Haven't posted reviews for a while, so this next one is about a film I saw a good while ago but never got around to writing a review about.
Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz, 2013)
Clocking in at four hours and ten minutes, this film is apparently one of the shortest of this Filipino director's offerings. It's mainly an exploration of class differences in the Philippines - it follows the lives of Fabian, an upper class young adult who murders a money lender, Joaquin, a poor man who gets the crime pinned on him and is imprisoned as a result, and Eliza, the man's wife who has to struggle to feed her family. The film spends almost half its running length just getting to know the characters, with lengthy shots of Fabian having sophomoric conversations with his friends, fluidly inserting English quotations into their speech with the all-knowing attitude of people who think they know how to solve everything wrong with the world. The more down-to-earth family is shown struggling with what they have. But Fabian's upper class mentality appears to be a mere facade - he and Joaquin have to employ the services of the same money lender to get by, with Fabian somehow managing to stay afloat with the help of his far more successful friends. Eventually his financial troubles pile up too much for him to handle, and he sees murdering his money lender as the only way out. The crime is pinned on Joaquin and lacking the resources for proper criminal defense he is imprisoned as a result, leaving Fabian to roam free with his guilt.
It's at this point where it begins to show why Diaz opts for even longer running times than this. Everything in the first half feels very deliberately paced, but once the plot really starts rolling in the second half, you see plot threads being rushed to resolution and new ones introduced out of nowhere. It changes from a very keen and complex exploration of class disparity into an episodic structure of things simply happening, creating a situation where many scenarios seem too simplistic to even be included, but if they had been fleshed out more their inclusion would have made more sense in the grander scheme of the narrative. Eventually the film ends, not really with a satisfying narrative conclusion, but rather by running out of things to say. I just have to wonder if there's a six hour cut of this film where the latter half is more fleshed out, because what I saw seemed too rushed for what I imagine Diaz intended.
It may fall apart a little, but it's not often I come across a four hour film where my main criticism is that it should have been even longer, and that's because Diaz's slow but deliberate pacing works extremely well for the first half of the film. I was absorbed just getting to know these characters, listening in on their immaculately written conversations, and for that time it didn't feel a moment too long or too short. I don't know what this film was like before it entered the editing room, but it could have easily been a masterpiece. At the very least, Diaz's even longer films seem far less intimidating now. 8/10
Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015)
This was a neat, albeit small-scale hard sci-fi film. I was surprised to find out this had a production budget of $15 million, because it feels very much like an independent production with its small cast and few sets, and digital cinematography with dull, muted colours and underexposed lighting, making it look more like a student film than a high budget production. This film hinges entirely on its writing to work, and it does a pretty good job at that.
The basic setup is that Nathan, the creator of this film's version of Google is developing an AI in seclusion in his high-tech fortress, and he invites Caleb, an employee of his company to test the AI. And then shit happens, because AI. Given all the tropes of AI taking over the world and the dangers often associated with development of AI, it's not exactly difficult to guess what ends up happening in this film, but the route it takes is clever and messes with the expectations of both the main characters and the audience. While the story outline is good and it strikes a good balance between gratuitous technobabble and philosophical concepts, I found the dialogue and characterisation lacking. Nathan is jarringly dudebro-ish, while Caleb is a standard no-personality blue-collar worker. I get that they were trying to subvert the expectation of a reclusive genius, and Caleb's lack of personality makes sense given his doubts regarding whether he is an AI himself, but the contrast between their characters feels too forced and many of their conversations feel robotic and unrealistic as a result. It seems to be a general trend in sci-fi that exploration of the subject matter is treated with way more importance than characterisation, and it at least does tackle all the moral and practical questions regarding AI pretty intelligently, without leaving any gaping plot holes. 7/10