{"id":168019,"date":"2021-02-01T19:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T16:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/a-glitch-in-the-matrix-review-sundance-2021-film\/"},"modified":"2021-02-01T19:00:13","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T16:00:13","slug":"a-glitch-in-the-matrix-review-sundance-2021-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/a-glitch-in-the-matrix-review-sundance-2021-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#A Glitch in the Matrix Review [Sundance 2021] \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#A Glitch in the Matrix Review [Sundance 2021] \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Rodney Ascher<\/strong> is still best known as the filmmaker behind the enthralling 2012 documentary Room 237<\/em>, a deep dive into several unconventional readings of Stanley Kubrick\u2019s The Shining<\/em>\u00a0that ended up being a movie about obsession. He\u2019s directed a few other projects since then, but now he\u2019s back to explore that same topic from a different perspective with A Glitch in the Matrix<\/strong><\/em>, a film which delves into the long-held theory that we\u2019re all living in a simulation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From the very first frame, Ascher establishes that this is not going to be a traditional experience. The opening shot is of a mechanized lion warrior staring into a webcam from a normal-looking home office; it\u2019s a digital costume, an avatar \u201cworn\u201d by his first interviewee. Throughout the movie, the director speaks with several different digital avatars (one looks like an alien wearing a fishbowl helmet, one looks like a horse with laser eyes), disguising the true app<\/a>earance of what he calls \u201ceyewitnesses\u201d \u2013 people who share the moments when they woke up to what they perceive to be the real truth of this world: that none of what we\u2019re living in is actually \u201creal\u201d and the whole thing is a simulation. Ascher reenacts their moments of awakening by using purposefully janky computer generated animation that often looks like something out of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest<\/em>, a technique which keeps the viewer at a healthy emotional distance from what\u2019s on display.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just a bunch of oddballs who have this theory: the film points out that the Greek philosopher Plato was pondering this possibility thousands of years ago. The movie frequently incorporates excerpts from a 1977 lecture by science<\/a> fiction author Philip K. Dick<\/strong> (Blade Runner<\/em>, Minority Report<\/em>, Total Recall<\/em>), who was a fervent believer in the idea, and features archival footage with people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson<\/strong> and Elon Musk<\/strong> who have entertained the notion as well. Ascher also speaks with experts of his own, writers and scientists who hew less toward new age-y anecdotes and toward a more academic approach.
\nAs in Room 237<\/em>, Ascher never really seems like he\u2019s trying to put his finger on the scale and convince the audience that any one of these experiences is the \u201cright\u201d one. Instead, the movie feels more like he\u2019s just fascinated in the subject and we\u2019re taking a journey with him, learning as much about it as possible in a condensed time period. The sheer scope of ideas he touches on here is dizzying: the concept of fragmented memories from alternate realities, the steadily-improving quality of computer generated photorealism, the Mandela effect, the nihilism that can arise if you subscribe to the simulation theory, the intersection of religion and technology<\/a>, and much more.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all entertaining enough on the surface, but I couldn\u2019t help but shake the feeling that this just does not feel like the right time for a movie like this, considering how conspiracy theories have been mainstreamed over the past couple of years and have seeped into our world in increasingly dangerous ways.<\/p>\n

And I had that thought before I reached the film\u2019s most disturbing segment: a very lengthy section in which Ascher interviews a man who was an devotee of the 1999 movie The Matrix<\/em>, outfitted himself in a black trench coat like Neo, and murdered both of his parents with a shotgun. Ascher\u2019s CG recreations put us inside the killer\u2019s virtual house while the murderer, from a prison phone, tries to explain his actions. It\u2019s deeply disturbing, not only because of the violent nature of his descriptions and the movie\u2019s insistence on plunging you into a visual representation of his world, but because he seems to shift the blame to\u00a0The Matrix<\/em> itself and the music he was listening to at the time (the Drowning Pool song \u201cBodies,\u201d known for its repeating line \u201clet the bodies hit the floor\u201d).<\/p>\n

It turns out there\u2019s a reason for Ascher spending all this time on this segment: it was to lay out the history for something called \u201cThe Matrix<\/em> defense,\u201d a branch of the insanity plea and a legal gambit that\u2019s been used by several people since 2003, including the DC sniper. But this segment left a bad taste in my mouth, and it negatively colors the whole rest of the movie, giving me the sense that Ascher primarily sees violent video game<\/a>s as a potential gateway to real-world violence. That\u2019s a complex topic that the film simply doesn\u2019t have time to properly explore. One of his experts rightly draws a line between the culture of live-streaming and the New Zealand shooter who live-streamed his massacre as if it was a game, and there\u2019s some time devoted to a gamer who stole a plane in 2018 and flew it around the skies of Seattle before crashing. But \u2013 and not to go full \u201cNot All Gamers\u201d on you, because that mentality has its own share of problems \u2013 the movie doesn\u2019t acknowledge the disproportionate number of people who play violent games and\u00a0don\u2019t <\/em>subsequently\u00a0commit crimes. It seems content to absolve individuals of their responsibility by pointing a finger at games and music as a way to justify those behaviors. Again, this is a thorny topic that could serve as the subject of its own feature-length documentary, but the half-baked nature of how it\u2019s treated here feels like it does more harm than good to this particular story.<\/p>\n

A Glitch in the Matrix<\/em> is more than just a conspiracy theory movie: it\u2019s about how we function in a societal system, how we interact with other people, and what happens when we embrace a worldview which seemingly offers answers to things in life that don\u2019t make sense to us. But the movie stumbles over its muddled execution of some of those ideas, and as a result, can\u2019t help but feel like a letdown.
\n\/Film Rating: 4 out of 10<\/strong><\/p>\n

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“#A Glitch in the Matrix Review [Sundance 2021] \u2013 \/Film” Rodney Ascher is still best known as the filmmaker behind the enthralling 2012 documentary Room 237, a deep dive into several unconventional readings of Stanley Kubrick\u2019s The Shining\u00a0that ended up being a movie about obsession. He\u2019s directed a few other projects since then, but now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":168020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/A-Glitch-in-the-Matrix-review.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1568,86758,5622,1570,10027,7598,86759,29332],"class_list":["post-168019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-featured-stories-sidebar","tag-a-glitch-in-the-matrix","tag-documentary","tag-features","tag-magnolia","tag-movie-reviews","tag-rodney-ascher","tag-sundance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}