the groundhog day project

(Before we get into this sixth and final day with Ex Machina , a note on something I will not be talking about: There's a line of music that plays as Caleb first enters the house, and again as Ava is leaving it, that reminds me of the theme to Jurassic Park . My son, who knows music better than I do, listened to it and said something along the lines of, if they wanted to reference Jurassic Park , they would not have put the line in a different key. Me--I still think it sounds like it. Plus, both films involve locations accessed by helicopter... Seriously, the structure is the same in that regard. Brief intro ( Ex Machina 's being far briefer than Jurassic Park 's), then helicopter ride to the location, a location where a scientist has perhaps taken things a bit too far, eventually endangering lives (note: in the novel of Jurassic Park Hammond dies in the end just as Nathan dies here), then the survivor(s) leave(s) on a helicopter. As a movie blogger, I gotta say, I think...

Despite some of the wiggle room I might have created (or tried to create) yesterday regarding Nathan's motives, I think we can safely assume that the character of Nathan is misogynist. The big problem in the film, in terms of the men, is how much worse than Caleb is Nathan, or how much better than Nathan is Caleb? I already wrote about how Caleb makes no effort to include Kyoko in his escape plans, how he simply tries to save the girl who is willing to put out. (So to speak; there is no actual indication toward the sexual between Caleb and Ava, except explicitly by Nathan. But, that information--that Ava is capable of sexual intercourse--is offered why? Because Nathan wants Caleb to fall for Ava. Modern sexist parlance requires that sex be on the table or Caleb will not care about Ava at all. And, Nathan clearly subscribes to such parlance.) Now, there are two paths we can take at this point with this discussion. 1) That Caleb has no (apparent) interest in also saving Kyoko,...

Caleb, what's your type? Of girl? No, salad dressing. Yeah, of girl. What's your type? You know what, don't even answer that. Let's say it's black chicks. Okay, that's your thing. For the sake of argument, that's your thing, okay? Why is that your thing? Because you did a detailed analysis of all racial types and you cross-referenced that analysis with a points-based system? No. You're just attracted to black chicks. A consequence of accumulated external stimuli that you probably didn't even register as they registered with you. Did you program her to like me, or not? I programmed her to be heterosexual, just like you were programmed to be heterosexual. Nobody programmed me to be straight. You decided to be straight? Please! Of course, you were programmed. By nature or nurture or both. And, to be honest, Caleb, you're starting to annoy me now because this is your insecurity talking. This is not your intellect. One could assume that Nathan...

Yesterday , a few minutes of this movie boiled down to more words than I usually go for in this blog. And, I am tempted to do things like that again, see the trees instead of the forest, as it were. Like, for example, a single shot--Kyoko sitting in the hallway with her shoes off. Or Ava presenting her drawing to Caleb like a child showing off to a parent. And, maybe I will get to another breakdown like that, with this film or another. But, today, I want to deal with something less cinematic, more... philosophical, political. Natalie Wilson at Ms. Magazine says that Ex Machina "explore[s] sexuality and gender in intriguing ways, but fails to explicitly condemn how the sex/gender paradigm is used as a tool of domination in profoundly deleterious ways." But, I disagree. I think the film is all about condemning that paradigm, condemning the ways men manipulate the world, men manipulate other men, men manipulate women, and only to a lesser extent, the ways women manipulate me...