The Animatrix: Beyond

Beyond is, hands down, the best of the Animatrix shorts, a simple story about a woman who explores a "haunted" house in search of her missing cat. It's a bit difficult to understand if you haven't seen The Matrix Reloaded, but it does address one point that was made in that movie that I had hoped they would go into in more detail, namely ghosts, vampires, werewolves and other paranormal phenomena being entirely the result of a glitch in the Matrix. Beyond is a haunting piece reminiscent of the "Labyrinth" segment of Neo-Tokyo, an obscure anthology of anime shorts by Rin Taro (Metropolis), Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll) and Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira).

I'm not a rabid fan of The Matrix (too many logistical flaws), though I have seen the two live action movies and plan on seeing the third (though I have to wonder why it is that so many movies lately are transition movies--Star Wars Episode 2, Matrix 2, X-2, etc).

My main reason for purchasing the Animatrix was that I am an animation lover, and not just of Disney or anime. I love Looney tunes, peanuts, Max Fleisher, Watership Down, Ralph Bakshi, Fantastic Planet, Wallace and Gromitt, Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Simpsons, etc. You get the picture. Of these nine stories, I can only say I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Not only is it beautifully animated, it has an imagination that rivals Miyazaki's. "Beyond" adds to the matrix mythology the essential element that it has been missing from the beginning: humanity in concrete terms. Unlike most of the rest, including the live action movies, it doesn't *talk* about what it's like to be human, because the characters are too busy being humans. It isn't about the mumbo jumbo of freeing one's mind to escape this seeming prison; instead, it shows someone, raised to believe the prison is not a prison, and she reacts realistically to it. Unlike the movies, it creates the sense that the people aren't automatons and are worth saving. (Not to take it too seriously, but just think of how many people they waste in all those shooting sprees--what, are they not worthy? Just because they don't buy into Morpheus' truth? Shouldn't they, ethically, knowing how these people will react to them, try to avoid conflicts with the caged humans, or at least attempt to use less-than lethal force? After all, is someone still a hero if they have to become the villain to save the world?).

The only real problem with Beyond is that it depicts animals as being as real as the humans (they're not, remember the deja-vu scene). But then, with the ending of Matrix Reloaded, perhaps there will be answers to this in Matrix Revolutions.

9/10. Seriously. You should see this even if you hate the matrix.

Most everyone I've talked to feels this was by far the most moving of the Animatrix shorts. I wholeheartedly agree, but I wasn't sure why at first. I think I've figured it out.

We all have those beautiful moments in life that surprise us, overwhelm us, and then just disappear. The problem is that we as humans can't really communicate experiences with each other. The best we can usually do is vaguely explain the circumstances of an experience and hope to trigger memories of that experience in someone else. It still only works if the person has already had the experience. If someone tells me about their first love, I can only understand it by remembering how I felt during mine. If someone explains what it's like to be abused as a child, I really can't relate no matter how well it's described.

There is, however, a good trick that can be used to convey feelings. Use a fictional but literal description that should provoke the same feeling. For example, to describe heartbreak, I may say it felt like someone ripped my heart out and kicked it into a trash can. Hopefully, you can imagine this literally happening to you and end up with the same feeling as I have.

This is what "Beyond" does. It describes what it feels like to experience beautiful human moments without requiring very specific empathy. Sometimes, with the way they make us feel, the moments we experience might as well be glitches in a perfectly running computer program that we bumble into and are deleted from under us just as quickly. Even an alien who only vaguely feels awe and wonder at the possibility of physics breaking down elegantly for a short time could understand the excitement, awe, and sadness that a human feels every few years, if one is so lucky.

A young girl, Yoko, sets out food for her cat but gets worried when the pet doesn't show up at the usual time. Asking around the neighbourhood, she finds a group of kids who say they saw the cat over by a building they know as `the haunted house'. She goes over to see if she can find her cat but finds much stranger things than she expected.

Part of the series of animations making up the Matrix companion piece `The Animatrix', I saw this as a stand alone piece recently at a festival of shorts and animations and was drawn in by where it was going even if it was a bit strange and seemed unlikely in what I knew of the matrix universe. As the house gave up it's secrets, the short seemed more and more unlikely and it lost me a little bit.

The animation is pretty good but lacks the heavily stylised feel that some of the others of the series have. That is not necessarily a bad thing but it needed more in the way of substance to make it work. The feel at the start is good as it uses music and an observational atmosphere to good effect but I never bought into the plot and it didn't really go anywhere of interest that added to the universe of the matrix.

Overall this starts well but goes nowhere. Those who love the first film of the trilogy may also find the central premise rather hard to accept.

Unlike the other Matrix films and short films which seemed dismal and nihilistic, this short film has a very bright and lively feel to it. The characters are very human and expressive rather than stiff and wordy like they can be in the other films. The story is told through emotion and wonder, and it works.