Transcendence (2014) Review: Big Ideas, Cold Circuits

Is Transcendence worth watching?

It depends on what you want from science fiction. Transcendence is a good-looking, serious-minded film about artificial intelligence and grief that never quite turns its ideas into drama. Cinematographer-turned-director Wally Pfister gives it a polished, elegant surface and a cast with real pedigree. The problem is the centre: the story moves stiffly, the characters stay distant, and the tension that should build around a runaway machine intelligence mostly evaporates.

What is Transcendence about?

Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is a leading researcher in artificial intelligence, working with his wife and fellow scientist Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) towards a machine that could surpass the human mind. Their close friend Max (Paul Bettany) shares their field but not all their optimism. When a radical anti-technology group launches a wave of attacks on AI researchers and Will is left with only weeks to live, Evelyn attempts something unprecedented: uploading his consciousness into a computer.

What emerges on the screen speaks with Will’s voice and seems to hold his memories, but nobody can be sure what it really is, or what it wants. As its reach grows, an FBI agent (Cillian Murphy) and a veteran scientist (Morgan Freeman) begin to watch closely, and Kate Mara plays a key figure in the extremist movement.

Transcendence is an American film in English, directed by Pfister from a screenplay by Jack Paglen, and runs 119 minutes. It is rated PG-13 in the United States and 12A in the UK.

A cinematographer’s eye, a cautious storyteller

Pfister shot several of Christopher Nolan’s films, and his debut as a director shows it. The images are crisp and carefully composed, with a fondness for natural textures that plays against the story’s digital subject. Sunlight, water, dust and plants recur, a visual hint that this is a film about where technology and the organic world meet. Several desert sequences are genuinely striking.

The trouble is that elegance becomes inertia. Scenes are staged with the same measured calm whether the stakes are domestic or global, and the film seems reluctant to let anything feel messy or urgent. A story about an intelligence expanding beyond human control should build dread; here the pace stays so even that the escalation feels procedural.

The question at its heart, left hanging

The film’s most interesting idea is simple and human: if a person you love returns as a voice on a screen, is that still them? Rebecca Hall carries this thread, playing Evelyn’s hope and doubt with more nuance than the script gives her, and her scenes are the closest the film comes to real emotional force.

Johnny Depp, by contrast, is oddly muted. His Will is mild and remote even before the upload, which leaves little sense of who was lost and makes the uncertainty about the machine less charged. Paul Bettany does thoughtful work as the friend with doubts, but Cillian Murphy and Morgan Freeman are given little to do beyond observing and explaining. The film raises questions about privacy, surveillance, extremism and the promise of technology to heal, then treats most of them as set dressing rather than drama.

Where it still earns some credit

For all its faults, Transcendence is not a lazy film. It takes its central premise seriously, avoids easy action-movie resolutions, and tries to hold competing sympathies for the scientists and the people who fear them. Viewers who enjoy science fiction that talks about ideas rather than blowing them up may find it more rewarding than its cool reception suggests.

Who should watch Transcendence?

It suits patient viewers interested in artificial intelligence stories, admirers of Pfister’s work as a cinematographer and fans of the cast who are curious about a film that divided audiences. Anyone expecting a propulsive thriller in the Nolan mould will likely be disappointed. Content is moderate, with some gun violence, injury and peril but little gore, in line with its PG-13 certificate.

If you want something related:

• Gone Girl, another 2014 thriller built on the unsettling question of whether you really know your spouse, handled with far more bite.
• Shutter Island, for a big-studio mystery about minds and memories that commits much harder to its atmosphere.
• More titles on the science fiction shelf, where sharper artificial intelligence stories are easy to find.

The verdict

Transcendence is handsome, earnest and frustratingly inert, a thoughtful premise in search of a pulse. Rebecca Hall and the visuals give it some value for science fiction devotees, but it never delivers the unease its subject promises.

Rating: 3/5