Transcendence

What a shame.  Transcendence is a movie full of big ideas, but it lacks the focus to really concentrate on them, or the heart to make us care about them.  This is an oddly impersonal movie, filled with talented actors giving off key performances.  As the story played out, I realized its biggest problem - For all of its grand ideas, there is absolutely no soul to the film, nothing to make us connect with it.  It's all concept and no execution.

A strangely mute and indifferent Johnny Depp plays a computer genius by the name of Will Caster.  For years, he and his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), have been making strides in the field of artificial intelligence.  Now, Will believes that he is on the cusp of creating a truly sentient artificial intelligence that can think for itself.  His work has its share of critics, and soon draws the attention of a tech-terrorist group who think that Will is crossing into dangerous territory with his experiments.  One of the members of this extremist group sneaks in while Will is hosting a conference about his work, and shoots him with a bullet that's been laced with radiation poisoning.  The poison slowly starts to kill him, and the doctors tell Will he only has four weeks to live.  At first, Will seems resigned to his fate, but Evelyn and Will's other partner in the experiment, Max Waters (Paul Bettany), believe there may be a way to save him.  They will upload Will's consciousness to an advanced super computer, so that his mind can live on after his body expires.

The real test of any Science Fiction film is does it allow the audience to completely follow its technology and premise, far-fetched as they may seem?  For a while, I was intrigued, and wanted the movie to tell me more about this process.  Unfortunately, once Will is hooked into the computer, the movie takes a predictable turn into thriller territory.  The Will who speaks to Evelyn through the computer is cold and power-hungry, and immediately wants to be uploaded onto the Internet, so that he can have access to all the world's information.  Max immediately senses something is wrong, fearing that it is not the real Will coming through the computer.  Evelyn ignores this completely rational concern, something she does an awful lot in this film for the sake of plot convenience.  Seriously, even when she herself seems to start worrying that Will might be going a little bit too far in his plans, she still stands by his side, even though it makes little sense for her to do so.  By the time she finally wises up (thanks mostly to another character slipping her a piece of paper advising her to "run away"), it feels a lot later into the movie than it should have been for her to put two and two together.

And yet, I know why she stays, or why she is supposed to be staying by Will's side, even when he goes potentially mad with power.  Her love for him is supposed to keep her bound.  However, due to the fact that Rebecca Hall and Johnny Depp never share a single ounce of traceable chemistry on the screen, it makes it harder to buy that she would stay with him for so long.  This romance, which is so central to the plot, never comes across as strong as it should.  This is what I meant earlier when I said the movie has no soul.  We don't feel any connection to these people, and we don't sense any connection between them when they are on screen together.  Not even that most reliable of acting veterans, Morgan Freeman (who has a supporting role as a computer expert), can breathe much life into his role, mainly because he is given next to nothing to do.  Why waste valuable talent like this?  Was first-time director, Wally Pfister (a cinematographer best known for his work with Christopher Nolan), just intimidated behind the camera or working with these people?  As a director, Pfister gets off some good shots (which should come as no surprise), but seems to be at a loss on how to get his actors to emote.

Transcendence also suffers from its story structure.  The film opens some years after the events have happened, and the main plot is told in flashback.  The opening sequence set in the future kills whatever tension the story might have had, showing us who survives, and also pretty much spelling out how it's going to all be resolved.  There is no need for the opening scene and narration.  I can understand why first-time screenwriter Jack Paglen would want to end his story in this time frame, but to open his story with it is simply mind boggling.  For all the talent on and behind the camera, this is a startlingly amateurish film.  And yet, it's clear that a lot of money and effort went into it to make the look and the effects be top class.  I don't understand why studios spend so much money on films, while ignoring its basic flaw - the script doesn't work, and doesn't have a human essence.  If they had spent as much time doctoring the script as they did making it look great, we'd have a heck of a film here.

As I think back on the film, I have no idea who this movie is going to reach.  It's not a mindless film, but at the same time, it's too dumb and underwritten to be compelling.  It's ultimately an ambitious film that's just not ambitious enough.  This leads to an awful lot of wasted potential and talent up on the screen.  What a shame, indeed.

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