By james art 
From Ex Machina to Civil War, Alex Garland’s diverse body of work as a writer-director explores the inherent flaws that make us human.
NB: The following contains spoilers for Ex Machina and Men.
It’s a sign of how gifted Alex Garland is as a storyteller that he can move between forms seemingly effortlessly. A pair of best-selling novels in the 1990s (The Beach, The Tesseract) led to his screenwriting work in the 2000s (28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go) and some texts from the video game industry (Enslaved: Odyssey To The West, DmC: Devil May Cry).
It was during the difficult production in 2012 Dredd that Garland first turned to directing (albeit uncredited) before making his directorial debut with Ex Machina just over a decade ago. In the years since, Garland has continued to forge an individual path in the film business, writing and directing films that are uncompromising and unmistakably personal. Although they are different in terms of plots and even genres, they are all united by common themes that seem to linger in the director’s mind. One particularly pressing element is the human capacity for self-destruction.
You can see it go through civil war, Garland’s relentless 2024 dystopian action thriller. It takes place in the United States, in which the president (Nick Offerman) has imposed himself as a dictator; a fierce battle broke out between federal forces on one side and the separatist coalition on the other. Garland does not dwell on political allegiance; instead, it depicts the wider societal cost of the conflict.
The war left the economy in such a state that the dollar was essentially worthless; cities are rocked by suicide bombings. In the countryside, Americans torture their old high school friends or dump the bodies of innocent civilians in mass graves. Garland portrays war as a disease—the final, terminal stage of a disease whose early symptoms likely include populism, fake news, and growing division.
Read more: Civil War | Alex Garland makes his own Heart Of Darkness
Garland explores the human condition more closely through her cast. Three of them are seasoned professionals – military photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst); New York Times reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Reuters hack Joel (Wagner Moura). The group is joined by Jessie (Caley Spaeni), a budding photojournalist.
Their stated goal is to travel across war-torn America from New York to Washington, where they hope to capture the president’s final moments before he is violently ousted. Beneath this professional ambition, they are driven by baser instincts of which they may not even be aware.
Joel is a thrill seeker who gets an adrenaline rush from surviving near-death experiences unscathed. Sami, an older man who uses a cane, has come to terms with the dangerous nature of his job; his feelings seem to be that he’s going to die at some point, so he might as well be in pursuit of something worthwhile. At the other end of the age spectrum, 20-year-old Jessie is driven by both her youthful ambition and a misplaced sense of indestructibility – as shown in the sequence where she climbs from one moving vehicle to another.
Darkest of all is Lee, whose experience in overseas combat zones has left her shocked and cynical about the value of her own journalism. Focused on her work with an almost aggressive single-mindedness, Lee’s acceptance of the danger to her livelihood goes beyond Sammy’s and into the arena of self-destruction—there’s a sense in both her dialogue and her hollow-eyed demeanor that she’s not just accepting that this last task might kill her, but she subconsciously hopes that it will.
Read more: Civil War | How political is Alex Garland’s film?
There are parallels between civil war and Alex Garland’s 2018 feature Destruction here Based on the novel by Jeff Vandermeer, Destruction is about another group of people embarking on a mission with an uncertain end point. A mysterious force field – an alien phenomenon called the Shimmer – envelops the coast off Florida, exerting an otherworldly effect on everything in its reach.
A scientific expedition is sent to go to the Shimmer to try to learn more about it and like the group in civil war, they are driven by more than mere curiosity. Protagonist Lena (Natalie Portman) is wracked with guilt because her soldier husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) ventured into the Shimmer months earlier and subsequently died. Kane’s decision to enter the Shimmer was fueled in part by his feelings of betrayal over Lena having an affair – resulting in Lena blaming herself for his fate.
Lena’s compatriots have a similarly dark background. A scientist (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is terminally ill; another (Tessa Thompson) suffers from a history of depression and self-harm; another (Gina Rodriguez) is grief-stricken after the death of her child. Seen from the perspective of the characters, the meaning of the title Destruction becomes clear: the film is about the self-destructive instincts that live within us and may even be embedded in our DNA.
Read more: Ex Machina could have starred Jake Gyllenhaal
Hints of the same sentiment are woven into Garland’s 2014 debut, Ex Machina. Oscar Isaac plays reclusive tech executive Nathan Bateman, who may or may not have created a sentient AI in the form of a female-looking android, Ava (Alicia Vikander). Young programmer Caleb (Donald Gleeson) wins a competition to visit Bateman’s elegantly minimalist home, which is part bachelor pad, part laboratory and part fortress. There, Caleb is given the secret reason for his visit: to determine if Ava is truly intelligent and self-aware like the rest of us, or if she’s just an elaborate parlor trick.
Garland very deliberately portrays Bateman as a darkly flawed individual – secretive, perhaps a little paranoid, and prone to heavy drinking sessions, which he atones for by lifting heavy weights the next morning. Bateman’s dogged pursuit of sentient AI—something that real-world scientists are pursuing as these words are introduced—could be seen as self-defeating; like the invention of the atomic bomb, we know it can do terrible harm, but it is pursued regardless, like some collective death wish. (AI is also part of Garland’s underrated TV series, Developerswhich is worth seeing.)
Of the films discussed so far, 2022 men it can seem quite out of sync. A little folk horror set in a remote farmhouse, it’s a world apart from Heart of Darkness-inspired journeys of civil war or Destructionor the high-tech claustrophobia of Ex Machina. But even here we are essentially peering into the psyche of a woman torn by guilt. i like Annihilation Lena, men The main character Harper (Jesse Buckley) is haunted by memories of her late husband, a depressed and emotionally manipulative figure whose influence still affects Harper’s every moment. Or is what we see her nightmare…?
Read more: Men’s Review | Psychological terror and grotesque thrills
Garland’s films consistently explore the darker edges of the human condition. To be conscious, Garland seems to suggest, is to be inherently flawed, naturally compromised, innately self-destructive.
When this writer briefly met the writer-director a decade ago, something he said about AI might offer insight into how his films deconstruct the human condition. While talking about his latest work then, Ex Machina, Garland referenced a line from the movie about advanced computer programs that are capable of beating humans at chess.
“This [the computer] it looks like it wants to beat you at chess, but it doesn’t want to beat you,” Garland said. “It doesn’t work i want something. It doesn’t really know it’s playing chess, does it? Computers make you face such a problem and make you think about it. I’ve always been interested in that.”
Garland then added that a friend of his, who he said is “in the know” on the subject, maintains that intelligent AI will never happen. Garland thought otherwise: “I instinctively think there will be,” he said. “And also rationally, I think there will be. We’ve argued a lot about it over the years.”
It is interesting to reverse Garland’s philosophy: if an unconscious computer does not want to win, then humans, on the contrary, are driven by desires and desires from the moment we open our eyes in the morning. Even beyond our daily need for food and water, we crave human connection; we seek validation; through self-destructive behavior we seek escape.
c Ex Machinathe male characters realize – too late to save themselves – that the AI in their midst has indeed achieved sentience. How do they learn this? Because the artificial intelligence—embodied by Ava and another female-looking robot, Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno)—uses cunning and even murder to escape.
To be truly sentient, Garland suggests, is to have needs and desires beyond mere programming. And if we ever create a conscious machine, then it follows that the creature we create will inherit the darker impulses that make us human.
As Oscar Isaac’s character says in Ex Machina“I gave her one way out. To escape, she had to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did. Now, if that’s not real AI, what the hell is?’
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