A 31 year-old private detective in 21st century suburbia, Abe Applebaum’s glory days are behind him. When he was 13, Abe was a hot-shot kid sleuth who could crack any case brought to him by the members of his quaint little town. But then, his innocent, soda-guzzling secretary suddenly went missing, and his failure to identify the culprit disappointed everyone, destroying Abe’s sense of self-worth and drive, and slowly turning him into the hard-boiled slacker millennial he is today. The film begins in earnest when an opportunity for redemption presents itself: one day, a sweet blonde teenager (a winning Sophie Nélisse) hires Abe to find out who murdered her boyfriend—finally, someone trusting him to solve something more complex, more “adult,” than where a lady’s lost cat might have run off to. As Abe unravels the mystery, the film’s tone proves to be wide-ranging: it starts with light comedy that’s dryly and genuinely funny, but takes a sharp right turn into much grimmer territory for the final act. Morgan’s visual aesthetic is quite run-of-the-mill, which tempers my enthusiasm for the movie overall, but I was charmed by the performances and amused by Morgan’s sense of humor. The great last shot is minorly crushing: proving your value to everyone else doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve figured anything out for yourself.
A Glitch in the Matrix takes audiences on a journey through science and philosophy to examine the theory that humans live in a simulation and the world as people know it is not real. It is a documentary style animated horror and composer Jonathan Snipes emulated the theme of the film into the score. Jonathan was inspired by 90s electronic beats and used those throughout the music. Beyond being the composer on this film, Jonathan also held the role of sound designer, sound supervisor, and re-recording mixer. Jonathan is also a longtime collaborator of Hamilton and Blindspotting star Daveed Diggs, through their freestyle rap group Clipping, and produced other Daveed tracks including Rappin Ced in the credits and album of Pixar’s Soul and Disney’s Puppy for Hannukah song. Alongside his work in film, he also works extensively as a theater sound designer, especially in Los Angeles’ Geffen theater. He also teaches a course on sound design in UCLA’s theater department.
A Glitch in the Matrix starts off by examining an idea that’s been bandied about for years and viewed with varying amounts of skepticism: what if we live in a simulation à la The Matrix? The film heavily features Philip K. Dick’s lecture in 1977 wherein he declares we are, in fact, living in a simulation, a weighty declaration from one of the foremost science-fiction oriented minds. Elon Musk and other bigwigs pop up with soundbites, but A Glitch in the Matrix focuses most of its time on ordinary people—some with families, some without; some with advanced degrees, some with high school diplomas—who happen to subscribe to this theory.
Director Rodney Ascher playfully obscures the faces of many interviewees with animated, mechanical masks, complete with creaking and scraping sound effects provided by sound designer and composer Jonathan Snipes that toe the line between diegetic and non-diegetic. (The film possesses a level of self-awareness that many within it do not.) We never get to see the expressions of those interviewed, but they lay bare their souls as they describe the metaphysical experiences that led them to believe in the simulation theory. Ascher rarely judges; he simply lets the speakers speak, often accompanied by extensive animations of their narratives and underlaid with appropriately eerie music, though there are moments when the viewers—and speakers—are brought back to reality. At one point, an interviewee’s dogs start barking, completely breaking the immersion and giving a much-needed moment of levity.
The first half of the film is interesting enough, if not that groundbreaking aside from the largely-animated style. The second half, however, examines a question I have not often seen brought up alongside the simulation theory: if we are in a simulation, then our actions should have no real consequences, and so what does that mean for our morality? How do we relate to other people?
Here, the film gets more intriguing and more harrowing, especially as we hear Joshua Cooke speak calmly of murdering his adoptive parents at the age of 19 while believing he was inside the Matrix. Yet many of the others interviewed, strange as it may sound, took the apparent lack of consequences in a simulated world and went in the opposite direction, wanting to “level up” for the person controlling them, concerned more with doing good than running amok. Several admissions turn out to be unexpectedly touching.
This is A Glitch in the Matrix at its best: engaging at a personal level with those interviewed, discussing the why over the what. Unfortunately, this is largely delegated to the back half of the film, but while we have to wait awhile before getting to the heart of the matter, it turns out that the heart, simulated or not, beats quite strongly.
With Portrait of A Lady on Fire (2019) as the gold standard, everything that’s come after it has seemed subpar. Fastvold’s second feature, The World to Come, isn’t bad; but it’s hard to ignore comparisons to its precursor Portrait, which shares similar themes. Although superior to the recently released Ammonite (2020), The World to Come suffers from the timing of having to follow up Sciamma’s masterpiece.
It’s a slow burn (which I adored) and an intimate portrayal of two women who are unhappy in their separate marriages. They find a sense of self, of love, and renewed purpose in each other. I most enjoyed the continued exploration of the female gaze. When I see and hear stories about women on film it is essential that I hear them from a woman’s perspective. This grounds the reality I see on screen with the reality I live.
Anchored by Waterston and Kirby’s performances, and captured vividly at times by André Chemetoff’s cinematography. The World to Come is a story of intimacy and loss that we don’t often see. Though it lacks the swooning magic that made me fall in love with Portrait of A Lady of Fire. It still manages to be a satisfactory addition to the frontier romance drama, even if it fails to be bigger than it’s individual moments.
The World to Come Trailer
The World to Come is currently scheduled to have a limited release February 12th 2021 and become available on March 2nd 2021 on VOD platforms.
