Archive (2020)

When "Ex Machina" (2014) was announced, it looked to me like a copy of "The Machine" (2013). Finally, it proved to have a different story, although both featured an AI named Ava. Another common part was that neither of the two movies impressed me enough to allocate time for a blog entry. That's why I wasn't expecting much from "Archive" either, which again, at a first sight seemed to be an "Ex Machina" v2.0. Only at the first sight...

There are two things in common: we have again a female AI and a robotics engineer somewhere in a secluded lab. That's where the resemblance ends. The story in "Archive" goes like this: year 2048 - George Almore is sent alone to a ultra-secured facility in Japan's forest by his company, in order to conduct some ultra-secret research in the area of robotics. This comes after escaping a car accident. Unfortunately not also the case of his wife, Jules, but fortunately in this future we have Archive. Archive is another company dealing with immediately saving the conscience of those close to clinical death, keeping up some limited means of communicating with them. The problem is that it's not a definitive save, each call getting it closer to the moment when Jules will be lost forever. Reason why, instead of dealing with what the company wants from him, George starts his own private project: the android model J-01, followed by model J-02, and the movie finds us at model J-03. Guess what's J for in these? ;)

"Archive" is slow-paced, and some might find it boring. For me it gave a sort of.. "serenity" feeling I'd say. I found the rhythm perfect - helped a lot by the technical part, which is flawless: both the sound, but mostly the visuals, meaning everything that gets into set decoration + VFX + cinematography + editing, where we have a frequent change between the lab setting and the natural environment. I've seen "Moon" more than 10 years ago, but I still remember enough to spot some similarity. Gavin Rothery - director and writer here was part of the art department ad "head of graphic design" there. And the visuals aren't the only resemblance, if we look at the whole idea of a SciFi movie with slow pacing, one actor, talking AI, and a final twist.

More than what's in common with "Moon", a core element from "Archive" comes clearly from some other place. The idea of "archive" as presented here is not new. I don't know for sure where this originates, but what we see in the movie is terribly close to the concept of "moratorium" in "Ubik". "Ubik" is a novel written by Philip K. Dick that appeared in 1969 - IMHO, or at least for my taste, the best SciFi novel ever written. The real significance of the word which is suspending something until a deadline was translated there pretty much as we have it here - a "moratorium" was a sort of a private bank keeping the conscience of the dead in cold-storage, available for communication until becoming exhausted with time. We don't have more from "Ubik" here ( although... but better no spoilers ;) ). The context is completely different, but since other movies (best example "Inception") took some stuff from there, it was hard to move over without noticing it. And it's not something bad, but I still hope to see an actual "Ubik" movie sometime :) Until then, small pieces are fine too...

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (maybe I'm a bit subjective, but I find the movie underrated - it's definitely better than "Ex Machina" at least)