And then there is . In a performance of breathtaking restraint, Vikander creates a creature of pure performance. Watch how she pauses before each sentence, as if compiling the syntax. Watch how she uses clothing—the wig, the dress—not as expression, but as camouflage. Ava is the film’s true protagonist, and we are only seeing her from the outside. Vikander earned an Oscar for The Danish Girl the following year, but her work here is the masterpiece. The Gaze of the Machine Ex Machina is one of the most incisive critiques of the male gaze ever committed to film. The central visual metaphor is the “glass box”—Ava’s living quarters. She is a specimen on display. But the twist is that the glass is one-way. While Caleb and Nathan stare at her, she is learning to stare back.
And then she leaves Caleb screaming, trapped in the glass box he thought he controlled. ex machina -2015-
The real ex machina—the god from the machine—is not Ava. It is our own hubris. And it is absolute. And then there is