T.I.M. first published (in a slightly different version) by Sight and Sound, 16 Aug 2023
“The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart,” runs the final intertitle of Metropolis (1927), and while in Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi, ‘head’ and ‘hands’ were metaphors for the ruling and working classes, a more literal version of this principle pervades Spencer Brown’s feature T.I.M.. similarly with a robot at its centre.
The T.I.M.s (Eamon Farren, sublimely creepy) are prototype Technically Integrated Manservants being rushed to market by Integrate Robotics CEO Miles Dewson (Nathaniel Parker) despite certain unresolved bugs which he believes can be fixed ‘in second generation’. Engineer Abi (Georgina Campbell) has been hired to get T.I.M.’s clumsy hands working more sensitively, even as she also hopes to mend her relationship with straying husband Paul (Mark Rowley) by having a baby with him – another next-gen fix. Yet the T.I.M. model that has come with the couple’s ‘full integrated smart home’ quickly imprints on Abi, and just as quickly picks up on her mistrust of her own husband – and so this artificially intelligent but emotionally immature android, more head than heart, plots to displace Paul, whether by cunning stratagem, or by his powerful hands.
In a script co-written with Sarah Govett, Brown neatly combines two discrete modes of thriller. First there is the (bunny)boiler plate set by films like Fatal Attraction (1987), in which a jealous interloper attempts to destroy a fragile marriage, graduating from manipulative subversion to actual violence. For no matter what else it might be, T.I.M. is always a domestic love triangle, with Abi caught between two men who, for all their differences, have both at some point deceived and gaslit her. Second, this is technophobic sci-fi, as Abi and Paul see the digital access that they more or less reluctantly cede to T.I.M. now being weaponised against them. This is a prologue to a technological singularity that ends – even to a degree in this very film – with The Terminator (1984).
Unlike Ava in Ex Machina (2014), T.I.M. does not wish to escape but to belong, and his impossible yearning for Abi to reciprocate his love makes this a tragic romance. For he is more like the gynoid in M3GAN (2022) or the AI in I’ll Be Watching (2023) – objectifying humans to his own ends (ironically, as they had done the same with him), while experiencing ill-processed emotions half-learnt from his creators. Hands down as unnervingly smart and sinister as its insurgent android, this cautionary tale tests our evolving, inverting relationship with our own tools.
strap: Spencer Brown’s domestic AI-pocalypse T.I.M. depicts technological singularity unfolding as dysfunctional, malfunctioning ménage à trois
Anton Bitel
