Marc Isaacs' new film Synthetic Sincerity is a curious, intriguing, semi-sincere affair that I couldn't make friends with. It is an odd, shallow piece of work about artificial intelligence that is itself exasperatingly artificial, a self-aware docudrama hybrid.
Premise and fictional setup
Isaacs is, or rather pretends to be, licensing the vivid characters from his previous, acclaimed documentaries to a fictional AI research lab called Synthetic Sincerity at the fictional University of Southern England, so that the lab's software can be 'trained' in the creation of AI human figures on screen. The lab's research staff are played by actors, or at any rate people acting; these include Lebanese independent film-maker Lynn El Safah.
AI avatar and digital face
Isaacs has amusing scripted conversations about this project with a disapproving AI avatar on screen, like Max Headroom of old, whose face is digitally modelled on Romanian actor Ilinca Manolache, from Radu Jude's Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. The film, however, does not show the process by which Manolache was approached and her face transformed into an AI figure.
Central subject: a Uyghur man
The supposed point of it all is to create an AI version of an exiled Uyghur man called Ablikim Rahman, who really does exist and runs a restaurant in London, on the ostensible grounds that the resulting AI figure will be able to say therapeutic things that the real person couldn't. 'Erm … really? Why couldn't he? It seems patronising to this dignified and intelligent man. But perhaps that is another fictional conceit,' the reviewer notes. Then we see the image of Rahman's face on screen, speaking candidly about his emotional challenges. So this is ostensibly an AI image, though it certainly seems a lot more real than the Manolache face.
Fictional conflict and political themes
El Safah then gets into made-up trouble with her made-up university employer for speaking to a Uyghur person when the university is so dependent on Chinese money, as well as for her anti-Israel views. Isaacs' work is much admired but I confess I found this unsatisfying and insubstantial.
Release details
Synthetic Sincerity is in UK and Irish cinemas from 17 July.
