My Robot Sophia

I thought it was 89 minutes of deeply uncomfortable, viscerally infuriating cinema, like a real-life version of an Alex Garland movie, and I appreciated how effectively the synthetic tale got under my very real skin.

It’s the hall of illusions Hanson projects that can often make this unnerving character portrait by Jon Kasbe (“When Lambs Become Lions”) and Crystal Moselle (“Skate Kitchen” and “Betty”) so enthralling, yet so disappointing.

The documentary begs the question: what is life? What quantifies an existence? Do science, medicine, poetry, emotions, and reproduction give us our humanity, or is it something else?

Both Sophia the documentary–as well as Sophia the most realistic humanoid robot in the world–will provoke deep questions about what it means to be human.

As an examination of the limits of our anthropomorphic leanings it's hard not to find yourself rooting for Sophia to gain sentience, or at least maybe just stop getting that wig snatched off and shoved into a suitcase so often

Moselle continues to refine and rework her narrative nonfiction approach to storytelling. Sophia, then, proves to be her most assured and cogent film, though with the unfortunate though not fatal side effect of also being her most staid.

Like when opening the suitcases that contain the robot, there’s a lot to unpack in Sophia.

“Sophia” is filled with the grandeur that Hanson’s big idea demands, but illuminates the constraints of what [its subject David] Hanson and his small team are capable of.