Sometimes I wonder if I’m seeing the same movie critics are. Sometimes highly touted flicks are total busts for me (I’m looking at you Wolf of Wall Street – DiCaprio was stellar but the movie… not so much), and in others, the reverse is true. Transcendence is one. I almost skipped this one because it is getting only middling reviews. I’m glad I took a chance on it, this is a fantastic film. While there are points in which the viewer is asked to take a pretty big leap of faith, it is a thought provoking and emotionally intense film.
I’ll say from the beginning, this is not a film for the masses. Though the visuals are great (the director is Wally Pfister, known more as the long-time cinematographer collaborator with Christopher Nolan, through Inception, his Batman films, and all the way back to his early Memento days), it isn’t a high-octane action movie. It is slow moving and can be wordy at times. I liken it to Spielberg’s A.I., which I also loved. When A.I. came out, it was not well received and did not do well here in the USA, only international tickets (rare when this movie was released in 2001) saved it from a total bomb. But it was an emotionally gripping movie, and I felt the same things in Transcendence.
The movie takes place in the near future when labs around the world are about to go online with a true artificially built intelligence. Things come crashing down when a terrorist group afraid of what this means for humanity decides to take it down and all the scientists involved with it. When one of the leads (played by Johnny Depp) is near death, his wife and friend upload his consciousness to a computer, thus making him the first fully aware A.I. For the rest of the film, you are left wondering if this is really the former human making decisions and only pretending at emotion, or if he is still “alive” inside the computer, as he makes newer and faster discoveries in science and medicine. You are not fully sure of this, and of his final intentions, until the very end of the film.
Sometimes I just want a pure action film and I don’t want to think, but other times I’m in for something that will make me pause and consider some “what ifs.” In this movie, these include what will a person do for the love of another, what is our responsibility to our planet, where will our continuing advancement of technology take us. When A.I. came out in 2001 it was not a success, but over the years people have warmed up to it. Perhaps Transcendence will find new life later as well.
Jons Movie Takes 