Transcendence (**½)

Directed by: Wally Pfister

Starring: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Morgan Freeman, Paul Bettany, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy, Cole Hauser, Clifton Collins Jr., Cory Hardrict

Seen: May 30^th 2014

**½ Out of ****

Transcendence might be one of the most difficult movies I’ll ever review, as it looks gorgeous but is baffling and downright silly and senseless in how it makes narrative and logical jumps. It’s technically science fiction, but at times the science fiction jumps into paranormal ‘horror’ (?) leaving you somewhat stunned and uncertain of what to make of events. The movie is Wally Pfister’s directorial debut after being director of photography (cinematographer) on such notable movies as Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, the Batman trilogy, Inception, and Moneyball (i.e. all of Christopher Nolan’s brilliant movies and some others); and visually the movie definitely impressed me. But after a solid intro and setup the story veers too far away from its initial premise, and not even such an impressive cast can save it.

Dr. Will Caster (Depp) and his wife Evelyn (Hall) are renowned scientists in the arena of artificial intelligence (AI), and Will postulates that a truly sentient computer with sufficient processing power could produce a point of Transcendence and take us past our current way of thinking and problem solving into a new era where technology grows itself in leaps and bounds to bring about applications that our current understanding cannot even imagine. At an event similar to the TED conferences, Will is shot with a poisoned bullet by a RIFT (Revolutionary Independence from Technology) fanatic, and is given less than a month to live. The attempt on his life is synchronized with multiple attacks on the AI industry, putting research back by many years.

Will, Evelyn and Max Waters (Bettany), their best friend, have been developing PINN, a relatively strong and almost sentient AI that eludes the attacks, and as Will deteriorates Evelyn transfers Will’s conscious mind into the AI, assisting him in transcending the human plain of existence. Evelyn helps the new Will to get online just before RIFT can stop them, and this AI starts building a research facility in a small town where he can hide and grow. Two years later, and the facility is a massive underground research laboratory doing incredible things supported by a huge solar farm above ground. The research is incredibly impressive, with nano-technology being front and centre of everything. Their old colleague and friend Joseph Tagger (Freeman) visits the facility and realises its true depth and grasp. He advises Evelyn to run, but she doesn’t see the imminent danger, and stays on while Will’s conscience, which certainly isn’t Will anymore, increasingly moves towards becoming a more threatening presence. The good deeds being done for injured/sick people of the region is unmasked as something altogether different, with the Will-AI building an army of nano-tech controlled super-humans that RIFT, led by Max and Bree (Mara), need to stop before it’s completely too late.

As I’ve already said, the movie looks good. But when corpses are creepily reanimated the credibility of the story is heavily strained and the script takes a leap to the dark side. It is science fiction to be fair, but there’s too much of a logical leap in thinking required when things start going really weird in the space of a minute in a relatively long movie that takes its time to define the rest of the theory at an almost leisurely pace.

The script is strange, but not so strange that it doesn’t still allow good performances from the entire cast. Johnny Depp is probably the most docile he’s ever been as a sentient AI, but he is convincing. In the end however, everything seems to, in some way, serve the visuals, and this is the undoing of Transcendence – story should be served by acting and visuals, not the other way around. Transcendence is difficult to peg (maybe because it transcends modern story-telling and movie-making?!?!?), but the more I think about it the more nonsensical and unfathomable it becomes. Too bad it couldn’t be enjoyable enough while watching it. It doesn’t even leave the discomfort of dealing with the story’s strange quirks for afterwards, it bombards you with it and simply makes watching it nothing more than a strange quirk.