Review: A Glitch in the Matrix – “A fascinating discussion”

Directed by Rodney Ascher

Dogwoof continues their run of some damned fine documentaries (I particularly enjoyed their Making Waves: the Art of Cinematic Sound), this time with acclaimed documentary director Rodney Ascher, who, among others, previously brought us the excellent Kubrick doc, Room 237, bringing us A Glitch in the Matrix, which arrives with some good word of mouth at the Sundance film fest. The question of what is real – can we actually trust what our senses are telling our brain about the world around us? – is an old philosophical argument, one that, like the debate over whether humans possess free will or of everything is pre-determined (either by a deity or by the nature of the space-time universe itself), has fascinated, and often confused and infuriated, people for millennia.

Simulation Theory posits the possibility that the world we see around us and everything in it, from rocks to people, are all just some form of digital simulation, the “reality” we experience is essentially a deeply immersive virtual reality. Our entire civilisation and its history could be a simulation running on a very advanced computer system by researchers from a technologically superior species (or even our own species in the far future) using it to study history, human behaviour, different possible outcomes in that history, much in the same way we use mathematical and computational modelling to study, predict and test theories.

The film starts with two influential strands which have long fed into this discussion – the cave thought experiment by Classical philosopher Plato (people who are kept in a cave facing only the back wall know the world beyond only by the shadows it casts on their wall) and, unsurprisingly, the great Philip K. Dick, returning several times to a talk this fascinating and influential author gave at a convention in the 1970s, while also drawing on contemporary influences, both academic and cultural (as you would imagine, The Matrix features a lot here as both an example of a simulated reality and also as the cultural artefact which brought the basic concept of Simulation Theory to a far wider audience).

Peppered throughout these academic asides and numerous relevant movie clips to illustrate points and make examples clearer there are, as you would expect in a documentary, a number of talking heads adding their voices and viewpoints. In a nice move, Ascher uses normal video viewpoints for some of these contributors, but for the ones who are actual believers in Simulation Theory, rather appropriately, Ascher uses digital avatars for each of them. This fits the feel of the film very well, in addition to giving the documentary an added bit of visual flair, and it soon comes to feel quite normal when those contributors are talking.

Those speakers who are believers outline the experiences in their lives which lead to embracing that belief, although most are quite moderate about it – as one notes, he thinks he may well be in a simulation, while acknowledging that the world could still be the flesh and blood reality most people take it for, but adds whichever it is, it’s his life and he doesn’t let that belief get in the way of enjoying his day to day life. Others get a bit more concerned – what if it isn’t just a scientific simulation, what if we’re in some sort of Sims style game? What if we’re not being studied by an advanced academic but at the mercy of the super-intelligent version of a teenaged gamer? How does this impact how you view life, value your life, friendships, family?

It’s a fascinating discussion, one we can probably never entirely prove or disprove, but an interesting topic to explore nonetheless, and Ascher handles it very well, with a good range of contributors (including one believer who was so traumatised by his belief that he was in a Matrix style artificial reality that none of the loved ones around him were real and so he committed a terrible action), and it boasts some clever use of appropriate film clips and visual flair to add to the interest level. To coin the old Vulcan phrase, it is “fascinating”.

A Glitch in the Matrix is out now from Dogwoof, on HD Digital, DVD and Blu-Ray.