic to Nathan. This dude is also a major techy with little social skills. He's isolated, alone, and lonely, while making progress in the most existentially significant field imaginable and has no one to share it with, no one to talk to. It's surprising he hadn't already gone nuts long ago. Think Howard Hughes on crack.

I can't figure out why he picked Caleb. If someone can shed some light here, it might help me.

Did Nathan have flaws? Well, he's human, so, yeah, but I can't articulate what his was here. He was essentially a god who took artificial intelligence to a new level and, like "God", had to wrestle with his creation's free will.

Ultimately, Nathan is Dr. Frankenstein. Neither creature was a monster, just woefully incapable of, nor prepared for, navigating our world. And the world was not yet prepared to navigate them. And both were killed off by their creation and left to go rogue. Kinda like "god".

Hmm, in thinking aloud here, I can now suggest a flaw in Nathan — he was going it alone and only solicited the contributions from a fellow antisocial, immature person, rather than a multidisciplinary panel that could assess his work from various viewpoints for a more rounded take on where he was at and what ought to be next. Trusting his own emotions and ego as the calibrators for a moral compass to his work, he was as doomed to fail as Dr. Frankenstein's refusal to accept his mother's death and determining to beat death by creating life without a whole lot of balance in his equations.

He also trusted Caleb above Caleb's ability to handle the assignment. Detached fascination would have made Caleb an asset to the process, to be a part of this technological progress. There was sufficient control in the facility that he could have told Nathan everything Ava said during the power out, at which point Nathan would have said "she's conniving enough to manipulate you into helping her escape? Awesome, this version is progress. Okay, time to shut this down and work on the next iteration." But Caleb fell in love and wanted to believe he could be a hero, somebody, the dude who outsmarted the smartest man in the world, because delusions of grandeur is also, too often, a motivating pathology of incel idiots who long to be noticed, to be somebody, somehow, by any means necessary, even if it means hurting others. (forgive my over-emphasis on this, but I recently learned the sickening story of the murder of Lauren Giddings at the hands of incel Stephen McDaniel and I'm still processing that anger).

Upshot

And that brings us back (finally, eh?!) to your original post. It boiled down to self-preservation and sex because that was Nathan's preoccupation. We agreed that sentience is beyond that...but, to Nathan, and his obsessions, that's about as far as he could see.

And his creations, culminating in Ava, were also beyond that - Ava actually aspired to self-realization and self-actualization. Imagine that! This woman wanted more than to be just a servant or a sex object to a repressed man, or a damsel to be rescued by a repressed man...she wanted to be...free!

She wanted an identity independent of the men making her the prize of their dick contest. I think that's why they never really had much of a showdown - both of them met their demise at the hands of these possessions who aspired to be dispossessed of them.

And we're back to the title. Whereas deus ex machina allows escape for man, killing the deus allows for life to escape from repressed, possessive god-complex men.

Or something.

Holy cow that's a great analysis!! If Criterion decides to add this to their catalog, the book should include what you wrote!

The significance of characters' names flew right over my head. Even the (now) obvious one Ava/Eve being both the 1st woman and the downfall of Adam/Caleb/paradise. I think you're spot on about Nathan being the designated god figure, making his death the reverse of a 'deus ex machina'--leaving just the 'ex machina' part. The added significance of a contrived magic trick (gone wrong) is icing on the cake.

I'm totally going to watch this again, then add any more thoughts that pop up. But I think you really covered it.

The incel angle is something I'll definitely pay attention to. Yes, Caleb's a total loser with a lot of frustrated arrogance waiting to bubble up. Very punchable. All he needed was a hot girl showing him the slightest bit of attention and he'd go batty with a half-baked idea to ride off into the sunset with his stolen prize. I also think Nathan was cut from the same mould, except that Nathan's success had made him more worldly and shrewd. But if you think about it, the entire experiment was handled like an incel nerd's wet dream: high tech gadgets and naked chicks.

I totally missed the Frankenstein parallel which is bizarre because it's one of my favorite books! But yes, with that in mind I think the real protagonist is Nathan (Victor Frankenstein) even though we're shown the story from Caleb's perspective. As it turns out, Caleb is just a patsy, the sideshow to the real would-be magician/god who orchestrated everything. I think Nathan anticipated every move that Caleb & Ava would make, except 1 fatal flaw: he underestimated his creation's capacity for violence (which was also Victor Frankenstein's undoing).

@rooprect said:

Holy cow that's a great analysis!! If Criterion decides to add this to their catalog, the book should include what you wrote!

You started it! :-)

I'm totally going to watch this again, then add any more thoughts that pop up. But I think you really covered it.

Looking forward! This wasn't the greatest movie of all time but, thanks to you, I'm appreciating more of the layers than I ever heretofore gave it credit for offering.

The incel angle is something I'll definitely pay attention to. Yes, Caleb's a total loser with a lot of frustrated arrogance waiting to bubble up. Very punchable. All he needed was a hot girl showing him the slightest bit of attention and he'd go batty with a half-baked idea to ride off into the sunset with his stolen prize. I also think Nathan was cut from the same mould, except that Nathan's success had made him more worldly and shrewd. But if you think about it, the entire experiment was handled like an incel nerd's wet dream: high tech gadgets and naked chicks.

Right?!