A Glitch in the Matrix

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🎙️ EPISODE 419: 03.11.22 The following is a part of the RODNEY ASCHER director focus series Like with his second film The Nightmare , Rodney Ascher transforms standard documentary interview segments with reenactments (digitally animated here, however), and — for the most part — eschews the typical "excerpt analysis," unless you count Elon Musk (which you should not) and Niklas Boström (which you should). The interview subjects here are presented in "avatar form" which is exactly what it sounds like: the people have been rendered as Roger Rabbit-style cartoons inhabiting real world spaces that look like this:

It's incredibly goofy and took me some time to get used to. Overall, while this isn't a bad or boring film, it's easily the least appealing of Ascher's four. This has less to do with his choices, however, and more to do with the subject itself: simulation hypothesis, a fascinating concept that would/will make for the best stoner discussion you maybe never wished you wanted to have, but ultimately too vague a topic to helm a successful documentary out of. Like examining the root system of a giant tree, there are more paths to follow down individually than 100 minutes of screen time allow. This, in an of itself, is somewhat indicative of what exactly simulation is or might be, conceptually, but in the end I don't think I really personally care about the time an orange cartoon lion-solider got into a car crash in Mexico.

One of the more successful, if not most harrowing digression relays the story of Joshua Cooke who murdered his parents and subsequently attempted to invoke the controversial Matrix defense in court. This segment, narrated by Cooke himself, over the phone from prison, and animated in a video game style provided some much needed real world balance to this wild notion, positing: sure, maybe the ideas in The Matrix are real, but we should probably not go around killing people just in case they aren't. Like so much in this life, we'll simply never know.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 418 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 420 ⫸

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A Glitch in the Matrix is a 2021 American multimedia exploration of simulation hypothesis documentary film directed by Rodney Ascher which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was released on February 5, 2021.