Ink

TIFF Film #23

I want to get this out of the way. I do not condone generative AI in films. I saw this as part of the film festival, so I didn't have to pay for it. Going into the film, there was such a commotion about the use of generative AI that for some reason I was expecting it to be more obvious, but it's just randomly used in areas (apart from one larger scene), which I think is even worse.

Spoilers for ink, I guess, but it makes this ridiculous claim towards the end of the movie, similar to the ending scene in Babylon, that The Sun was the start of the devolution of culture, of people being able to have civil conversations, of sensationalising everything, and while I think that scene is bad in its own right, I think it's even worse with the context of the utilisation of generative AI in this film.

It feels like AI is kind of the next step in that evolution. This idea of disinformation and misinformation spreading all over the internet, it just feels incredibly backwards that Boyle would use this technology and then in his own words "leave it for young people to decide how to feel".

There are rats in the film that add nothing. They're like randomly used as scene transitions which have been confirmed to be AI. There is also a scene of a Margaret Thatcher, which is so glaringly AI, it's absurd, and what's more, adds nothing to the story. It is simply used in a little scene.

With the knowledge that AI was used in this film I did go into it viewing the film through a different lens. Suddenly, I'm trying to find AI. There's a lot of chaotic filmmaking, as is standard for Boyle movies. There are photographs and little animations, and part of my brain was always wondering: was this done with AI? Because some of it looks like it was. However, I'm not able to confirm that. It's just a feeling I have and that was a feeling I felt throughout the entire runtime.

However, even outside of all that, I don't think this is a particularly well-made film and part of me cynically wonders if the AI stuff was revealed so early on to have more people talking about the film. As I mentioned, the movie, like many Boyle movies, is hyper-stylised. There are Dutch angles, weird edits, and gross camera placements.

It's all really interesting, up to a point. It really immerses you in that chaos, but then the film forgets to have this chaotic filmmaking and settles into a fairly standard corporate biopic, a genre which we have had an exceedingly vast number of entries in. There's a single scene in the centre of the movie in the bullpen where all of the writers are contributing and talking about the revolution they want The Sun to be where I think the film locks in. It's on fire. The performances are great, the quippiness works. It's mining at something interesting with the intention of the sun before the thrill of increasing reader numbers took over that passion.

But I think the main issue with the movie is that the film fails to have a strong angle. It lets its lead characters, who, just to remind you, are Larry Lamb and Rupert Murdoch, off quite lightly. It's not a real interrogation of them as individuals. Lamb is motivated by growing The Sun and Murdoch is strangely positioned as condemning Lamb in areas, but that's about it. And considering the impact Rupert Murdoch has had on media and the thesis statement that this movie ends on, the film fails to capture the destruction that Murdoch had on media.

AI will likely be the talking point for this movie as it should be. There is nothing creative about using generative AI in filmmaking, but let it be known if the AI stories are the headlines and the film is the article. The article isn't much more of an interesting read.