This review by Brian and Charles was originally published in connection with the film’s debut at the 2022 Sundance International Film Festival. It was updated and re-released for the film’s theatrical debut.
One of the oldest questions in science fiction – already asked by Mary Shelley Frankenstein and only this year After Yang — asks, “If we create artificial life, what happens when it realizes its agency and looks beyond us?” The answer is often dark and foreboding, dissolving in the cruel manipulations of Bladerunner or the bloody revenge of Ex Machina. she presents a less violent but still melancholy vision of AIs quickly outstripping humans and meeting them with benevolent indifference.
The gentle 90-minute comedy Brian and Karl is different. For writers and actors David Earl and Chris Hayward, and director Jim Archer, who are adapting their 2017 short film of the same name, this drama of creator and creation plays out in whimsical banter and modest personal growth, and asks questions that are no less are important. but much more relatable.
Brian (played by Earl), a loner and hobbyist living amidst the desolate beauty of the Welsh hills, has – almost by accident – invented a robotic companion. Charles (Hayward) is 7 feet 4 inches tall and comically inelegant, with a washing machine for a torso topped with a strange mannequin head. Brian is enthusiastic about the company, especially after Charles taught himself English by reading a dictionary overnight. But he also instinctively keeps his creation a secret and forbids Brian to leave the house or meet other people. Eventually he relents enough to allow Charles to tour his garden. “Does the exterior stop at the tree?” asks Charles, with the halting diction of an automated phone line. Suddenly a flock of birds breaks into the air and flies away. Startled and uncomprehending, Charles turns and challenges Brian, “Can birds do what they want?” Brian doesn’t know how to answer.
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Photo: Will Davies/Focus Features
Before that moment, it’s not clear that the film is for anything but laughs. Brian and Karl begins as the sadness mockumentary that has been ubiquitous ever since The office debuted on British television in 2001. Archer later seems to forget the mockumentary build, but it’s a forgivable slip because by then the characters have taken over the film. As Brian, Earl shuffles through his muddy cottage and, in a throaty, nerdy voice, he talks to the camera about his useless inventions, like the “fishing nets for shoes” he attaches to his own feet. He’s little more than the blinded butt of a joke until he finds a mannequin head in a pile of rubbish. The staring triggers something in him: inspiration fueled by deep loneliness.
The robot he builds doesn’t work until it mysteriously comes to life one dark and stormy night – and so does the film. Charles is the heart and soul of the film. The cheapness and lewdness of his costume is a good source of clumsy slapstick and surreal visual humor, but there’s also something endearing about him, especially for British viewers, who might be reminded of the legendary eccentric by his stringy white hair, bow tie and lopsided gaze TV astronomer (and game master) Sir Patrick Moore. (Charles began life as a voice calling out on a radio phone show that Earl hosted in his role as Brian before Hayward built the costume himself for stage performances.) Hayward’s uncanny vocal performance infuses Charles with curiosity, naivety, stubbornness, and a blind loyalty of one child without interrupting the strange rhythm of the speech synthesis for a second. He is a touching creation.
It takes Brian longer to step out of the lonely comedian stereotype and focus. There’s nothing unconventional about the journey to self-esteem that Charles inevitably inspires in his maker. Brian and Karl follows reassuringly familiar feel-good beats, whether in Brian’s faltering romance with the equally shy Hazel (sherlock‘s Louise Brealey) or the mild danger conspiracy involving a local family of thugs. Archer adopts the unconventional, low-fi style common in indie cinema, but it’s clear he secretly likes to stick to the book.
However, the warmth and tenderness with which the film explores the relationship between Brian and his creation is genuine. At the end there are the philosophical questions of the filmmakers Brian and Karl are even older than those of Frankenstein, and as much for plain old parenting as for the AI singularity: what does it mean to take responsibility for another life? how does it change you And how do you ever give that responsibility back? Archer, Earl, and Hayward may not have original answers to these questions — they hold to messages like, “If you love something, set it free.” But the humble ambitions of those messages don’t make them untrue, and Brian and Karl delivers them with simple grace.
Brian and Karl Cinema debut on June 17th.
