“I’m Your Man,” the sci-fi romance that has been selected as Germany’s contender in the Best International Film category at the Academy Awards, is the latest film playing with the idea of falling in love with androids that feel way too human. The film’s star: “Downton Abbey”Dan Stevens is an alumnus of that university. “becoming human”His character evolution was one small step at a moment.
Maria Schrader, Stevens, and Steve Pond spoke to Steve Pond about their film. The film follows Tom (an android) who spends three weeks living with Alma (Maren Easterert), an archeologist, who agrees that Tom’s behavior can be replicated in return for funding. However, Alma’s attempts to distance herself from Tom begin to fade.
Tom’s process of becoming more human was built by Schrader and Stevens over the course of filming, as they had an idea of the AI’s arc. They left the details to the camera roll, but they did not get into the finer points.
“We were always asking ourselves: Is it good for the movie to always remind the audience that he is not human or make it easy to forget it?” Schrader said. “We provided ourselves with all possibilities. With every scene and every take, we were adding or reducing the robotic feel of the character. We worked on separating language and physical action or delaying action to show the algorithm making its choice.”
Stevens was forced to take each scene apart, breaking down every detail to determine which scenes were different from what would be expected in a romantic movie. Although Tom is a kind, selfless and compassionate person that Alma would love to spend her entire life with, his behavior doesn’t escape the uncanny valley.
“Every scene starts on one track and you think ‘This is a recognizable scenario,’ but because Tom is involved, it takes a left turn,” Stevens said. “And for me, that’s where a lot of the fun and the delight of playing him came from.”
“Every scene became an exercise for Tom, asking, ‘What does Alma want? And how can I provide that for her?’”He concluded. “He’s trying to read every scene…and break down exactly what she would want him to be performing in each situation. So it was fun to come into each scene and ask, ‘OK, what are we doing today?’”
The video below shows the complete interview with Maria Schrader & Dan Stevens.