REVISITING THE WACHOWSKIS
PART II: ‘THE MATRIX’
In the days leading up to the release of the new Netflix show Sense8, I’m going to be revisiting the Wachowski oeuvre, one day at a time. I’ll be looking at the movies themselves, as well as the critical reception of each film, and thinking about how this all relates to questions of film criticism at large. You can read my introduction to this little writing experiment here, where I rambled a bit about when I started to have a personal stake in how Wachowski films were being received. Warning: Some spoilers follow.
‘THE MATRIX’ (1999)
Directed by: The Wachowski Siblings, then credited as the Wachowski Brothers
Starring:
Keanu Reeves as “Neo”
Laurence Fisburne as “Morpheus”
Carrie Ann Moss as “Trinity”
Hugo Weaving as “Agent Smith”
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%
The Plot
Thomas Anderson (hacker alias: Neo) works a dead-end job in a software company, until one day some mysterious figures show up and offer him a choice. He can either open his eyes and wake up to the way the world really is, or he can forget everything. He chooses knowledge and soon discovers that the world he knows is nothing more than a computer program (the Matrix) designed by an army of machines to enslave humanity. Neo might be The One, a reincarnated version of a mythological man who could bend the Matrix to his will.
With the help of his newfound friends, Neo tries to learn as much as he can about the world in order to stop the machines and free humanity from their shackles.
What’d the Critics Think?
Sixteen years on, The Matrix is considered a modern-day classic, an inventive staple of the sci-fi genre that perfectly epitomized where we were as a society at the end of the 20th century.
The film’s sleek, green-tinted, leather-and-sunglasses aesthetic drew praise, influencing fashion for years. Critics also took notice of the stunningly innovative special effects, as the Wachowskis employed a brand-new, never-before-seen way to capture action sequences in what has become known as “bullet time.” More on this below.
Early reviews of The Matrix also begin to pick apart the philosophy of the film. It’s a movie packed to the brim with symbolism, from Neo’s name being an anagram of “One” but also meaning “new,” to the choice to give humanity’s last outpost the name “Zion,” to the frequent motif of Alice in Wonderland-inspired plot developments like following a white rabbit down the rabbithole.
Some critics, however, weren’t so wild about the film’s blend of mythology, mysticism, Christian iconography, and techno-jargon. RottenTomatoes quotes Palo Alto Weekly as saying: “The problem with The Matrix is that the enormously talented Wachowski brothers think their playful premise has metaphysical implications.” I’m not sure what this means. More on this below.
The BBC review of the film, however, notes, “The image of a superficial existence, where ignorant people thrive by blocking out a troublesome reality, is potent for a Western society drowning in wealth while the rest of the world suffers.” Whereas most critics were content to see The Matrix as a parable warning against the dangers of society’s increasing over-reliance on technology — which is certainly part of what’s going on in the movie — here we see a critic noticing that familiar Wachowski theme I started to discuss in my review of Bound: class disparity.
What Did I Think?
There is no denying that The Matrix is fun to watch. The action sequences are incredible and are integrated perfectly into the plot; the character’s arc involves breaking free from the hold the Matrix has over his mind, and so by the end of the film, he has learned how to defy the laws of physics. The Wachowskis literally move their camera like no one ever had before, leading to showstopping shots like this:
Everything about this just works for me. The spiraling, circular motion of the camera as it weaves between the shockwaves left behind by the bullets… the billowing of his trench coat… It’s hypnotizing.
I’m also a huge fan of body horror, and The Matrix certainly delivers on that front… which I think is an interesting decision in a movie that posits we don’t actually use our bodies, instead spending our entire existence floating in a pool of jelly while plugged into a virtual reality. The Matrix shocks us with concerns of the flesh in the first part of the movie, forcing us to watch as Neo’s body is manipulated and violated, before he is awakened and breaks free from the physical constraints of the Matrix.
The film is essentially split in two halves. The first, while it does have some bursts of action, is mostly all story-setup, as Neo asks questions (mostly “why?!” or “how?!”) and other characters explain the world to him. It’s here that I think the movie drags the most, especially on subsequent rewatches. A lot of the dialogue is disappointingly expository, and I don’t think it’s especially self-aware, either.
Sometime in the early 20th century, Morpheus explains, “mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.” “Artificial intelligence?” Neo clarifies… solely for the benefit of the audience. What else would Morpheus mean? We know the world has been overrun with machines. Neo’s a smart guy. Morpheus is a smart guy. Sigh.
That AI turned on humanity, harvesting our electrical energy to power themselves, developing the Matrix as a way to keep us content, unaware of what power structures were really in play to keep us slaves.
It’s here that I think the movie starts to have some really interesting philosophical implications that go beyond “mankind’s reliance on technology will be its downfall.” Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) explains:
The first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world. Where none suffered. Where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops [of humans] were lost. Some [AI] believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization.
The Matrix spoke to a lot of people at the end of the 20th century. By many accounts, the 1990s were a pretty good time to be alive in America. Some people even say it was the best decade in American history. But, going into the new millennium, there was undoubtedly an air of ennui. Had we really achieved everything we were meant to? Was this really as good as it gets?
While it captures a specific mindset in 1999, the film remains relevant today for the way it plays out and works through many of the concerns that would come to dominate the next 15+ years of American life. Many times, the characters refer to a looming sense of dread, the idea that something was coming that would soon shake American society to its core. And the characters frequently talk about the fear that they are being watched, that absolutely everything they do is being tracked by their machine overlords who want to keep them down, keep them blissfully unaware of the actual powers that control every aspect of the world.
I’m talking, of course, about the way the film anticipates anxieties about post-9/11 surveillance. Watching the film now, it seems weirdly prescient... and I don’t just mean the fact that a quick glimpse of Neo’s passport shows that it expires on 9/11/01 (birthing a whole host of online conspiracy theories about the Wachowskis being an agent of government mind-control employed to subconsciously prepare audiences for the importance of the upcoming date).
The characters worry about their movements being tracked every time they use cell phones, and they’re right to. They’re constantly reminding each other that anything they do online can be traced, hacked, or otherwise manipulated, putting their physical safety in danger because of what they do on the computer.
The movie also seems to discusses the dual nature of the post-social media personality, where people act one way online and another in real life. This is reminiscent of Carl Jung’s idea that everyone projects a “persona,” or mask, to society, concealing their true, innate identity. But in The Matrix, this idea is flipped, subverted, inverted and confused… reflecting our own uncertainty with how to deal with identity in an age where personalities can be carefully curated and cultivated. Agent Smith tells Neo, “It seems that you’ve been living two lives. In one life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company… you have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Neo and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.” He means that they’ll allow Thomas Anderson to continue on as a software programmer as long as he gives up his life of hacking… but in fact, it’s Neo who has a future, not Thomas Anderson. Neo’s life in the computer is his “real” life, his real purpose, what he truly excels at and what he enjoys. The other stuff, the “respectable” stuff, is a cover by day to allow him to live inside the computer at night.
But, isn’t it all virtual? The respectable software stuff isn’t “real” either, because in fact Thomas Anderson exists inside the Matrix; he’s as much of a virtual construction as Neo is. So, too, are we forced to reconcile our own position with regards to how we make use of social media. What’s more real, the image we choose to present to the world online, or the people we are when no one’s listening? Is there always a difference? Can one persona inform the other? Should it?
Personally, I think my online life has greatly improved my “real life” life. Before I made full use of the internet, I was quite introverted and insecure, often afraid of how I was being perceived by those around me. Opening up online, on social media and blogs like this one, has helped me to be more outgoing in “real life” as well. If I can be who I want to be online, why can’t I be who I want to be in the real world? And, come to think of it, how do I really know who I want to be, in either world?
The Matrix, then, is trying to work at what it really, truly means to be “human” in an age where everything we do depends upon splitting our time between the actual, physical world and an online approximation of it. This isn’t even really subtext; it’s text, an actual subject of conversation between people in the film. And it does carry larger implications for society at large. So, this is why I’m always confused by critics who say it “doesn’t mean anything” as a way of dismissing the work put into the world-building. It seems like such a pretentious thing to say about a movie that so carefully constructs various layers of symbolism and meaning… “Aww, isn’t it cute that they thought they could say something about the world!” Well, yes! I’d rather a movie try to have deeper meaning than just concern itself with flashy action sequences. And, yes, The Matrix does concern itself with flashy action, but there is so clearly a deeper intention to the reality-bending and universe-hopping… I don’t know. I know “they just didn’t get it” is often a lazy way of dismissing possibly-valid criticism, but someone saying “The Matrix is style over substance” really seems like people just didn’t bother engaging with the larger issues the movie is working at. And personally, I think the same thing happens in the critical response to later Wachowski films. But, I’ll get there.
I’m especially fascinated by the idea that a utopian Matrix was rejected by vast swaths of humanity. The idea that humans measure themselves against a backdrop of suffering, and in fact embrace such suffering as an essential facet of “reality,” is an interesting one, explored most recently (to disappointingly limp effect) in Tomorrowland. Why is it that we refuse to accept a positive version of ourselves? Why do we resign ourselves to the fact that life is always going to suck, instead of striving for something better?
The Matrix wants us to strive for something better. When Cypher (Joe Pantoliano, the only cast member returning from Bound) betrays the team in the hopes that the Agents will hook him back up to the Matrix so he can forget that it isn’t real, we look down on his decision, and not just because he’s put our heroes in danger. We hope that we wouldn’t be lured by the promise of an easier life of blissful ignorance; we hope we would instead fight for our essential humanity, whatever that means.
“Do you believe in fate?” Morpheus asks Neo when they first meet. “No,” Neo answers almost immediately. “I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my own life.” The Wachowskis don’t like that idea, either. Even though their hero is destined to do great things, he has to choose that destiny for himself. This is a theme that will carry over into their other films, especially Cloud Atlas, and later be subverted in Jupiter Ascending.
Now, I know I’ve spent most of this review talking about the technological implications of The Matrix, when I said what interested me most was the way the whole story can be read as a metaphor for class disparity, for the way much of the world is content to concern itself with distractions while remaining intentionally ignorant of various power structures that keep them from realizing their full potential.
In The Matrix, humanity is literally turned into a living power structure. Humans are hooked up to giant power stations, floating forever in little gel pods filled with liquefied dead people to provide nutrients. This allows the machines to harvest electricity from our bodies, which serve exactly zero purpose other than to help our captors thrive.
In a post-Occupy world, this image carries even more resonance. The movie is a sci-fi abstraction of a very real system of economic power that we prefer not to have to think about. I think it’s no accident that the power plant resembles a cluster of tall skyscrapers, the comatose bodies lined up like strangely-lit office windows, the nameless and faceless people inside giving their lives in service of a system from which they will never see any benefit.
This idea of people complacently complicit in their own subjugation, along with the conceit of people sustaining themselves by unwittingly consuming the liquefied flesh of the dead, is something the Wachowskis will return to time and time again throughout their career, refining and reinterpreting the imagery each time to say something slightly different about what it means to be human.
One of my biggest complaints about The Matrix is the way the story feels incomplete. So much of the film is setup, and while the final fight is thrilling and goes on for a good 45 minutes, we end with Neo realizing what he has to do in order to save humanity. But we don’t get to see it. The end of the film is a call-to-action, Neo explaining that he needs people to join him in the fight, but then it’s over.
Good thing there are sequels, then! Onward I go…
