Almost halfway through Annihilation, <\/i>writer\/director Alex Garland\u2019s latest, strangest film, Tessa Thompson\u2019s Josie Radek is pulled into marshy waters by an alligator. Radek is part of a team of five scientists that has been sent to investigate a mysterious \u201cShimmer\u201d that has appeared somewhere in the U.S. Eventually, that alligator comes to shore, and after it\u2019s shot down by Radek and her colleagues, Natalie Portman\u2019s Lena, a biologist, decides to have a closer look.<\/span><\/p>\n Garland frames Lena\u2019s investigation from inside the gator\u2019s mouth, where she discovers that the creature\u2019s teeth closely resemble a shark’s. The gator seems to be in a continual state of evolution, and this evolution fascinates Lena. Despite the danger this creature so recently posed to Lena and her team, Portman\u2019s face betrays an undiminished interest in it. <\/span><\/p>\n Lena\u2019s fascination comes not just from a natural, scientific curiosity, but also from hurt and longing that go much deeper. As Garland\u2019s framing suggests, Lena could have been food for this creature. Even so, she wants to understand this place, one where her husband traveled before her, and returned seriously ill and transformed. Initially, Portman has the kind of steely resolve that suggests she wants nothing but revenge, but really she\u2019s looking for understanding. She wants to understand why her husband chose this path, one which almost certainly ended in death. <\/span><\/p>\n Alex Garland\u2019s filmography, stretching as far back as the screenplays he wrote for 28 Days Later <\/i>and Never Let Me Go<\/i>, has always suggested his interest in probing for answers to unknowable questions. Every one of his screenplays, and especially\u00a0Ex Machina <\/i>and Annihilation \u2014\u00a0<\/i>the two films he\u2019s directed \u2014 focus on characters who are fascinated and even obsessed with their own demise. <\/span><\/p>\n During one key scene, Lena reveals this obsession through her unwillingness to turn back toward safer ground. When half of the team wants to leave The Shimmer after they lose one of their own, Lena not only wants to continue with the mission, she lies to her comrades to convince them to come as well. Despite the apparent danger, Lena wants to go deeper. <\/span><\/p>\n Ex Machina<\/i>\u00a0follows another character who can\u2019t help but strive to learn more. Caleb, played with charming guilelessness by Domhnall Gleeson, is entranced by Ava (Alicia Vikander), an artificially intelligent android who feels as real to Caleb as any girl he\u2019s ever met. <\/span><\/p>\n Throughout the film, Caleb attempts to learn how Ava works. He gets close to her, wants to understand her, and is ultimately left behind by her. Caleb aids in Ava\u2019s escape, but that doesn\u2019t save him from being imprisoned at the film\u2019s end along with the body of Ava\u2019s abusive creator. She is the instrument of his demise. She is dangerous, and both Caleb and Ava\u2019s creator (played with bro-y malice by Oscar Isaac) are forced to reckon with the fact that Ava, and artificial intelligence more generally, is inevitable. What\u2019s more, it may mean the end of humanity as they know it. They know it\u2019s coming, and that it will mean their end, but they can\u2019t help but be transfixed by its approach. <\/span><\/p>\n What\u2019s radical about Garland\u2019s films is that the coming apocalypse, whether it\u2019s brought on by technology or something more natural, is not an inherently malicious force. It\u2019s not wiping out humanity because it hates humanity, it\u2019s just existing in ways that make humanity\u2019s survival unlikely. It\u2019s a driving, indifferent force. <\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s the thing that Garland\u2019s protagonists seem to find so compelling. They want to understand the forces that will bring about their own demise, and they come to find beauty in humanity\u2019s destruction. Garland uses these world-altering stakes to dissect the forces of change and death in our own lives. These characters don\u2019t just grapple with their own mortality. They embrace death, and try to ascribe a motive to its inevitability. <\/span><\/p>\n Annihilation\u2019s <\/i>stunning climax asserts the impossibility of understanding. As Lena encounters a being that seems determined to copy and replace her, she also comes to understand that, whatever this being is, its mission is not destructive, it\u2019s transformative. Although the title Annihilation <\/i>suggests total and complete destruction, that term is relative. Lena and her team may be gone, but The Shimmer has left something in their place. <\/span><\/p>\n In one of the final scenes of Annihilation, <\/i>Benedict Wong\u2019s Lomax, who has been grilling Lena on what happened in The Shimmer, asks her what the life form she encountered wanted. \u201cI don\u2019t think it wanted anything,\u201d Lena replies. Lomax is insistent that the creature must have wanted something, unwilling to accept the idea that there are forces that simply act<\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But Lena understands. It\u2019s what draws her toward The Shimmer in the first place. This is a force of change that isn\u2019t inherently destructive. It\u2019s equal parts horrific and beautiful, and Lena wants to understand it, intimately. Lena is driven by a yearning to comprehend, but her ultimate realization is that what she wants to understand is a force of nature. Like death itself, it has no agenda. It\u2019s simply an inevitability.<\/span><\/p>\n Support us by following us on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or liking us on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost halfway through Annihilation, writer\/director Alex Garland\u2019s latest, strangest film, Tessa Thompson\u2019s Josie Radek is pulled into marshy waters by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":528,"featured_media":8899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1400],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-on-the-marquee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/528"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n