Transcendence
Director: Wally Pfister
Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Kate Mara
Length: 119 mins
Country: UK/USA/China
I feel as though Christopher Nolan and his long standing cinematographer Wally Pfister have cracked their own formula for blockbuster moviemaking. You take a “high-concept” science-fiction premise, give it an enigmatic, long-worded title (Inception, Transcendence, Interstellar), and grant it an A-List lead with an all-star supporting cast and BOOM! Box-office gold. Critics will laud it and the audiences will lap up the challenge for a couple of hours. What Pfister has tried to accomplish with Transcendence is his own brand of intelligent sci-fi, delivering on the premise of technological advancement in the modern age and to what ends our ambition will lead us.
Taking place in a not-too-distant future, Will Caster (Depp) finds himself on the rim of developing the ultimate A.I., ever expanding in intellect and grasp. But an underground movement led by the single-minded Bree (Kate Mara) will stop at nothing to put an end to his, and many others, ambition. When he is mortally wounded, both Will and his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), find the answer that they have been seeking all along. In order to allow their current A.I., P.I.N.N., to become self-aware and succeed in Will’s fabled “Transcendence”, Will’s dying mind and personality is uploaded into the computer. Only then do the real problems begin, both for the characters and the film itself.
The film prospers in its ambition. Its dialogue is dense, but the immense amount of exposition rarely feels unnatural. The core idea could very well be ‘what does it mean to be human?’ The most engaging part of the story is the relationship between Will and Evelyn, their unwavering devotion to each other being the main thrust in Evelyn’s desire to hold on to Will by any means necessary. Her inability to see past the guise of this new Will manages to alienate her from everyone, and as she continues to follow Will’s instructions, you can see her desperation to keep the man that she loves in her life. As Will’s power and ambition continues to grow, the façade slowly begins to crumble as she begins to question how much of the old Will is still within the machine, and how much is simply the code of the original system. Will’s reply to an earlier question of “Can you prove you’re self-aware?” is answered in a way that begs you to question how much of the new Will is the man that he used to be. His near god-like scope and ability further blur the lines as he exceeds his former humanity.
The most engaging part of the story is the relationship between Will and Evelyn, their unwavering devotion to each other being the main thrust in Evelyn’s desire to hold on to Will by any means necessary.
All of these ideas that are brought up throughout are thought-provoking, but ideas are all that they truly are. Transcendence raises many interesting questions concerning its subject matter that it cannot answer. Be it through unsure footing or just not having enough smarts to come up with its own conclusions, the film is terrified of straying from the formula of the genre. But even then, there are even less traditional conventions to satisfy the average moviegoer. The film is too talky for its own good, with a third act that barely counts as an exciting climax, mostly due to an unnecessary intro scene that undercuts nearly all dramatic tension within the action.
More so, it seems that both Pfister and screenwriter Jack Paglen have failed to replicate Nolan’s sense of emotional engagement with any of the characters bar the leading couple. None of the supporting cast has much personality, spouting dialogue and just generally being wherever the plot requires them. They are not bad performances – they’re just not given a great deal to handle, and so your investment weighs completely on the frittering bond between the leads. It helps even less that the film doesn’t really have much of a narrative beyond just plot. There are no true arcs that the characters go through or overcome. Not that this is obligatory, but in a world with characters this half-baked you really need something for them to strive for.
In the end, what the real problem comes down to with Transcendence is that the film feels incredibly cold. It is by no means at
all a bad film, it’s impressively good-looking and intricately put together, but it’s not a great or truly memorable one either. The film has a brain, but not the heart that it needs to keep it going. Much like the lightless eyes and detached voice of the computerised Will, the film is lacking the humanity that it so sorely deserves.
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