It’s all a dream?
The description of this movie caught me, and I made the effort to go to the one cinema in Melbourne that was showing it. It disappointed for two reasons. The first is it’s not very good. Second, it could have been amazing. Let’s dive in.
First lets remind ourselves of the description which hooked me in:
“In the near future artificial intelligence is in control of everyone's lives and human emotions are perceived as a threat.”
AI is everywhere right now, most of it is over hyped but it is an interesting subject. In fact, here is a piece I wrote on that subject. I find AI interesting, particularly for how it interacts with us. With this in mind, the idea of this film really captured that thought, in a world of AI, could humanity could become obsolete?
The first and most glaring problem is there was no AI in the movie. There were voices which I assumed where the “AI” but there was no real impact of it being AI. It was just a voice that could be attributed to anything. In 1984, the voice was an authoritarian and functioned in very much the same way. This felt very much like AI washing, tacking it on over the top in the hope that it got attention. Well it got mine.
Putting aside the AI issue lets just go with the idea that the voice and ideas were AI. The next thing which captured my interest was this idea that emotions were perceived as a threat.
The idea of the humanity of our emotions being a threat, risk or other thing really captures my interest. It is what make us most human, as well as causing us the most harm. I could see where they were trying to show emotions being the threat, but at most it is a threat to the people themselves. There is no real interplay with a threat to or of the AI, or society. It really fell flat.
They also used really overplayed tropes, like the secret lovers or the disaffected young man. They are great places to start, but there was no complexity to these aspects. For a movie that was clearly trying to be different, they made no attempt to view these from a different angle. It was on par with a midday movies complexity.
If you want to ignore all of this, the process to remove emotions, doesn't bring on an appreciable difference in the character. Those who had the procedure seem like everyone else. This is because they fell down the Arthouse trap of people being aloof. The main character of Gabrielle, I could not tell whether she had the procedure. Again really interesting, but fumbled.
The problem these film makers had, was they took a very common SCI FI idea and tried to make it “art” ignoring its SCI FI roots. This in the hands of SCI FI writers and directors would have been really good.
It felt as if they missed a thread linking all aspects of the movie. They chose to remove the thread to keep the audience disoriented and it worked. The problem is they never brought us back together. I stayed disorientated.
They sacrificed the story for style and its disappointing. I really wanted to like this.
I like to be challenged, my favourite movies guide me through the story. They do not tell me the answer, but they usher me to it. That being said, in this case I missed the tour bus, and the movie went on without me.
There is one really bright point, or rather two, the lead actors. Léa Seydoux as Gabrielle Monnier and George MacKay as Louis Lewanski. This was a dialogue heavy movie, and often these are the hardest for an actor to keep our attention. These two did this masterfully.
Even in points where I was so lost, almost having to check the cinema number to be sure I wasn’t transported into another. They kept me interested. This movie was broadly three movies, and I would watch every single one if these two were to headline. Jumping from English to French and back, I was transfixed.
The only section I wasn’t as much a fan of was when they were Americans, and Gabrielle had an American accent. It wasn’t bad but once you hear her French accent you never want to hear anything else.
As I have mentioned numerous times I wanted to love this movie. If they had of kept a thread throughout, it would have been much more interesting. If they realised this was best a SCI FI, and acted accordingly this would be a modern classic. It is only rated two stars because of the idea and the actors. They kept me in my seat.
They claimed AI and delivered a computer running Windows XP.
Byron
Star Rating Guide
1 Star: Unable to sit through the movie.
2 Stars: Could force myself to watch it, but not pleased about it.
3 Stars: Enjoyable for a watch, won’t watch again.
4 Stars: Enjoyable, and will be watching it again.
5 Stars: Loved it, can’t wait to see it again.
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