Mark Keresman  May 2014

Transcendence

     A  little cinematic and historical context:  Many films and hunks of fiction deal with the collision of humans and technology. Two pieces are especially relevant here: “The Brain of Colonel Barham,” a 1965 episode of the classic science fiction series The Outer Limits; Colossus: The Forbin Project, a 1970 film. In the former, a terminally ill astronaut, seething with bitterness over his approaching fate, volunteers to have his brain hooked up to a computer for a long-distance space voyage. As you may guess, things go horribly, horribly wrong, as the astronaut’s brain decides to take full advantage of his now-superiority. In the latter, America and Russia—acting independently, naturally—place their defense systems under the impartial control of super-computers. However, the American computer, named Colossus, gets the “idea” that in order to really prevent war—all war, really—it “hooks up” with its Russian counterpart Guardian. This union of electronic brains—using the nuclear arsenals of both nations as a “bargaining chip”—decides the future of humanity is too fragile to be left up to humans, so Colossus/Guardian enforces global world peace whether the assorted governments of the world want it or not.

In Transcendence, Johnny Depp is Dr. Will Caster, a computer wizard working on a true artificial intelligence system. A Luddite-type group—“Unplug now!” is their battle cry—decides this is a Very Bad Thing, and so a member of the group shoots Caster with an irradiated bullet. As a result, Caster, like Col. Barham, becomes terminally ill. His wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and colleague Max (Paul Bettany) have an idea: What if Caster’s consciousness could be up-loaded into a computer?  Quicker than you can say “Frankenstein’s monster” Caster is practically running the internet, and with the aid of some speedy online investments—providing virtually unlimited capital—he’s built himself a technology-based empire that, while benign, has gotten some people very worried. With this technology at his disposal, Caster is able to heal the sick, with a bonus of being able to control the formerly sick people as well. The Luddite terrorists, the FBI, Will’s wife, and another of Caster’s colleagues, Joseph (Morgan Freeman), form an uneasy alliance as they perceive that Caster’s nearly absolute power will corrupt him absolutely.

The good: Rebecca Hall is excellent as Caster’s devoted wife—she palpably displays a range of emotions from sorrow to doubting if the “thing” is still really her husband. Transcendence is a movie of gray areas—Depp’s Caster is nominally the “villain,” but is he really? He doesn’t seem to be the usual “At last the world is mine!”-type bad guy—his intentions seem genuinely, dare I say, good. Where he gets into iffy territory is the way he extends himself into the people that benefitted from his computerized surgery—he’s turned these people into “extensions” of himself. What happens to his host’s personality when he does this? The people trying to stop Caster—are they certain Caster has become evil or is this yet another case of let’s-kill-someone-who’s-trying-to-change-things-for-the-better? (Humanity has a rich history of this, going back to that guy from Nazareth…and I don’t refer to the band.) For a two-hour film, this moves along at a decent pace.

The bad: Depp seems as if he’s on autopilot for most of this movie. He could’ve invested Caster with more personality, really, before he was “up-loaded.” Freeman is there basically to be [surprise] the Wise Old Concerned Fellow. The “science” is, as our British cousins would say, a bit dodgy—things happen with no explanation at all.

All in all, Transcendence is a good film that, with a bit more thought/foresight, could’ve been great. Recommended with reservations.

In addition to ICON, Mark Keresman is a contributing writer for SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Pittsburgh City Paper, Paste, Jazz Review, downBeat, and the Manhattan Resident.

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