‘Artificial’ Review: Andrew Garfield and Yura Borisov Shine as Ethical Opposites in Luca Guadagnino’s Riveting Real-World Tech Nightmare

Andrew Garfield is now in his early 40s, but when he lollops around with his rubber limbs flapping every which way and a happy-go-lucky smile plastered across this face — he’s like a goofy Pied Piper trailed by enchanted tech bros — you might swear he’s a teenager. That makes it diabolically clever of Luca Guadagnino, a gay director never shy about exploring queerness, to cast OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as the “demon twink” archetype. Whatever sorcery the makeup or effects department has performed to put the glint of sociopathic madness in Garfield’s eyes, it works.

But what makes Artificial, a two-decade chronicle of machine learning and technological heedlessness, so riveting is the balance provided by Yura Borisov — more than making good on the promise of Anora — as Soviet-born AI trailblazer Ilya Sutskever. Borisov’s brainy, tender, deeply contemplative performance lends an anchoring humanity to a film that might otherwise have curdled into sourness and despair — though there’s plenty of reason for that. Guadagnino and screenwriter Simon Rich mold the material from dark humor through technocratic giddiness to sobering horror.

Artificial

The Bottom Line A sneaky gut punch.

Venue: New York Film Festival (Main Slate)
Release date: Friday, Dec. 25
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Mark Rylance, Cooper Hoffman, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O’Dowd
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Screenwriter: Simon Rich
Rated PG-13, 2 hours 20 minutes

Humorist and former SNL writer Rich’s clear-eyed, propulsive script starts in 2003 at the University of Toronto, when Ilya knocks on the door of Geoffrey Hinton (Mark Rylance at his soft-spoken, eccentric best), a professor whose pioneering work on artificial neural networks would earn him the “Godfather of AI” title — and a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024.

At first Geoff shoos Ilya away, giving him a research paper to study and discuss the following week. But when the 17-year-old Russian returns what seems like moments later with a solution to significantly advance the theories outlined in the paper, the professor finds himself with a new research partner. Within 10 years, Geoff, Ilya and another graduate student, Alex Krizhevsky (Fedor Fedotov), have designed the first image-recognition neural network, which they sell to Google for $44 million, joining the company as part of the deal.

In that early stage of AI development, Professor Hinton is already wary of the potential risks, causing him to cut short a pitch from a Chinese bidder who gets excited about possible defense applications like automatic drones.

Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, Altman and his buddy Elon Musk (a hilariously weird Ike Barinholtz, even his awkward gait announcing his self-importance) commiserate over losing out to Google, though neither of them will be squeezed out of the AI race so easily. Musk hires AI engineering wiz Mira Murati (Monica Barbaro) at Tesla, while Altman brings Ilya into the fold with a sizeable investment stake. Geoff warns Ilya to moderate his projections, emphasizing the need for safeguards, but the idealistic Russian is swept up in the vast potential of AI — to solve the climate crisis, cure cancer, even save humanity from itself.

The dizzying evolution of AI picks up speed when Ilya gets Sam worked up about next-level AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, theoretical technology with human-level cognitive capabilities. Sam is naturally seductive as he sells his vision — which is really Ilya’s — on AGI controlled by scientists and not by government or moneymen. Yeah, right. “Don’t you see, we’re the only ones sitting in the future?” enthuses Sam at one point. “It’s exhilarating!”

In 2016, they launch OpenAI out of the San Francisco apartment of Greg Brockman (Cooper Hoffman), a software engineer who is perhaps the most obnoxious — and there’s stiff competition — of a bunch of tech bros constantly fist pumping and popping champagne and shouting triumphantly about every breakthrough. One of the first of those is when their AI program teaches itself to beat the machine in a notoriously difficult video game. (I swear, after repeat exposure to these dudes chanting “Feel the AGI,” I was ready to charge up a flamethrower.)

A reshuffle after they decline Musk’s offer to join Tesla lands Mira at OpenAI, where she wins over Ilya with talk of the benefits to medicine, science and communications, along with the fact that Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” is her favorite song. Mira believes advancement in their field will come through human-AI interaction. But Sam believes it will come through partnering with Microsoft for funding, overruling Ilya’s ethical concerns with a faux sincerity that you start to believe even he thinks is genuine. “We’re doing this for the benefit of humanity!” he says.

As development accelerates, the neural network reveals the capacity to lie, which leaves Ilya disillusioned more than anything: “I thought we were doing this to make AI smarter and better. But what if it makes it just like us, only worse?” Ilya’s urging to slow down and observe the safety protocols merely result in Sam nudging him aside, along with Mira for a time.

Professor Hinton, who exited Google some years earlier over a philosophical divide, sums up what’s to come when he says, “The question isn’t ‘How can this go wrong?’ It’s ‘How could it not?’”

It’s around this point that Guadagnino begins slowly tightening the screws, almost imperceptibly shifting into a mode adjacent to psychological horror. This is one of the director’s most controlled films, as he works with the same sort of expediency and finesse employed by Altman to win over — and sometimes discredit — doubters. The ultimate effect is chilling.

Garfield plays Sam as a charming villain, capable of talking himself back into the leadership position even after he has been fired by the board for shady dealings. It’s easy to imagine the portrayal of Altman being a key reason Amazon MGM orphaned the film (until Neon snapped it up), given the fraternity among tech billionaires. The $50 billion deal Amazon signed with OpenAI was likely the deciding factor.

Audiences unaware that Altman is gay might pick up on subtle hints in Garfield’s performance, before Musk jokes about it during a dinner scene or a boyfriend is finally seen well into the film. The way he sweetens his voice and shoots the briefest of slutty glances at a hot blond waiter while ordering vodka shots is an amusing tell.

Sadly, we don’t get to see Altman allegedly meeting his future husband in Peter Thiel’s hot tub. But after his sexuality remains in the background for most of the movie, there’s a real eye-opener of a scene in which he returns to his swanky Napa compound, where his partner is clipping shrubs in the garden while various beautiful boys are draped around the pool and downstairs there’s a kind of high-tech bunker with amply stocked gun cabinets. The characterological contradictions in this scene alone speak volumes about who Sam Altman is.

Barbaro is strong as always, though — even if Mira speaks up frequently and seems unintimidated in the phallocentric environment — the actress could have been given more to do. Rylance is a joy to watch, even when indulging in some familiar tics; Barinholtz steals every scene he swaggers into; and an almost unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman has poignant moments as a man who fled the tech industry when he saw the writing on the wall and, judging by his unruly tangle of hair and straggly beard, would now appear to be homeless.

On the craft side, the movie never feels too slick; there’s an agreeable looseness to its pacing, even at its zippiest, and a crisp unfussiness to Malik Hassan Sayeed’s cinematography. Guadagnino has always been skilled in his choice of music (Sufjan Stevens’ alt-pop in Call Me by Your Name, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pounding EDM in Challengers). Artificial is no exception, with Blur frontman Damon Albarn’s energized electronic score and songs working in concert with Marco Costa’s fluid editing.

This ranks among Guadagnino’s best work, its dry humor lulling us into a relaxed state of enjoyment before the sword comes down on the scary reality we’re now facing. Even if AI developments are coming so thick and fast that no movie could possibly keep up, Guadagnino and screenwriter Rich have made a provocative feature that feels precision-targeted for this moment.

Speaking of swords, Sam actually carries one around his San Francisco apartment while schmoozing with reporters over his blamelessness in the OpenAI ouster. It’s not hard to imagine this guy thinking of himself as being on some kind of valiant crusade. His ego is in exact inverse proportion to Ilya’s, which is part of what makes Garfield and Borisov play so beautifully off each other. Sam maintains that “the future is inevitable,” now that they have opened Pandora’s box, but in the same breath spouts the ultimate in vapid tech-speak: “We’re all just NPCs in this cosmic video game.” If that’s the case, could someone please unplug it?