Shadows on the Wall | Artificial

Artificial

dir Luca Guadagnino
scr Simon Rich
prd Jeffrey Clifford, Jennifer Fox, Luca Guadagnino, David Heyman, Simon Rich
with Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Mark Rylance, Cooper Hoffman, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O'Dowd, Will Angus, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet
release US 25.Dec.26,
UK 27.Jan.26
26/US 2h20

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An offbeat comical sensibility livens up this account of the race to develop artificial intelligence, as director Luca Guadagnino and writer Simon Rich hone in on the quirkier aspects of real-life tech nerds. These guys are simply too brainy for their own good, or indeed for humanity's. So the film slides closer to horror territory in the final act, with its chilling depiction of AI's lack of guardrails.

In 2012 Toronto, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton (Rylance) is working with Ilya Sutskever (Borisov) when their lab is purchased by Google, and they relocate to Silicon Valley. Along with Google boss John (O'Dowd), they begin mixing with tech bros like Elon Musk (Barinholtz) and Sam Altman (Garfield), who hires Ilya as chief scientist for his startup OpenAI. But Ilya and colleague Mira Murati (Barbaro) worry about safety protections, as AI begins pushing people in dangerous directions. Since Sam is more interested in making money, they ask the board to fire him as the company's CEO.

Moving to unexpected rhythms, the scrappy narrative is packed with dense conversations that feature important plot points, impenetrable technological ideas, and massive moral dilemmas. So there's a sense that we are always one step behind the storyline, playing catch-up with these brilliant minds who are literally changing how the world thinks. This creates a vivid sense of both the pace of AI's rise and the high stakes involved.

At the centre, the gifted Borisov delivers another textured performance that combines intelligence and emotion. So even though the film never touches on Ilya's personal life, we feel like we know him. Ilya's interaction with Sam is fascinating, largely because Garfield goes for broke, both idiosyncratic and enigmatic as he draws people to him. Even though Garfield specialises in this kind of thing, this is jaw-dropping. Rylance is the other standout as the brilliant, matter-of-fact Geoffrey.

With only one key female character, this movie is populated by braying tech bros who think they're the smartest people in the world. And they might be. It's frightening to watch them race past safeguards to commercialise AI for the public, rather than take a nonprofit-style approach that emphasises how AI can be a force for healing. So in the end, the film is terrifying in its implications that, even though everyone knows that AI might end humanity within a decade or so, it's worth it if you can make lots of money before hiding out in your billion-dollar bunker.

themes, language 6.Nov.26

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