MOVIE REVIEW

A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX

Not Rated. On Amazon Prime, Hulu, Google Play and more.

Grade: A-

Is there a more perfect film for this moment in our collective madness than A Glitch in the Matrix, a non-fiction effort that suggests we live in a computer simulation? Taking his point of view from the conspiracy theorists hit parade of movies, namely The Matrix films, as well as John Carpenters visionary, Reagan-era, paranoid fantasy They Live and a few others, documentary filmmaker Rodney Ascher of Room 237 fame, has forged a parable for these inmates-are-running-the-asylum times. The film tells us that we and our world are not real, that we are all codes in a supercomputer video game.

Cue Philip K. Dick, right? Well, that is exactly what Ascher does by showing us real footage from a 1977 convention in Metz, France, where the prophet of paranoia and author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Man in the High Castle reads from a paper hes written about the revelations he has had concerning the nature of existence. Three of the young-ish men interviewed for the film appear for some reason dressed in animated cosplay masks and outfits perhaps their video-game avatars? to talk about their revelations and suspicions concerning simulation theory.

The film comprises on-camera interviews, computer-generated images, film clips, many of them from the The Matrix and its sequels and archival footage. One of the interviewees is obsessed with synchronicities, which some might label coincidences. Another spends his time re-creating art by Moebius aka Jean Giraud, substituting characters from Peanuts for those of Giraud. Of course, a film about being inside a computer simulation must have a cameo or two by Elon Musk, and so we have them. Dick, whose work has inspired dozens of TV shows and films, recalls a flood of alternate memories he experienced sparked by a 1974 shot of sodium pentothal. Ascher uses computer-generated imagery to illustrate a terrifying childhood memory of one of his speakers.

One of the clips used in A Glitch in the Matrix is from the 1903 tinted French silent film The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ by Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet. Are we all in Gods video game? We hear of Descartes demon, Platos Allegory of the Cave, Hindu myths and Avatar because, obviously. In case we forget how mad these times are, we are reminded how the 2019 New Zealand mass murderer live-streamed his killings on major platforms. First, there was the Taxi Driver defense. Now, we have the Matrix defense, which the lawyer for one of the speakers, who put on his black trench coat and killed his parents with a shotgun, invoked unsuccessfully.

Awaken, Neo. The Glitch in the Matrix is eerily now.

(A Glitch in the Matrix contains disturbing images.)

Originally posted here:

Is this real life? Glitch in the Matrix has its doubts - Boston Herald