SHORT REVIEW | System of Units, by Richie Mehta

SYSTEM OF UNITS (2004, short, IndieFlix, runtime: 22 mins., director: Richie Mehta)

“In an online world, people have forgotten how to connect…”

System of Units opens with this convincing post-apocalyptic premise. The world’s gone totally virtual, with nary a moment to waste. Human beings are connected exclusively via the Net-Work (yes, written just like that!) and even the merest of muscular exertions, like fashioning words into sentences in one’s mouth, is an extraneous chore which been cleverly evolved out of our bipedal species. Human touch has been rendered non-existent, peoples’ emotions and passions have been outlawed, and human sympathy is a fossilized relic of a now-forgotten bygone era.

The short’s characters now live in pod-like dwellings below ground. They are forbidden from going Topside by the Net-Work, even though rumors abound of the fate of those denizens who dared to defy the omnipresent Net-Work by wending their way through the labyrinthine tunnels and back channels leading towards the surface. While there, they would be relentlessly dogged by the Net-Work’s minions and summarily assassinated, all for the simple crime of craving the warm embrace of the sun, a sighting of color, and a chance to greet those legendary souls who succeeded in shucking off the Net-Work’s monotonous tyranny and had the spherical sac of venom to boldly rebel.

Messing (played by Asim Wali) is our hero. One of the diligent worker drones, he’s lately felt the latent stirrings of his nearly-extinguished humanity. Messing feels something for “the Girl” (played by the lovely Pragna Desai) — a sentiment he can’t yet properly articulate because this “dangerous” word has been purged from his memory banks. He attempts to summon her attentions away from the all-knowing, all-seeing awareness of the Net-Work, but even though she notices the Girl doesn’t seem to comprehend his need to reach out to her; for she, too, is bereft of the necessary emotions that would enable her to appreciate Messing’s gushing ardor. Their colleagues and “friends” at the pod observe what’s been steadily happening to Messing, but for now they chalk it up to a mere “maintenance” problem which can be patched up at the turn of a screwdriver.

Messing’s, though, is one of the exceptionally rare few to have surfaced Topside several times in the past without getting caught. Above-ground, he peels back the layers of that stultifying greyness which is the suffocating burlap uniform he wears while at work, breathing in the fresh air and brazenly daring to use his mouth to “talk,” an act punishable by the Net-Work with an unspecified sentence. During this latest attempt to rendez-vous with Color, a rebel, Color hands Messing the most sublime object imaginable — a daffodil — which he intends to give to his beloved Girl. Stuffing it into his sleeve for the long trek back, he absconds from the abandoned sunny moonscape which is Topside.

Messing’s longings, however, grow more intense and intrusive. He begins to day dream…gingerly, at first, but then at night as well, and vividly. He imagines himself actually speaking to the Girl, ballroom dancing, in fact, dressed in completely different clothes, and deeply in love. When he voices his descriptions of his dreams with the pod-mates, they’re beyond aghast. “You had a dream?!” they spit out. “How is that even possible? You should go and have that fixed,” they admonish him. Yet Messing’s dreams refuse to cease, and he grows more recalcitrant and upstart as the clarity of what he sees while asleep plague him during his every waking moment. He seems no longer under control.

All this builds to a climax one day in the canteen. Messing must have the Girl. He dares to reach out and touch her hand, which everyone can’t help but see, and a collective gasp goes up from the crowd. Sirens and alarm bells shatter the sanitized silence of the room until the cognitive ache — triggered by the Net-Work — of the act he has just inexplicably committed sinks in for all concerned. He suffers a rupture, and all who are present become witness to Messing’s systematic breakdown.

In his act of defiance, Messing has somehow triumphed over the Net-Work, unprepared and incapable it was to process the magnitude of our man’s violation. It leaves the assembled stunned beyond words, an event that will likely affect them forever. Their uneventful humdrum lives as children of the Net-Work will never be the same again.

What I enjoyed most about this short?

Toronto: System of Units was shot in my hometown, so right off the bat I’ve got something to kvell about. The production values were “big city,” without the big city price tag…a clever choice on the part of the filmmakers, Poor Man’s Productions. I also gather that most of the actors in this piece were friends of the director, with everyone seeming really keen during the shoot.

Acting: For non-professional actors, Wali and Desai played off each other marvelously. Mehta somehow got them to tap into a vein of energy that manifested itself onscreen with electrifying power: again, and as I’ve said all-along, never an easy feat to achieve in such a short period of time with screen minutes weighing in at such a premium. I was moved.

Plot: A very plausible storyline. As we hurtle today mindlessly towards the globe’s virtual future, Mehta was right in demonstrating how we’ve almost forgotten how to actually speak to each other. Words have somehow become a burden and emotions are that heavy anchor which drags us helplessly down a rabbit hole. Human contact — even today — is almost verboten. If you don’t witness hints of this in your daily existence already, then you’re not paying attention to the signs. It almost like society is saying: why confront someone about a problem when you can just as easily fire off a blase SMS? Why deal with challenges when you can just as soon brandish your “fury” through passive-aggressive emails and hidden meanings? Why entangle yourself with unpredictable human relationships when the machine can tie up your intellect for hours on end, animating your day without any of the emotional baggage?

If we’re not there as a society, we’re getting perilously close with the passing of each hyper-developed, meth-ed-up, month.

A quick squizz at Richie Mehta‘s IMDb,com profile shows he hasn’t shot or written anything since 2007! That’s not exactly dog’s years in the film biz, and taking into consideration the average indie project takes about three-plus years to incubate, my synapses are telling me he’s incubating something set to break out soon.

A short personal anecdote: I recall bumping into Richie and his assembled actors and crew at the then-Montreal International Film Festival back in 2004 as they were shopping around their short film, Amal, which was subsequently made into a feature by the same name.  Great job, guys! I didn’t know that…

But if I’m wrong, and both Amal and System of Units mark the end of the line for Richie Mehta, it’s a damn crying shame because by the emergence of these two films, here walked a truly promising talent.

And here’s the Amal trailer, in case you’re curious.