A One Mann’s Movies review of “Artificial”. (From the 2026 London Film Festival). (2026, 4*, NR).
The Industrial Revolution. (BUMP). Babbage, Lovelace and Turing (BUMP, BUMP, BUMP). Home computers (BUMP). Mobile phones (BUMP). The internet (BUMP). Social Media (BUMP). AI (BUMP). Dramatic changes in society tend to come along more as a whisper than a shout. Some guy tinkers with something in his garage in California or his dorm room in Harvard and the idea slowly propagates. It is only after the event that you realise what a remarkable bump in the road of humanity you’ve just lived through. I feel honoured, and not a little bit freaked out, that I have lived through more than my fair share of those “BUMPs” (no, not Turing – don’t be rude!). The analogue world I grew up in in the 60’s is unrecognisable from today’s world. Teenagers in particular would never cope. (“What do you mean you’ll meet me under the big clock at 2 o’clock? What if something changes? What if I’m late?“).
Arguably…. well, no, really not that arguably… Artificial Intelligence (or – you know – we could rename it “Super Intelligence”^*) will completely revolutionise society: work… life… everything. Just yesterday, in the space of an hour, I wrote a complex computer program in Python to automate a booking process on a web site, so I didn’t miss out. The night before, I wrote another program in Python for my laptop to listen out for the noise made by a pesky rat and, if heard, play a recording of my voice telling it to “Bugger off”. The thing is, I haven’t done programming for 30 years. I don’t know the Python language! I don’t need to any more. AI – and Chat GPT in this particular instance – is a wonderful tool, in the right hands. But it is also an incredibly dangerous one. A tool that can not only make its own Pinocchio to be “honest, good and truthful” but one that can potentially make an army of Pinocchios with hammers to bash all our brains out. Skynet is real: it is not the stuff of Terminator 2.
Artificial walks us through that particular “BUMP“. From the early breakthroughs and the initial hints of nervousness amongst the scientists to the commercialisation of the technology and the evidence of ego and greed overriding common sense. As such, this is an important film. It is also about the most accessible film that Luca Guadagnino has ever made.
^* What an absolute knob-head.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
Toronto, 2012. A genius – Ilya Sutskever (Yura Borisov) – joins the lab of Professor Geoffrey Hinton (Mark Rylance) who is studying advanced, sci-fi-like stuff about machines that can program themselves. The world is about to fundamentally change.
Certification:
UK: NR; US: PG-13. (This film has not yet received a classification by the BBFC, but I would expect it to be a 12A based on the US rating which is based on “Some strong language”.)
Talent:
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Chris O’Dowd, Mark Rylance, Ike Barinholtz, Angus Imrie, Jason Schwartzman.
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino.
Written by: Simon Rich.
Running Time: 2h 20m.
Review:
Positives:
- This was a game of two halves for me, and I loved the first half. We start with a peerless performance by Mark Rylance as Professor Hinton, ‘interviewing’ Ilya (Anora‘s Yura Borisov) for a position in his lab. I was pleasantly surprised: after the heavyweight drama of the last two Guadagnino films I’ve seen (Queer and After the Hunt) this was surprisingly spritely fare, highly watchable and thought-provoking. As such, I think it will appeal to a much broader demographic of cinemagoers than his previous films.
- It was fascinating to see how the future of the world was set. The developments, the set-backs, how other decisions being made might have killed the monster at birth. It is astonishing (I’m assuming the script is reflecting the history) that there was still so much pessimism and so much lack of caution about the Pandora’s box they were opening. In one wonderful scene of a meeting in Google HQ, chaired by Chris O’Dowd, Ilya is shooting his mouth of, pushing ‘ridiculous’ ideas that they might develop an “AGI” within “30 or 40 years”. Professor Hinton pours scorn on this – calling his ideas “dangerous nonsense”: that such fantasies will be at least 100 years away and “not in our lifetimes”. That was in November 2014: and here we are, 12 years later!
- Ike Barinholtz gives a wonderful impression of “E–LON” (as the orange psychopath-in-chief called him and which is now permanently in my head). Every time he entered the room, the audience in my screening laughed and he is given some very Muskian lines: “I’m not good at waiting” he barks. Barinholtz has him to a ‘T’, and I bet Musk absolutely hates it!
- The creation of Open-AI as a “safe, open source AI” and the rise of Sam Altman (Andrew Garfield) is also fascinating. The ‘headquarters’ are initially in Greg Brockman’s apartment! A slo-mo celebration with beer, when a breakthrough is made, is a terrific bit of cinema (although I would have personally stayed with the single shot, rather than cutting the angles, which diminished it for me).
- Monica Barbaro again confirms what a new presence in the movies she is with a terrific performance as Mira Murati. I was never quite sure what job it was she was being recruited into, but the interview between Ilya and herself in a conference room, with the camera swinging from close-up face to close-up face, is bravura filmmaking.
- One of tensest scenes in the movie is where an AI researcher – a prophet of doom if you will – confronts Ilya on a park bench. Played by an unrecognisable Jason Schwartzman, the scene is where the story really got chilling.
Negatives:
- The second half of the movie was a comparative disappointment to me. We descend into corporate squabbling about OpenAI funding, Elon wanting to fold OpenAI into Tesla (!!!) and partnerships with other parties are discussed. Altman is portrayed as acting like a complete asshole and, for me (and I know Garfield has a certain Oscar buzz about this performance) goes a bit over-Garfieldy (a technical term) in portraying him. I love Garfield, but, for this, I don’t think it should merit a nomination.
- The film really didn’t nail its landing for me. I’d have been reasonably happy to end the film on a doom-laden note with that brilliant bench scene with Jason Schwartzman, mentioned above. Instead we go on and on and on with additional scenes (back to Lord of the Rings: Return of the King again) before the film ends on a bit of a damp squib. I wanted to exit the cinema full of AI-paranoia and I didn’t!
Summary Thoughts:
It’s a good watch. Does it completely nail it as the “horror film” it should be – no, I don’t think so. Perhaps it’s not Guadagnino’s doing anyway. Maybe the machines in post-production got wind and jimmied with the ending?
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDZplZFnbOk.
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