THE STORY – Follows the confusing firing and rehiring cycle of Sam Altman at OpenAI, where the board gained control of the company and removed him, but Altman still returned.
THE CAST – Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O’Dowd, Ike Barinholtz & Mark Rylance
THE TEAM – Luca Guadagnino (Director) & Simon Rich (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 140 Minutes
Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial” has had one hell of a journey to reach its world premiere at this year’s New York Film Festival. The film, which originally was an Amazon MGM Studios production slated for release this year, was soon dropped, coincidentally in the aftermath of the company signing a multi-billion-dollar deal with Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Altman, the co-founder, acting CEO of the company, and subject of the film, has become an ever-growing presence in our society. Surely strong enough to pressure the powers that be at Amazon, i.e., billionaire tycoon Jeff Bezos. If it wasn’t for the team at NEON coming to save the film, Guadagnino’s latest film might’ve been lost in the studio shuffle, having its hand out waiting for a savior, and thank the cinema gods that’s not the case. After a rare Guadagnino misfire in “After the Hunt” last year, “Artificial” is more than a redemptive film for the acclaimed director; it’s a terrifyingly prescient work that hammers in the notion that we’re only doomed with every second that passes in the current world as we made it.
The film spends most of its first act scurrying through history toward the inevitable creation of OpenAI, an American artificial intelligence public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California, that has slowly infiltrated nearly every aspect of our lives, starting with Guadagnino taking us back to the University of Toronto in 2003. Bright-eyed teenage student Ilya Sutskever, played by Academy Award nominee Yura Burisov, approaches Mark Rylance’s older and respected Geoff Hinton, a heralded professor at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (known as “the Godfather of AI”). Ilya’s lack of social awareness is more than made up for by his brilliance, leading Geoff down a path where the biggest tech corporations court their groundbreaking discoveries in machine learning. Yet Ilya’s vision for AI was deemed impossible this century, even though he believes it could arrive in a far more realistic timeline. Ilya strives to create a technology entirely for altruistic purposes, hoping it will aid humanity in every way possible, from curing disease to eliminating pollution and making the world a safer, better place. So it makes natural sense for a tragic story like this to instead send Ilya to someone like Sam Altman (Andrew Garfield), a slippery yet charismatic investor completely won over by Ilya’s grandiose and possibly profitable ideas. Garfield, who perfectly embodies Sam’s pusillanimous presence, quickly wiles Ilya’s good-hearted aspirations and runs them through the unethical ringer of capitalistic hurdles, amplifying the burrowing realization that the technology he has created is spiraling into something beyond our control.
Early on, it’s clear Guadagnino has no intention of mincing his feelings toward these private equity tech bros, dispelling the notion that these polarizing billionaire figures, propped up in our society, are made up of the most insecure crop of unmasculine sociopaths. Most depicted, even those at the heart of creating OpenAI (and ChatGPT), contribute nothing beyond their braggadocious personalities. All of this is depicted in typical seductive Guadagnino fashion, with these men showering each other in champagne, working as a homoerotic substitute for ejaculation. This unnecessary adulation is even more apparent in Ike Barinholtz’s mean-spirited performance as Elon Musk, whom these characters treat as if he were David Bowie in the flesh whenever he graces them with his presence. It’s a straight-up caricature reeking of pure disdain, yet one that plays into the dark comedic elements Guadagnino is drawing from this vastly eclectic ensemble.
Simon Rich, the screenwriter whose unplanned proximity to the burgeoning evolution of this tech instills not only his comedic sensibilities in the script, but also a more-than-apparent fear of where our world is heading. Guadagnino amply weaves Rich’s dread into every conversation each figure in this world has with one another. While “Artificial” does take a minute to find its rhythm in the storytelling, once Sam and Ilya cross paths in their first excessive supper of these Silicon Valley figures convening for what would most likely be the world’s death sentence, “Artificial” finds itself a nice lane to tell a very familiar but still human story. Guadagnino certainly doesn’t play it all for laughs, as the film’s essential horror-comedy constitution forms itself as almost the anti “The Social Network,” doubling down on a far more nihilistic take on how we already signed away the deed on the natural beauties that make life worth living. The plotting is nowhere near as polished as a Sorkin screenplay, but it certainly doesn’t teeter on the centrist liberal ideology that, in the end, the systems at play will shape themselves for the better. Guadagnino displays this lack of hope throughout ” Artificial,” constantly using bridges, mainly the Golden Gate Bridge (synonymous with the Bay Area), as a totem of how man’s drive for advancement was for the betterment of humanity. A creation made to connect us. To make something that would ease the burdens in our lives. Instead, everything Ilya has built has become something that not only poisons our planet but also our ability to connect with the world around us.
Garfield’s haunting performance reinforces this sentiment with some of the most transformative and best work of his career. The multi-Oscar-nominated actor who last experienced the aspirationally thorny collaboration that was “After the Hunt” with Guadagnino imbues this parasite of a human being with an awkward ne’er-do-well energy that somehow weasels its way into every interaction with false sincerity. He’s an open, smiling presence that exudes warmth on the surface but is really a tumor growing underneath as each selfishly motivated desire becomes more apparent. It plays well off Borisov’s sternly honest turn, making Ilya the film’s moral compass and audience surrogate that feels all the more fictional in hindsight compared to how these individuals operate. His presence in the inevitable AI Space Race that sets everything on course for disaster is a terrific follow-up to his breakthrough performance in “Anora” and will continue to show Western audiences what a brilliant actor he is.
The entire ensemble fittingly gels with what is basically Guadagnino’s first pure comedy (as dark as it can be at times), whether it’s Cooper Hoffman’s overtly bro-ish persona as Greg Brockman (the former Stripe employee and now board chairman of OpenAI) or Ryalnce’s veteran presence as a gentle, empathetic man witnessing the downfall of his life’s work. The way these performers can dial into Guadagnino’s humanistic approach only makes the work of someone like Barinholtz all the more amusing. Why bother ragging on its SNL-level energy when Berenholtz makes every word or gesture one of the year’s most laugh-inducing moments whenever he pops up on screen as a complete joke of a human being, even if he was revered as a god during this time? Musk is essentially depicted as a frustrated man-child impatiently waiting to grow his wealth, even if it means bowing out of the potential of a company that will make far more of a change to society than he ever would. Jason Schwartzman pops into the narrative briefly to be the voice of doom and gloom that warns Ilya of the dangers he’s unleashed upon the world, frantically urging him to stop (something that none of the major tech companies have done as of this moment, let alone slow down their advancements towards AGI, a hypothetical AI system that matches or surpasses human cognitive abilities across a wide range of tasks and domains). Academy Award nominee Monica Barbaro is given the film’s only primary female speaking role as Mira Murati, the chief technology officer of OpenAI, who aligns mostly with Ilya’s ideals but is increasingly swayed by Altman’s charms.
These figures are captured in invasive close-ups, as cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed shoots Sam Altman as if he’s Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence Of The Lambs,” his unsettling gaze piercing through the screen and straight into our souls. The cinematography is exceptional, perfectly attuned to Damon Albarn’s electronic, heavy score that perfectly fits the mood of this far more urgent story that will remind viewers of the best elements of “The Social Network.” Albarn’s score operates in this bright frequency before veering into an almost atmospherically harrowing piece of music that could be ripped out of any horror film.
Guadagnino, even with a rocky opening first act, eventually pulls audiences further away from the notion that the future is going to be alright. For the filmmaker, an artist whose commitment to the analog process of navigating emotion through the form is insulted by the presence of Altman’s work, it feels like a cry for help to best explain to audiences how we ended up here in such a short period of time. The fear stirred by the powers of big tech and AI nearly buried this highly entertaining, brilliant but scary film. Luckily for us, “Artificial” is here, and it’s one of the better, more timely films of the year, let alone Guadagnino’s career.
