A Glitch in the Matrix

The closing credits, featuring some of the names of the filmmakers juxtaposed on a cave wall, beneath the sound of a crackling fire, speak in a powerfully direct and simple way to the need for storytelling, which is long hardwired into mankind. So, is this director Rodney Ascher’s sly way of acknowledging that his latest film, A Glitch in the Matrix, is itself an exercise in flamboyant narrative indulgence, despite its nonfiction roots? If so, it’s perhaps too cute by half, but also emblematic of the fitful engagement of this intellectually playful yet ultimately frustrating documentary, which unfolds as a mixture of epistemological surveying and philosophical spitballing.