For years, Wally Pfister has been the right-hand man of auteur Christopher Nolan as his cinematographer. Now, Pfister is making his debut as a filmmaker with "Transcendence," a film that is arguably an homage to the man he has worked with over the years. But does Pfister's directorial debut live up to the quality of Nolan's films?
"Transcendence" tells the story of William Caster and his wife Evelyn who are both involved in the development of artificial intelligence. When Caster becomes terminally ill, Evelyn and the couple's close friend Max Waters resolve to upload his consciousness onto the Internet. The decision breaches into the conflict between reality and artifice and asks questions about just how human artificial intelligence can truly be.
Johnny Depp plays William Caster and gives his best performance in years. His wacky charisma is given a short leash in this film and is mostly understated throughout. He is likeable as both an online entity and human, but also manages to make his cyber self menacing through his often blank and rigid stare. Rebecca Hall's turn as his wife Evelyn is also nuanced. She starts the film off with tremendous energy but slowly falls apart as she faces the death of her husband. In the middle of the film, she becomes robotic and her face is almost expressionless; this detail complements Depp's often human portrayal in the computer and emphasizes the questions about how artificial humans can be and how human artificial intelligent could be. Their performances represent the main positives in a film that unfortunately fails to live up to its top performers and its concept.
The idea of uploading a human's consciousness to the Internet is timely. After all, today people are often more apt to share their inner feelings on the Internet than they are in real life. Most people communicate more via text or social media with their friends then they do with them over the phone or in person. The problem is that "Transcendence" is consistently confused about whether or not Caster's Internet persona is really him or an external piece of artificial intelligence that pretends to be him. The film vacillates on this position to meet its narrative needs.
For Evelyn it behaves like Caster, but for the other characters it does not behave like Caster. Obviously, the argument here would be that perspective plays a huge role and that Evelyn is willing to overlook any obvious hint that her husband's online persona is really not him; this would be great if not for the film's continued confusion at its climax when it completely negates this idea in the most incredulous of manners and still attempts to convince the viewer that what the machine/Caster has been doing the whole time is for the greater good, something that the rest of the film completely contradicts.
But the issues extend far beyond the issue of Caster's identity; this might in some ways be the smallest issue of all. The artificial intelligence/Caster manages to advance technology rapidly throughout the film, but the results stretch imagination and reality so much that the film moves from science-fiction to absurd fantasy. At one point the A.I. manages to connect with real human beings and thus control their minds. This essentially turns the people into Caster's invincible superpuppets. That Evelyn does not realize how demented this takeover is from the start stretches the credulity of the character a bit and makes the viewer uninterested in identifying with her.
At another point, the Internet somehow manages to get into the water and another character informs us that drinking the water would connect the people to the A.I. How exactly can digital information get into the water and magically make people part of the machine? The film does not care to explain this most unbelievable of conceits. The ending will also surely confuse some as it seems intent on creating the ambiguity of the usual Nolan film that will likely stir up some conversation. The problem here is that the film has spent so much time showing the viewer that the Internet is bad and that the world is actually "smaller without it" that the reversal at the end in which the Internet might still exist and is potentially a positive thing negates the film's overarching thesis.
Another major question that is never answered—what exactly are Caster and Evelyn doing with their own lab facility in the middle of the American desert? The viewer can infer that the machine (if it is in fact a machine and not Caster) wants to take over the world by expanding its reach and controlling every single person. But what exactly is Evelyn doing? Does she never question why he has instructed her to buy up land in this small town and create a facility? This is another instance in which the character of Evelyn proves questionable at best.
But she is not the only character that fills the viewer with frustration. Paul Bettany's Max is a good man that follows Evelyn for some unexplained reason despite his own moral apprehensions. If he wrote an essay on the dangers of artificial intelligence then why does he follow along with the idea of uploading his best friend's consciousness on the Internet?There are hints that he may be in love with Evelyn and that that is the reason for his following along, but this is never truly explained. He eventually switches his position and becomes the moral center of the film, but his change comes because he is essentially forced into it and not because he really stood by his beliefs in the first place.
Morgan Freeman's Joseph Tagger is essentially the same character as Max, making him feel superfluous. Cillian Murphy's Agent Buchanan seems to be around to clutter the screen with other Nolan mainstays while Kate Mara's anti-A.I. terrorist Bree dominates a great deal of the film's first half but fades into nothingness in the second half. She is against A.I. and is willing to take radical action to destroy it. Her behavior is villainous at the outset, but as the film develops, Pfister ignores the fact that she committed the murder and has her ally with the "good guys." The moral implications of this are never explored again and her behavior is allowed to stand behind the excuse that she was fighting for her ideals.
"Transcendence" revolves around what eventually becomes a world domination plot, but the script is filled with other genre clichés as well. The biggest one of them all is an implied action sequence in which the terrorist organization is ready to battle it out with the "zombie/superhuman" army while Evelyn tries to reason with Castor's consciousness. But Pfister, who carefully puts the pieces into play for the big action set piece, never actually hits the button and the result is a seemingly unfinished anticlimax that seems unnecessary altogether.
"Transcendence" certainly starts off with great intentions and expectations. But the results are ultimately confused and the terrific turns by Hall and Depp are unable to truly rise above the mess.
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