3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Archive

2020, Gavin Rothery (visuals on a few things including Moon) -- download

There is a breed of movie I am rather fond of, one that starts with Shorts by visionary directors, that establishes, with us the viewer, their visual and emotional kit box. The best example is Neill Blomkamp, who blew us all away with his premiere District 9. He has a visual style that probably type-cast him (note: I am yet to see his horror movie Demonic but I should see it soon) but has kept me a fan, even as he returned to explore more ideas via animated & live action shorts (see Oats Studios). Everything in Archive smacks of someone with a bunch of visuals in his head, ideas and emotional constructs that need to be depicted. Unfortunately, a lot of these ideas are other people's already; homage - maybe - rip-off - more likely. Its a shame though, as there is something tangible there, but if the first real attempt is muddled in these choices, as well as a eye-rolling twist plot, I am not sure where it will go. 

George Almore (Theo James, The Time Traveller's Wife) is an AI/Robotics scientist assigned to a remote facility in Japan, a beautiful, bleak location in the mountains, perched on a gorge. The facility has seen better days, with most of the security offline, and things constantly breaking down. George has been working on the hallmark of all AI/Robotics movies -- the human like machine. His first two attempts are mild successes, one a clunking, walking box much like GNK-series (or gonk) droid from Star Wars, with the emotional & developmental level of a five year old. The other is a classic "person in a box-y robot suit" 16 year old, petulant, jealous and constantly challenging George like all teens do. The last, the one the company doesn't know about, is a perfect looking human torso. He's not finished yet and the company is pressuring him for results, but we get the idea he is not telling them what is going on, nor what his own personal end goal is.

Wrapped up in that is the death of his wife Jules (Stacy Martin, The Serpent), and a technology called Archive that keeps her mind alive, and able to communicate with him, for a short period of time. George's ulterior motive is that he is using the Archive technology to feed his AI technology, stealing their IP to further the intelligence, and yes, using his late wife's archived mind as the template. His end goal is to resurrect her. And he succeeds, or so we think. The twist ending is so fucking annoying, I am going to hand-wave it all away, even though it was somewhat broadcast, almost as if they re-edited Rothery's movie because he couldn't come up with a decent ending. When in doubt, twist ending!

I liked the look of this movie, but primarily because it looked like other movies I liked. The mild bits, like the monolithic Archive unit smacking of 2001 and hinting at how this technology will change mankind, is cute and somewhat eye-rolling. But the blatant ripping off of The Ghost in the Shell both anime and live action, during his "the human-like robot is complete" sequence was annoying enough that I wanted to just throw something at the screen. Amusingly enough, with the twist ending in place, its more acceptable. OK ok, the twist is that nothing of this is real, its all in George's head. He died in the car crash, and he is in the Archive, not his wife. The whole movie is just his brain filling in the gaps between chatting with his wife and finally dying. So, the idea his "sleeping" brain rips off a Japanese AI story is ... amusing? But no, dude, find your own metaphorical visuals.

In the end, there is a little play on the themes I was hoping more for. George does not create machines as just machines, he sees them as emotional beings, and while he treats them as badly as any human might treat another human, he does care for them. But he also uses them to his own ends. The final act has him sacrificing his opus creation to resurrect his wife, which is a very human, callous act, tossed aside for a farcical twist. But I wished they had doubled-down on his choices, and explored the impact of them to his own life, and that of his (simulated) wife.