Over the weekend, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina — already a critical darling — premiered in just four theaters, taking in the highest per screen average of the weekend. (It will expand nationwide on April 24.) At the center of the story is Ava, a robotic humanoid powered with artificial intelligence. but the question is if Ava is truly conscious, something Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) has been tasked with answering by Ava’s part “bro,” part mad scientist inventor, Nathan (Oscar Isaac).
Ava is played by Alicia Vikander, a name that you’ll hear more and more over the coming months. Before Ex Machina, Vikander was probably best known for playing Kitty in Anna Karenina. In 2012, she co-starred with Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore in her first studio film, Seventh Son, a movie that wound up finally being released just this year to very little fanfare and poor reviews.
Don’t feel too bad for Vikander, because in 2015 alone, other than Ex Machina and Seventh Son, she has: Guy Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Justin Chadwick’s Tulip Fever, John Wells’ Adam Jones, Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans, and Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper’s Oscar contender The Danish Girl (co-starring Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne).
Yes, as Vikander explained when we met her at her Soho hotel, this is a scheduling quirk of all of these film’s post-production timeframes, but it’s going to be a busy year.
When you auditioned, were you tempted to do a “robot voice”?
I think what helped me — and through the discussions I had with Alex — was that thing of wanting to aim for “girl,” not robot… and it helped me to think “girl,” and I found innocence, I found naiveté. And trying to aim for perfection in the movement was like Human 2.0. All of my movements are movements a human could make, but it’s almost the perfection of movement.
Were you ever told one of your movements was too imperfect?
No, he never did that. That’s also a great director: He just gives you keys and lets you try things without telling you not what to do. What I realized was, by making her movements a bit more perfect — her speech very calm; what I tried to be something very innocent and pure — made her feel more robotic.
Were you playing her as a sentient being?
We don’t know.
I feel I know.
But that’s what everyone thinks. That’s what I love about the movie.
I’m probably wrong.
That’s what we all love about the script. It’s three roles and you don’t know what roles they all have decided to play because they all play each other out in this film.
The film has a way of being a few steps ahead of the viewer. It knows what the audience is thinking about these three roles.
It is.
I thought I had it all figured out.
Away from the fact that we were playing a role, a character’s journey, we also know we made a psychological thriller.
A psychological thriller with a finite number of outcomes, there are really only three characters.
But tiny little seeds have been planted throughout and you’re like, “Oh, I think I know.”
It felt almost interactive with the audience.
It’s the intelligence of feeling that we are taking Caleb’s journey, in the end. And that means you feel like you are very much a part of the film. Even though you try to outsmart him, you think, but Alex already knows what you’re thinking.
I feel bad for what happens to one of the characters at the end.
That’s normal.
Do you look at it a different way?
No, I think the complexity in the script… the survival instinct is very human. Then you can question the morals of sudden decisions that you can take. So, that is kind of the main thing.
After this, you have The Man from U.N.C.L.E., then Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans, then Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl with Eddie Redmayne. Is this the kind of moment an actor waits for in their career?
I mean, this is one of the first and I’m so happy it’s finally coming out and most of the films coming up I haven’t seen yet. I’ve seen Ex Machina. And I’ve been so fortunate and happy to be invited to work with some great filmmakers and some amazing actors. It was people that I never thought I was going to meet, to be in the same room and be able to create was remarkable… but it’s a bit of a coincidence…
Because you obviously didn’t film them all at once.
No. And you can only make a certain amount of films a year. It just happens that a lot of the films I did last year have a long post-production. And The Danish Girl already has a release date set this year, even though I haven’t finished the film.
What was post-production like for you with Seventh Son? That was filmed in 2012, then finally came out earlier this year, then after all that, kind of came and went.
But for me to come and do my first studio film was an extraordinary experience. Being in the same room working with Julianne Moore was amazing. I think the most important thing is going into a project believing in it. And I think that’s what I’ve been doing – and you never know.
People who didn’t like the movie still seemed to like you in it.
Yeah, you try to create something with every single role that you have, whatever sort of genre or whatever sort of film it is. And that’s the only thing you can do. And I had some amazing help from some pretty good actors and people on that film, too.
Julianne Moore did look like she was having the time of her life.
[Laughs] And I think we all did loved our costumes. It’s a way of stepping into another word.
I’m sure you did research before shooting Ex Machina, how far are we away from true artificial intelligence like this?
We’re not anywhere close to that now. But, my fantasies, my ideas, do I ever think that could happen? I don’t know. What I found interesting is that I started reading more and more, not only about AI, but about human minds. And it’s the questions about consciousness in your own perspective that comes out. What is the soul? This is something that every religion out there is already questioning and no one has an answer to that. So, we don’t know what consciousness is, so what can we create when we don’t really know what it is?
Did feel left out when Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson both got cast in Star Wars?
[Laughs] Everyone else in this whole film got a part in Star Wars!
Mike Ryan has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.
