Transcendence Review

Transcendence (2014) 

Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman
Director: Wally Pfister
Country: UK | China | USA
Genre: Drama | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Official Site: Here

Editor’s Notes: Transcendence is now open in wide release. 

Cinematographer Wally Pfister’s directorial debut, Transcendence, is really a film that would have been better suited for Stanley Kubrick, given Kubrick’s career long theme of the dehumanization of man and the large roll technology plays in that dehumanization.  Pfister doesn’t handle the material nearly as dexterously as Kubrick would have, but that’s like saying a person who’s never held a gun isn’t as good a shot as Annie Oakley.

The story is that of Will Caster (Johnny Depp), a computer scientist working on the first true artificial intelligence.    With the promotion and help of his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and friend Max (Paul Bettany), he’s working toward the first fully realized AI.  Then, a coordinated series of attacks on computer labs across the US occurs and an attempt is made on Will’s life by domestic terrorists determined to destroy any attempt at creating AI and seem to have a general disdain for technology, at least obliquely since they use computers and cell phones regularly.  He survives, but the bullet was laced with something that gave him incurable radiation poisoning and five weeks to live.

Pfister doesn’t handle the material nearly as dexterously as Kubrick would have, but that’s like saying a person who’s never held a gun isn’t as good a shot as Annie Oakley.

Evelyn doesn’t want to give him up, so she starts working on a way to improve on another scientist’s research and trials of putting a live mind inside a computer (this other guy uploaded a chimp).  By the time Will dies, Evelyn succeeds and fights to keep him alive over the objections of Max.

During an attack on their lab by the domestic terrorist group, Evelyn connects the computer to the internet where Will can download himself anywhere and he starts building the funds to build a complex where he can begin his work of improving the world.

Of course people start to get spooked when he’s able to create nanotechnology that can repair cells and also link them into the network and give them the capability of working as a hive mind or alone with him being able to just pop in and say hi whenever he feels like it.  Then FBI agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy), Max and Joe Tagger (Morgan Freeman), who was one of Will and Evelyn’s best friends and a top executive of their previous company, join forces with the domestic terrorists to shut Will down.

The film ultimately tries to wrestle with artificial intelligence and what that would mean for and do to humanity.  The trouble is that is much too heavy a topic for this particular film.  It brings up a lot of notions but arrives at no conclusions or even any leads on where screenwriter Jack Paglen wants us to take up the conversation.  What it does do is attempt to make us sympathetic to a domestic terrorist organization’s manifesto that is very much akin to the anti-choice groups in the US.  Which is odd, because Paglen writes a line for Will that goes something like “So they’re doing this for humanity, but they have no problem killing people.  Obviously, they aren’t big on logic.”  By pointing this out, Paglen opens up a plot hole that nearly swallows the film.  I guess he ends up making them kind of right, but that doesn’t mean we should just jump on board and condone their actions (though the FBI allies with them so they have someone to blame “if this all goes sideways”).  The action in the final stretch of the film feels completely out of place and undermines any philosophical points Paglen was trying to make with his script.  Considering that the script was on the 2012 Black List of favorite unproduced screenplays (sort of like a consolation prize for not getting their films made, at least they know people liked it even if it won’t get produced), I’d thought it would be better but I’m guessing changes were made in order to get the thing into production (as is the case with most Black List screenplays that eventually get produced).

Depp gives his most normal performance in ages, but it’s flat and uninspired.  True he spends most of the film as a computer program, but still he’s supposed to be the living consciousness of a person and as such he doesn’t seem alive or conscious.  

To the point of Pfister as a director, I’m sure he’ll direct again.  His framing works and camera placement is as impeccable as it ever is.  He pushed his DP Jess Hall into Gordon ‘The Prince of Darkness’ Willis territory with his lighting (Willis earned his nickname by lowering the lighting so much in a scene in The Godfather Part II (1974) in which Michael is speaking to his mother and there is almost no light in the scene at all) by making shadows overtake nearly the entire picture except those outside during the day in the desert.  Being a fantastic cinematographer, the fact that his camera work as a director is great should come as no surprise.

Where he falters is his direction of his actors.  Depp gives his most normal performance in ages, but it’s flat and uninspired.  True he spends most of the film as a computer program, but still he’s supposed to be the living consciousness of a person and as such he doesn’t seem alive or conscious.  Hall is normally much better, though she’s not exactly a superlative actress.  She functions well in the roles she’s had, most notably in Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) but here she’s boring.  Bettany, like Depp, plays his most normal person he has in a very long time but even he comes off uninteresting.  Even Freeman can’t save the acting in the film, mainly because he’s barely in it and his character turns on a dime against what little there is established.

The trouble with the film is not that it’s uninteresting or boring, though it is badly paced.  The trouble is that it takes itself a bit too seriously for most of it then it just throws itself out the window and almost starts making fun of itself.  It is entertaining when it isn’t hitting you over the head with whatever message it’s trying to make at that particular moment (there are lots of messages and they all vary) and it does bring up some valid points but they get buried under the everything else it tries to pile on to look impressive.  Transcendence isn’t a major splash for Pfister as a director or for any of its stars but at least it’s watchable.