Archive

Archive
Starring Theo James, Stacy Martin, Rhona Mitra, Peter Ferdinando
Directed by Gavin Rothery

The concepts of creating something and giving it life, and bringing back the dead, has existed for as long as human history.  Everyone would love for a chance to reconnect with long lost loved ones, and inside most of us there's a god-like complex that wants to create a new life.  Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is a more modern-day blueprint of these ideas, but it's far from an isolated idea.  "Archive" takes this idea and propels it into the future (2038, to be exact), a film that touches on the subjects of life after death, resurrecting the dead, and crafting an artificial intelligence capable enough to house a human soul no longer on this earth.

George Almore (Theo James) is a scientist who lives in isolation in a white-walled palatial factory where he's been tasked to craft an artificial intelligence for his boss Simone (Rhona Mitra), but secretly he's been trying to craft a robotic body to house his deceased wife Jules' (Stacy Martin) soul.  He's tried two different times, resulting in "sisters" J1 and J2, where J1 is a lumbering, silent robot reminiscent of a child, and J2 is a speaking, more fully functioning artificial intelligence with his wife's voice, but has the mentality of a teenager.  For his third attempt, George managed to craft a human-looking robot he calls J3, and manages to achieve his goal of getting his wife's soul into the body, but J2 becomes jealous and sets out to sabotage his work, threatening to disconnect the link between the married couple.

"Archive" is an interesting film in that it touches upon the aforementioned themes of creating life and reconnecting with lost loved ones set against a sci-fi backdrop that adds a sense of excitement to it, but yet it also delves into the generic tropes of the male savior role and typecasting women as merely objects for men's affection.  George feels that he can resurrect his dead wife, and we see the former fruitless endeavors of his processes in J1 and J2, which oddly enough didn't even look anywhere near what a human being would look like, while J3 is his most perfect being, since it's crafted in a female form.  It also delves into the concept of the jealousy women have for one another, as J2 is insanely jealous of the attention and affection J3 is receiving from George, even though technically they're the same entity.

The film itself is very sanitized in its visuals, as it's pretty much entirely, literally white-washed.  The building is entirely white.  It's constantly snowing.  While it does add a palate of post-modern technology, it becomes rather bland and forgettable - I saw this film a few days ago, and almost forgot to write the review for it, and even now I'm having trouble recollecting most events that take place, save for the end, which in actuality does make the entire film worth it in its highly cerebral and well-thought-out twist, so the movie has that going for it, along with Theo James's strong performance, being basically the only humanoid actor in the film as he interacts with the robots around him, which were created with practical effects which I also appreciated, but ultimately turned into a film that, while I enjoyed at the time, I wouldn't want to watch again.

While offering a unique twist in the end, "Archive" fails to achieve anything extremely stellar, providing a decent outing for one viewing, but a film that becomes more and more forgettable as time passes by.

The Score: B+