If I make you a delicious sandwich, which you eat and think is delicious, then inform you that mixed in with 99% of bread, mustard, salami and cheese is 1% sh*t, then it was a sh*t sandwich. If you still think it was delicious after knowing that you’ve just eaten sh*t, you are insane, and if you are not mad at me for serving you a sh*t sandwich, then you are a fool. Now the Venice Film Festival has made the mistake of openly embracing AI, and is screening a ”movie” entirely made by AI (hopefully to empty rooms, but at least to audiences that won’t include me). But by choosing to open the festival with a film that notes its use of AI only in its end credits, the festival has made it clear, both to its professional audience and the cinemagoing public, that we’re going to be eating a lot of sh*t from now on. The fact that Ink has been made by formerly respected artist Danny Boyle, who has chosen to blow up his professional and personal integrity by using AI, is as big an insult to human talent that can be imagined. Let’s be clear: that’s an insult both the human talent that went into making the film as well as the humans in the audience. And how dare everyone involved serve up this sh*t and expect us to like it.
While I am at it: it has gone past a cliché into an insult when the lead female characters in historical biopics of famous men are fake women. Why yes, once again, in a movie featuring a sea of men whose life histories are public record, the only composite character is the biggest female one. Once again we have a group of male creatives – this time it’s screenwriter James Graham, who adapted his own play, and director Mr. Boyle – who have chosen to gloss over, ignore, minimise and erase the pig sexism of the times so modern audiences will still like the heroes. If this is the only way for your heroes to remain likeable, you should either find better ways of depicting them, or maybe better heroes.
And it is infuriating that this level of anger has to be directed at Ink. If it were not for its use of AI, even with its offensive and childish use of Jules (Claire Foy) as the only woman in the room, it would have deserved a genuine rave. Because – if it were not for that use of AI – it is otherwise an expertly made depiction of how Australian Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce, who is on a wonderful roll these days) and Yorkshireman Larry Lamb (a magnificent Jack O’Connell) joined forces in late 60s London to blow apart serious and educated journalism into the salacious non-stop tabloid gossip churn we now must live with. They were two working-class white men who, thanks to their backgrounds and accents, would never be allowed into the existing corridors of British power, so instead built their own. This would have been a rip-roaring tale of shifting journalistic ethics, revenge as a motivator, the underappreciated value of a good sense of humour, and how openly discussing and/or showing people’s secret desires is a great way to connect with the masses. We could maybe have ignored how the final plot twist minimises the furious chauvinism and gender essentialism that still so blights life in the UK. We could even wonder more about how much of this plays out the way it did as the result of a terrible (and still unresolved) crime. But all of Fin Oates’ brilliant editing, a rock-solid ensemble including Brian Gleeson, Patrick Kennedy, Blake Harrison and Bertie Carvel (who won both an Olivier and a Tony playing Murdoch in the stage version of the show), and the kind of propulsive atmosphere that covers a lot of sins is for nothing, because of that use of AI.
And what is that use of AI for? A brief image of the Kray twins, as a the punchline for a story Jules tells about Larry at a party, and a brief image of Margaret Thatcher, in a dream Larry has. That’s it. That’s for what Danny Boyle turned his wonderful movie into a piece of sh*t. He didn’t need to do this! He especially didn’t need to do this in a movie about how important it is for hypocrites to be held to account! And because the movie is otherwise so good there will probably be a lot of people telling you to overlook the 1% sh*t and enjoy the rest of the sandwich. But the simple fact is that you should not. So I cannot suggest you go see Ink, and I would also in fact pay close attention to the people who think you should. The very least we can do these days as more and more of this sh*t comes out is hold the hypocrites to account.
Ink recently played at the Venice Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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