Reading time: 9 minutes
When do the ends justify the means? Are the final solutions, argued to serve a prospective welfare of the society, worth interfering into individuals’ personal lives and subjecting them to distress, and enormous emotional pressure?
In a psychological sci-fi thriller called “Foe” (starring irish actors Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal) the events take place in a farm, between the empty lands of our planet earth, in the near future, when and where natures resources are fully depleted, so our planet begins to die. The main character of the film is a married couple, Han and Junior, who recite in a remote farm, passed down to Junior through generations. Their lives get suddenly distorted once a man approaches their house and faces the two with an offer they literally can not refuse. The film itself is emotionally heavy and at the same time disturbingly confusing, many interactions, elicited inner states of the characters, their behaviors and gradual twists throughout the experience interfere with the audience’s minds by building expectations and preconceptions without ever really satisfying them. The movie ends with a startling plot-twist ( ! which will be spoiled and analyzed in this article ! ) that brings one to question the extent to which the scientific community would be willing to go in order to invent and discover.
The main concept of the film is A.I. on the periphery and the impact that it could potentially have emotionally on human beings; To provide and explain more about the main plot: A man who appears at the door of the couple’s house introduces himself as Terrance, a member of an aerospace corporation called OuterMore. Terrance announces that Junior (the husband) has been selected by the government to travel to the Installation, a large space station in orbit around Earth, where he would remain for about two years, before returning home. Junior is deeply in love with Hen (his wife) and thus is especially disturbed with the idea of leaving her alone. Terrance reassures him that while he is gone, he will be replaced by a biomechanical duplicate that will care for and accompany Hen. Junior is horrified at the idea of him being replaced with – a robot, however Terrance promises Junior that this biological duplicate of him will be crucial for his wife’s well-being in his absence and will function as a new form of self-determining life form, a continuity of an individual that exists and lives freely in domestic settings. Its creation is based on interviews conducted with the person being “replaced”, observations, psychological investigation of their mind, its dynamics, morals, beliefs, cognitive tendencies → emphasizing that gaining all possible details from junior would be – inconsequential in order to generate an authentic model.
Between the events and turning points during the film we navigate the couple’s marriage, their troubles, inconsistencies, which, with the interference of Terrance, amplify and begin to pressure both of them into extreme agony, distress and confusion. Since Junior is forced to separate from his wife and put under such emotional scrutiny, he starts experiencing different emotional states of deliberate dwelling and rumination about the future that is to come, while trying to figure out Hen’s odd behaviours, reasoning there’s something that she knows of but doesn’t reveal to him – the only person she is really predisposed to trust and open up to.
The rest of the storyline follows the processes of Juniors interventions conducted by Terrance revealing the deepest corners of his consciousness..
The Final Plot Twist
Was it all simply a configuration of tactical lies?
In the ending of the film it is revealed that the Junior we have been observing was the clone, the “replacement” all along. Towards the end of the movie the real Junior returns from the two-year expedition and finally meets Hen, but little did he know that his wife began catching feelings for the duplicate in his absence. Real Junior observes a scene of his wife Hen, trying to break through the security, in order to comfort the duplicate of Junior, who is being maltreated and basically distorted. The affection that Hen demonstrates here towards the clone of Junior stuns all the people present in the room including her real husband.
Before the entire experiment it is emphasized that Hen is unhappy with her marriage. In one of the dialogues between Terrance and Hen, she opens up about her doubts that her husband no longer saw and wanted to see the features and traits he fell in love with in the first place, her curiosity, desire for exploration, traveling, seeking out the new. She says that she quelled those very characteristics that were at some point, crucial for her persona, in the attempts to adapt to her husbands preferred way of living, giving up her music, without her spirit of discovery and the desire to live a different, vibrant life. Terrance promises Hen that the new Junior, his “replacement”, will be like his old authentic self, the person Hen fell in love with in the first place, the one that appreciated and loved all of her initial aspects;
So, as it is revealed, Hen rediscovers her strong feelings towards her husband in his arbitrary replacement. She derives emotional attachment to the creature which, as she feels, is more open and appreciative of her peculiar characteristics and values.
Why is this so?
The result of Hens’ prevailing preference is a direct explanation of how much explicit experiences can shape and influence our dispositional traits, attitudes and beliefs we hold about our lives and the people in it – this underlines how crucial of a role our experiences play in shaping our identities. In this case Junior’s duplicate was faced with the risk of losing the dearest person in his life, he felt her slowly drift further away from him, so he reprioritized his values and as a result reasoned that he’d rather give up on his selfish desires, than lose Hen and the relationship established between them, throughout the film he ruminates on their happy memories and therefore continuously tries to reapproach his wife who seemed alienated all along. It appears that in these attempts of breaking through to her, Hen recognizes his strong feelings and commitment towards her. Later on in a dialogue between real Junior and Hen, Junior disappointingly tells her that he expected loyalty, rather than her ending up experiencing feelings of love towards his “replacement”. Hen replies with words full of honesty: “I saw you in him, I saw what we’ve lost, It’s you that I fell in love with again.”
However, the real Junior is a different person, one that’s not willing to accept change for Hen, one that lived in the comfort of a stiff lifestyle, which was never sufficient for his wife. This is why Hen accepted the idea that her real husband would never become the man she loved and left the life she lived with him altogether.
“I’ve always had this fantasy that there’s something else out there for me.” “What do you think it would take?” “To leave? Courage. The courage to let everything go, follow what I feel, not be scared… to go somewhere where everything just doesn’t feel like it’s dying.”
The Ethical Question
Why was the simulation of Junior’s duplicate re-experiencing the events of leaving and the entire atrocious experience of conducting interventions important for the grounded plot?
This multilayered film appears to contain numerous messages and cues that contribute to its central theme. However, to me, the primary focus seems to be the creation of an artificial living organism through arbitrary means and the emotional distress it experiences throughout the process. The experiment of Junior’s testing seems to be a manipulative method designed to measure the extent of its success by eliciting reactions of disturbance and distress from the creation itself. This is particularly evident in scenes involving Terrance’s interventions, especially one where Junior reaches a state of such intense catharsis that he begins punching the wall with his bare hands, displaying self-destructive tendencies. In these moments, a grim yet satisfied expression often crosses Terrance’s face, emphasizing his contentment with the experiment and the unsettling realism of the artificial being.
Before executing fake Junior Terrance says to him: “There were other possibilities for how this part might go; We set out to create consciousness; To validate it through real human connection;
But we never imagined Hen would experience love… What you have both shown us here tonight is a gift to humanity.”
Terrance remarks that this unexpected scientific breakthrough of love between a human and a biomechanical duplicate will be written about for years. Pleased with his success he received the applause from the observers present in the room and left the distorted family behind.
The Question Remains
Was the entire experience worth the final success of the set intention, for the sake of scientific discovery?
It seems that the movie questions whether such creations and appliances of artificial creatures into our reality and everyday lives is an ethical solution to concerns that we have to deal with.
Now, I imagine how this could sound as provokingly unserious, given that such scenarios would be far from expected in real life, but given the circumstances of such rapid development and popularization of artificial intelligences and arbitrary cognitive living systems – along with our planet’s resources being regularly depleted, is this reality really that far from ours?
This movie measures and puts our reality into an interesting perspective, providing insight, rather proposing questions, on many crucial topics: how humans can unpredictably produce deep feelings and emotional attachment, how AI could potentially develop in the future, how the desire of scientific discovery can interfere into ordinary people’s private lives and most importantly the destructive consequences on individuals caused by unethical scientific procedures.
By Ana-maria Razmadze
anamaria.razadze01@icatt.it
A.P.E. 
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