"God created the first robot: man, the artificial god who dreamed of becoming a real god and created an artificial man." (Machine Dreams) This film is about man and machines, man as machine, and machine as man. Duchamp recognized it (in "The Bride Stripped Bare..."): man is married to the machine. Peter Krieg explores this marriage-its irrational, emotional roots as well as its historical evolution-in a filmic essay that is by turns frightening and fascinating, and always compelling. The relationship between man and his Doppleganger, the machine, has its mythical, even religious components; the more practical its applications, it seems, the more ominous, considering Jeremy Benton, the father of utilitarianism; or sinister, as described by the British sculptor Jim Whiting, with his machine-like men (or man-like machines) straight out of a Quay-Brothers animation. Early monasteries (man as mill) give way to American Marines, proud to be stripped bare of their egos. Then there is the benign Marvin Minsky, the "father of artificial intelligence." Krieg paints a picture of the machine as a projection of our inner wishes and fears: to fulfill the former, soothe the latter. How far has it come? Can technology ever replace the human brain? A truly intelligent machine, the film asserts, will have emotions. This is the machine that will say, "I am not a machine."