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System of Units: A Review

System of Units (2004) is a family sci-fi short film (I’m going by the Indieflix description) set in the future.

The movie begins with a narrator explaining that, after many years of struggle with man, there is a solution to making people connect. In the future, people are stationed at strange lantern-like objects which their brains are connected to. They don’t communicate vocally; conversation takes place through voice chatting via brain waves. (They also seem to dress in robes that look very Islamic, and live in an underground village.)

One man, Messing, is interested in a woman he works with. Messing seems too nervous to join his friends in a social gathering, so he flees. After riding a transport shuttle and crawling into a secret entrance, Messing comes to the surface, where he encounters humans unlike him and explores foreign substances from the past.

When Messing gets home and chats with his friends, he feels a more personal connection with the girl from his workplace. He wants to connect to her like people used to do in the past. As he dreams about this girl, he tries to ponder how they would speak with their real voices instead of with telepathy.

Messing eventually meets up with his friends at a restaurant and his crush, Maritza, happens to be there. (She speaks Spanish though.) Messing tries to communicate with Maritza until suddenly the system finds out he has violated multiple codes. Finally Messing realizes what he must do. However it might be the biggest risk he’ll ever take in his life.

The effects for this movie are pretty cool and it also shows a stunning story about how sometimes radicals will take risks to defy the rules of whoever’s in charge. The ending is just perfect as well, as it really gets emotional at the end, setting the tone just right. It’s also  a perfect metaphor that really applies to people today who barely talk to each other and are wrapped up in social media.

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