Luca Guadagnino’s docudrama “Artificial” premiered at the New York Film Festival, chronicling the rise of OpenAI through Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of CEO Sam Altman and Yura Borisov’s performance as Ilya Sutskever amid corporate turmoil and industry ambition.
The fall movie season brings a sprawling, enthralling, brain-spinning drama about the creation of artificial intelligence. Directed by Luca Guadagnino with a script by Simon Rich, Artificial spans a two-decade chronicle of machine learning and technological heedlessness. The production follows the explosive trajectory of artificial intelligence from academic roots to high-stakes corporate dominance, capturing both the exhilaration of breakthrough discovery and the chilling realization of what ceding control to algorithms entails. “Artificialarrives with such capital-
I” importance in this moment of anxiety over artificial intelligence that there is a version of the film that could have soared on the strength of its message alone, craft be damned. Artificial appears as collective anxieties around an unrestricted AI arms race mount, joining a fall season packed with tech hubris: Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, his follow-up to the film about the beginning of Facebook, The Social Network. The subject matter could not be timelier, and the picture’s similarities to another cautionary tech drama, David Fincher’s The Social Network (and, indeed, Aaron Sorkin’s forthcoming The Social Reckoning) might also be a lure. Guadagnino has always been skilled in his choice of music, utilizing Damon Albarn. Across his filmography, a full-body sensuality gives his films a naughty pleasure, from Tilda Swinton in The Protagonists.
University Beginnings and the Genesis of Neural Networks
The narrative begins in 2003 at the University of Toronto, where a young Ilya Sutskever knocks on the door of British-Canadian computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton. Hinton’s pioneering work on artificial neural networks would later earn him a Nobel Prize. When we meet Ilya Sutskever, played by Yura Borisov, he is an eccentric, eager prodigy incapable of lying, whose passion for creating artificial superintelligence is only matched by his desire to create standing desks out of Pringles, toilet paper, and desk drawers. Humorist and former SNL writer Simon Rich’s clear-eyed, propulsive script starts right there in 2003, rooted in a genuine sense of discovery and curiosity. Professor Hinton eventually exits Google over a philosophical divide, later summing up what’s to come by stating that the question is not how this can go wrong, but how it could not.
“Have you ever considered the link between knowledge and patience?”
Geoffrey Hinton, via TheWrap
That early dynamic sets the intellectual foundation for the breakthrough work that follows. After an initial stint at Google where Sutskever grows frustrated by cautious development timelines, budding entrepreneur Sam Altman and investor Elon Musk recruit the brilliant researcher to join their new venture.
Garfield and Borisov Portray Silicon Valley Ambition
Andrew Garfield steps into the role of Sam Altman, delivering an unsettling and transformative performance that captures both disarming charm and underlying ruthlessness. Andrew Garfield is now in his early 40s, but when he lollops around with his rubber limbs flapping every which way and a happy-go-lucky smile plastered across his face, he is like a goofy Pied Piper trailed by enchanted tech bros. Whatever sorcery the makeup or effects department performs to put the glint of sociopathic madness in Garfield’s eyes, it works. Critics noted that Garfield plays Altman with an underlying petty rage, understanding that behind every reassurance is a crash out waiting to happen. Opposite him, Yura Borisov portrays Ilya Sutskever, bringing a brainy, tender, and deeply contemplative performance that lends an anchoring humanity to a film that might otherwise have curdled into sourness and despair. Additional cast members appearing in the film include Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati who becomes the company’s chief technology officer, Cooper Hoffman as OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Ike Barinholtz as an arrogant Elon Musk, Jason Schwartzman, alongside Chris O’Dowd.
The friction between Garfield’s calculating pragmatism and Borisov’s unshakeable idealism anchors the core conflict of the film. While Sutskever pushes for safety protocols and observes that AI may be slightly conscious, Altman dismisses the cautions. Armed with funding from Musk, Sutskever and Altman launch OpenAI. Musk hires AI engineering wiz Mira Murati at Tesla, while Altman brings Ilya into the fold with a sizeable investment stake. As the development accelerates past safety guardrails, Altman maintains that the future is inevitable now that they have opened Pandora’s box, spouting tech-speak about everyone being NPCs in a cosmic video game.
Neon Acquires the Film Following Amazon MGM Studios Exit
Behind the scenes, the film experienced its own real-world corporate drama before reaching audiences. It is easy to imagine the portrayal of Altman being a key reason Amazon MGM orphaned the film until Neon snapped it up, given the fraternity among tech billionaires. The $50 billion deal Amazon signed with OpenAI was likely the deciding factor. Neon ultimately closed a deal to handle international sales and distribution, setting a theatrical release date for December 25 in the United States, following festival screenings in New York and London.
Critics praised the atmospheric score and the meticulous recreation of tech culture, produced by David Heyman, Jeffrey Clifford, Luca Guadagnino, Jennifer Fox, and Simon Rich under Heyday Films and Frenesy Film Company. As audiences prepare for the nationwide rollout, the film asks difficult questions about power, control, ambition, and greed, leaving viewers to ponder whether the true artificiality lies inside the machines or within the boardroom.
