“Deus ex machina,” meaning “god from the machine,” refers to an ancient Greek plot device used in storytelling that refers to the inexplicable saving or resolving of an assumedly unsolvable problem by the sudden and unexpected intervention of some new character or event, through miraculous, divine hand.

You might notice that in the title of the new science fiction drama. Ex Machina, the Latin “Deus,” or “God” (“divine”) is removed. Appropriately, God doesn’t exist in this film’s science-ruling near-future here either, and with that, allowing for moral ambiguity.

In Machina, humans have evolved highly enough to assume the role of creator of life, taking out the need for such deity’s reverence. Yet as writer and director Alex Garland shows, there can be devastating effects in playing God, creating self-aware sentiments that show that when all you have left is “from the machine,” the state of “life” itself is one that might not only apply to humans.

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“I didn’t even really plan to be a novelist…”

English-born Alex Garland, best known for his screenwriting efforts for big-screen event pics, particularly the Danny Boyle films 28 Days Later… and Sunshine, as well as Never Let Me Go and Dredd, is a revered voice in sci-fi cinema for creating such unique and long-standing films that rile not just imaginations, but so to their more intelligent quotients. Which is why it’s a breath of fresh air to see his first directed feature film hit theaters, as it is already showing promise of one of the year’s best.

Machina tells the story of a young programmer, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), who is selected to participate in the opportunity to test an artificially intelligent robot, Ava, (Alicia Vikander) created by the tech-wiz recluse and quirk-capitalist Nathan (Oscar Isaac) and discover what qualities make it human enough to possibly pass.

The stylishly beautiful compositions and camerawork might allude to the work of a director with ample film experience. And you’d be right, but not if you thought directing was his plan to do all along – or movies, in general, for that matter. “I didn’t even really plan to be a novelist,” Garland relays to me, referring to his hit The Beach that was later adapted by Danny Boyle. “Like the whole thing that set the thing in motion was never, in a strange way, an intention. It actually came from having worked in comic books, drawing rather than writing. And realizing I was never going to cut it. And I’d been writing for stuff that I was drawing, and I essentially ditched the drawings and, therefore, ended up writing. And if you’re writing without drawing you’re kind of writing a novel, and that’s sort of what happened.”

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“I did really like the way it was planned to be executed, in sort of this sort of chamber piece vibe, because it’s very exposing. It doesn’t give anyone anywhere to hide.”

There are only three characters, and yet any more would throw the whole thing off course, or at least be a different movie. The small dynamic provides, to Garland, a tonal view of how these big ideas could be most effectively understood and related to these very tight characters and relationships: “I did really like the way it was planned to be executed, in this sort of chamber piece vibe, because it’s very exposing. It doesn’t give anyone anywhere to hide. You can’t hide behind sort of action sequences, you can’t hide behind momentum, to push you past an awkward plot point. One of the ways you get past awkward plot points, of the sort we were just talking about, is you just drive past them. But then something like this is too slow and reflective to be able to do that.”

Garland further notes this in the rest of the production: “And that actually applies to everybody. Like, the composers have nowhere to hide. If they’re trying to write a bit of music for Ava as a theme, that feels kind of beautiful…if it’s not beautiful and innocent sounding, and they fail to pull it off, it’s very stark, how kind of the degree to which it’s failing. Likewise the camerawork. If the camerawork’s not beautiful, it’s just going to sit there in this real obvious way. And if the performances aren’t good then that would be the same.”

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“I’ll have one script that I think works for every thing I write.”

For all of Machina‘s big ideas and heavy genre, the film is a whole lot of fun. Heck, a surprising portion of it is actually quite funny. But hiding just behind those humorously settling moments are the planted workings of story misdirections, fake-outs, and twists, that give the whole thing increased gains in excitement, as the intoxicating experience becomes clearer.

“I think approximately, I write three scripts,” Garland says of his scripting process. “Like, I’ll have one script that I think works for everything I write. I mean that’s a kind of loose average, but it’s actually pretty close when I look back at the projects I’ve sort of got on my desk.”

Asked whether it was his intention to always direct this film, he deflects to the intention of just writing the story, which is telling of his work’s process, that simply writing the story is, in and of itself, all the intention that is needed. “At the time I was writing it, and this is always true when I’m writing a script, the only focus in my head at that moment is “Does this work?” In the terms like I’m hoping it works. And the reason that is is because most scripts I write, at the end of that process no it doesn’t work.

At the writing stage, I’m really just testing it, and I’m not talking about it to anyone and I’m not thinking of showing it to anyone, I’m just, for my own purposes, wanting to know if this works or not. And all of those other things about who’s attached to the film come later, because I would feel like I was doing something very premature if I was talking to anyone in those terms, because like, to me, it’s genuinely uncertain. I never know if an idea works until I write it out, cause there’s too many ways you can trick yourself in like a script breakdown or like a treatment  or just in thinking about it, there’ll be some problem and your brain just glosses over it. And then when you sit down to write it you realize, no, this is like a fundamental problem and you can’t get around it. So yeah I’m a bit of weary I guess.

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“There’s this sort of other magic (Alicia’s) got. And that, in essence, is exactly the kind of quality Ava needed to have.”

Of course, with such lofty and fantastical ideas, the film required a fundamental connection from audience to character, no small feat for its actors but is exactly what Garland’s troupe provides. A familiar face to Garland’s past projects, Domhnall Gleeson plays the film’s guinea pig Caleb, who is selected to interact with the AI and show whether it passes with “human-like” consciousness. Caleb as the control group, however, learns that there may exist underlying motives to his testing, which Gleeson charters seamlessly here. Asked if he had written any parts in mind for any of the actors, Garland only says that he knew Gleeson could do this character, and so he called him up and offered it to him.

To play the role of Nathan, a question mark of a character that slowly shades into darker territory, is one of the most fantastically slippery actors working today. Garland noticed this too, and praises the work of Oscar Isaac, whose recent films are as prestigious as it is eclectic (Look to the whiplash turns from Awards-aimed headlining acts in 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis and last year’s A Most Violent Year to this December’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens for a short example).

“Oscar, one of the things you notice, is he just vanishes, in part to part,” Garland praises. “He’s an incredibly talented actor and he just simply vanishes. It’s really hard to keep track of what Oscar Isaac is, in some ways, because the performances are so different from film to film. They’re all good, but the characters feel so different. It’s hard to draw lines between them.”

Yet providing perhaps the most stirring and captivating performance here is that of Ava, the sleekly designed AI whose plastic and metal fixtures and artfully exposed wiring make her appear as an iPod in its most beautiful human form. If audiences are unaware of Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, they won’t be for long, who will be starring in many releases in just this year alone.

“I’d seen her in a Danish film called A Royal Affair, where she plays opposite Mads Mikkelsen…Mads Mikkelsen is obviously an incredibly charismatic character actor, very experienced. But, you’ll see that you just get hypnotized by this girl. She’s probably then maybe like twenty or twenty-one years old, and has an amazing presence. She just really owns scenes, and your eye tracks whatever she’s doing on screen. And she’s very good at acting, but she also has this other thing which is just, she makes you want to look at her, she makes you want to watch her. And that’s not just to do with being beautiful.

She’s obviously very beautiful, and she’s a very good actress, but there’s this sort of other magic she’s got. And that, in essence, is exactly the kind of quality Ava needed to have.”

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“(Ex Machina) is the only project I’ve ever worked on where I just feel a kind of undiluted sense of contentment with it.”

As Machina has already shown in its first-wave limited release, its connecting in the specialty-film market, arousing audiences’ senses of smart spectacle, high-brow concept served in stylish and thrilling movie tones as only as skilled and veteran a storyteller as its writer/director is.

Machina, as opposed to Garland’s other accomplishments in film, stands out in particular, as only a creative type would acknowledge: “I just feel really good about it. It’s the only project I’ve ever worked on where I just feel a kind of undiluted sense of contentment with it. There’s always like some big caveats to me, there’s always some thing, and it’s usually a compromise. There’ll be a compromise I made somewhere, and I look at it, and it just sits there right in the middle of the movie, sort of like an accusation almost saying like, ‘Why did you compromise on this thing?’

I’m not sure I’ll ever get the chance to do that again. There was like a combination of factors that led to proper creative freedom, and that’s hard to get in film for any number of reasons. I feel truly lucky that we did it and somewhere in my working life at least once I managed to do that.”

In ending our phone conversation, I ask if I can sell the movie to friends and audiences-at-large alike as “Jurassic Park meets I Robot meets The Shining.” In a humbled laugh, Garland allows. “That’s a good pitch. I like that.”

So, for audiences looking for a film like Jurassic Park meets I Robot meets The Shining, then I know of one…

Ex Machina is in theaters nationwide today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYGzRB4Pnq8