LANA WACHOWSKI & LILLY WACHOWSKI – THE MATRIX – 1999 –
MATRIX RELOADED – 2003 - MATRIX REVOLUTIONS – 2003
It is vain to retell these films,
or this trilogy. But I would like to insist on the general structure of the
world that is depicted in these movies.
There are three worlds. First of
all the normal human world we know, New York essentially, that is in fact only
an illusion created by the matrix, a program or a vast set of programs invented
by the Architect who does not have any other identity and who pretends he is
not human at the end. This illusion of a normal human world in which billions
of people live has been created to simply control humanity in their growth,
development, everyday life, etc. In other words we have a total digital
dictatorship of which no human is conscious, well nearly no human is conscious.
To keep this world in place and in peace the Architect has invented a set of
Agents all called Smith, all similar, dressed the same, physically the same,
etc, who have special powers to transport themselves at will where they want
and to penetrate and possess any human being.
There is then Zion, the resisting human underground world
in vast caves mostly artificial and with some kind of metallic skeleton. This
world is human because the people living there are humans, but otherwise it is
an artificial world, but it is managed by a council of representatives though
we do not know how they are selected or appointed. Apart from this council the
main institution is the armed forces since this underground world is under
attack and in the midst of a war with the third world that seems to be in some
kind of objective alliance with the matrix world. Note this human world is so
cut off from the normal human, world, because of the matrix, that the only way is
to jump from the underground world to the matrix world and the very few who can
cross have to be plugged on some kind of digital program that transfers them,
body and mind, to the over-ground world and yet keep their bodies underground,
though they are then connected to the underground managing unit, though it
seems this managing unit for that kind of transfer is on board of one vessel or
ship that is some kind of space ship that can get out of the underground city
and circulate outside though they cannot
normally reach the matrix world and they believe they can’t reach the third
world.
The third world is the world of
machines. Apparently they raise human beings to get their energy and thus fuel
their machines. Only at the end the main hero Neo will reach Machine City
and cast a deal with the representative of this machine world. That deal will
enable Neo to get some kind of truce in the war that is raging at the very
moment, then an alliance between the two worlds, Neo’s and the machine world,
against the Matrix because the Smith program has gone out of hand and the
original agent Smith has multiplied to millions and has been able to simply
take over the matrix world with only one clandestine link between the matrix
world and the underground human world entirely controlled by a Frenchman, the
Merovingian, who uses the Trainman and his train to smuggle things from one
world to the other. With this alliance Neo is able to be sent to the matrix
world that has become Agent Smith’s world and to have the final fight with the
original Agent Smith that will decide of the end.
The color of the matrix is green,
like all the lines of codes on the computer screens, lines that work from top
to bottom and then it is not clear if it is from left to right or from right to
left. Green is the matrix color, though the Architect is dressed is some light
creamy white suit. The illusion of a human world created by the matrix is
multicolored like our own human world. The underground human world is highly
dominated by brown and all brownish shades of brown, and there are quite a few:
the people are vastly diverse in ethnic origins and heritage. They are dressed
in all shades of brown, with an alternative light grey. Agent Smith is dressed
in black and is white, a color intending to imply we are dealing with a very
pure white world. He is dressed in black and wears black glasses more like some
kind of blind man than sunglasses. Finally the machine world is all kinds of
dark grey and black but with systematic red eyes because these machines have
red eyes, have eyes. At the end it is revealed that blind Neo is able to see
this machine world as pure light from white to bright yellow and bright orange.
The stake is thus to liberate the
human world we know of this digital dictatorship of the Architect and let it go
back to the normal palette of colors we know from sunup to sundown. It is clear
too that modern civilization, science and technology can only produce what H.G.
Wells already described in Time Machine, an industrious and industrial world
living in total darkness and genetically descending from the working class, the
Morlocks, exploiting and raising for meat a human species descending from the
bourgeoisie, the Emoi, except that this machine world has no human presence at
all, except as an animal raised to produce energy. On the other hand in its
digital branch this modern world, science and technology can only enable one
man to control the whole world and even to create a police of “thought,” an
omnipotent corps of robotic androids. Imagine an army of millions of nanobots
in all human bodies, all nanobots connected to one central unit managed by one
man. The digital evolution leads to that. But there is hope because some humans
will resist, and yet they need the vision of an oracle (a black lady that ages
fast) and of a One who is a white man who can save the world with the help of
Trinity, a white woman he is in love with and who is in love with him. This
trinity of Oracle-One-Trinity is not the only trinity. The Oracle goes along
with an East-Asian Seraph and a little South-Asian girl. We have there a strong
reference to Christianity. Trinity and Neo will have to be sacrificed for the
prophecy to come true and the matrix to be defeated. The sacrifice of Neo is
typically in a crucifixion form, arms outstretched perpendicularly to the body
and light effects are super-impressed on him in the form of a roman cross, and
this roman cross will turn into a Greek cross of light. This Neo is thus a new
Christ. This very strong Christian reference is founded on three worlds: the
human world controlled by the matrix, the underground human world of the
resistance and the distant machine world. Add to this that most teams in this
trilogy are groups of three people. It is a ternary vision, though the digital
world is based on a binary language. The dominance of the ternary figure is
thus very clearly ideological, meaningful.
All in all it is a very
fatalistic vision with a touch of hope in the form of a blind Messiah and an
Oracle.
THE MATRIX – 1999 - Human cattle
enslaved as Duracell batteries
The
film is science fiction. We know every thing about this. The principle is
simple. What we think is reality, real life, is a world of flesh and bone that
is entirely controlled by some matrix, some entirely mechanical principle and
intelligence. Human beings are nothing but some species of mammals that are
raised like cattle but they have no freedom, no control over their life,
nothing at all, not even the freedom to breathe that can be denied any time
without any possible protest.
Against
this totally inhuman world there is a resistance, a resistance of super
machines that are controlled by men, of super heroes and supermen who are
faster than the lightning, and even the light itself, not a new species of
human beings, just the good old stock that modern life and consumerism had
killed. They are ready to sacrifice everything for the freedom of their human
brothers and sisters.
To
achieve this they have special powers that have been worked into them through
some mechanical procedure and mechanical device. They are human beings in
feelings and courage made machine in power and velocity. Then there must be
transportation channels between this resistance and the real world controlled
by the machines.
These
transportation avenues are the information highways of the telephone and
computers, in other words the Internet. And that's where the film becomes more
interesting. We do not know after a while where real reality is and where
virtual reality starts and ends. We have to believe that we can retain in real
reality some of the capabilities we have in virtual reality, and in virtual
reality some of the human sentiments and feelings we can only experience in
real reality.
Then
the film becomes an imbroglio of various realities that are so intertwined and
interlaced that we do not know any more which one has spliced into the other
and which one has been spliced onto another. If you get lost in this interwoven
splicing, it is the proof that this film is disquieting and should be shown to
all kids in the world for them to maybe realize that the world is not what it
looks like nor life what it tastes or smells like. It may stink at times, and
yet that stench is just the beauty of life because if there were not bad smells
we would not even know what a perfume may be.
MATRIX RELOADED – 2003 - Getting ready for
the final battle
We
know what the matrix is, altogether, since we have seen the first episode. We
know that machines have taken over the world and have decided to control all
human life. Humans are slaves serving machines. Nothing very new. In this
second episode we enter the final phase of this machine-controlled world : the
eradication of human life, and first of all of Zion, the city that is a concentrated vision
of human and urban life. The human race is trying to get organized to resist
this final apocalypse, but human beings cannot much without machines and their
machines are not that good when compared with the machines of the other realm.
Yet
some human beings, a small team of them are following a prophecy and have the
capacity to navigate mentally but in a pseudo-physical state from their back
world into Zion
and the human world. When they thus navigate between layers of material life
they leave their heavy and hard bodies behind and enter new bodies that have
tremendous powers. It is these powers they need to defeat machines. This second
episode of the saga is interesting because it enables us to meet with the
mathematician who has constructed the whole matrix. First he is human and no
explanation will be given about how he can survive in the realm of machines,
and how he can expand his life into some timeless eternity.
Second
he announces that he programed everything, including the
prophecy that is then a lie, and that Zion and its destruction is necessary to
keep the balance of this matrix and that the final destruction that is
announced will be the sixth destruction. We note that there is no explanation
about this number six, about why and how Zion
can survive every destruction. The most surprising is of course the number six,
the number of Solomon that has nothing to do with the end of the world. Yet Zion leads us to the bible
and the main prophecy we can think of is the Book of Revelation.
But
then the number of this apocalypse is not six but seven. In other words we are
not in any kind of a meaningful allusion to the bible. The film is only using
these allusions to create an atmosphere of secrecy, of spirituality that helps
making the film a lot less pure action. It gives some inspiration to what would
otherwise be nothing but brutal movement. Third this film transforms battles,
fights and action into some kind of 3-dimensional ballets that can be very
pretty at times. These ballets can be set in any place whatsoever : in an open
square, in the hall of a Renaissance mansion, or on the roof of a truck on a
highway.
The
general impression is that one or two heroes are fighting against a
never-ending and constantly reinforced army of cloned individuals than can
become hundreds in one instant and multiply to thousands in less than ten
seconds. Just the time it takes to open a door and to bring them out. And yet
these ballets have some beauty even if it is a little bit repetitive hence
slightly long. But what can the meaning of this film be ? We will probably come
to the final meaning in the third episode.
But
here we do have a very negative vision of a mechanized world in which human
beings are becoming completely dispossessed of their life and of their future.
The human race is also tremendously reduced in vision and even the will to
really fight for their survival seems to have been tremendously reduced. The
future of the world, when it is menaced with utter destruction, lies in the
hands of half a dozen people at the most. That does not make a crowd, does it ?
Then
there emerges from the film a tremendous sense of fatality. Is there any hope ?
If we believe the two or three who say yes, but if we look at the real and hard
facts given in the film, no, absolutely no. And this fatalistic vision is
emphasized of course by the nearly black and white pictures that are in a way
filmed in all the possible shades of grey.
THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS – 2003
- Fascist manipulation debunked
The
third film finally gives the secret. For one, it is probably slightly better as
for the fights because they are more in the air and that makes them look like
surreal comic strip fights. The technique is superb and the cameras are
sublime. There is not one strange and normally never used shooting angle that
is not used at a moment or other in the shooting of these fights. For two, the
machines are brilliant. Of course we all think of Aliens because some of the
fighting equipment looks a lot like what we had in Aliens. But the beings, the
machines, the mechanical fighters are absolutely unique and they look both very
elegant like some giant sea creatures Octopuses maybe but with so many more
legs.
Machine City is also great with the allusion to these machines not
being able to live in the sunshine. Follow my eyes and read my lips. H. G.
Wells is not very far with his time-traveler. The will to show schools of them
flying or floating through the air makes these creatures more computer animated
and governed because they get involved in some pretty heavy mass movement. But
that's great. The master machine is given some kind of a human face and voice,
why not since machines are born slaves and slaves imitate their masters. But
this meeting with the master machine finally leads us to the real meaning of
this saga. But before getting to that it is important to speak of the characterization
of the main characters: they look human, they are very expressive in their
faces and gestures. They do have the face and body language they need to make
us believe we are in real danger.
But
of course, the main point of them all is the meaning the way it comes up. The
machines not more than the humans want to go on with the war that is supposed
to destroy the human race. It becomes very clear that the matrix was planned
and produced by some human minds in order to make human life ever better than
what it had ever been by giving all the dirty and heavy work to machines all
maintained and locked up in Machineville. This idea is typically western in
thinking, even though it is implied that humans being what they are doomsday is
possible everyday of the week. It is a rewriting of H.G. Wells' Time Machine.
Actual working and producing was the task of an underground race living in
darkness. The change is that these producers are here machines and nothing but
machines.
The
human race then can have it easy at enjoying life. That's a change from H.G.
Wells again because for him daytime humans had become unable to do anything
except enjoy living and being hunted by the underground species like wild
animals or rather submissive cattle. What went wrong is that a special species
of men have taken over the control of both human and machine worlds for their
own interest and somewhere pleasure. They have highjacked the
computer program that is behind the Matrix. The fight then takes place between
Neil, aka Mr Andersen, and Agent Smith. Agent Smith has the power to clone
himself into any other human being.
So he
has become an army and he controls the world and he has decided to get rid of
the human race. Against him an Oracle, a black human woman who knows more or
less what is going to happen, and Neil who has special powers too and can stop
Agent Smith, but no more than stop. So he has to trap him into a common ending,
a common death because he has to destroy himself if he wants to destroy the
fascist. The rest is for you to discover. Very effective. So the world can
survive for an unspecified period of time. Peace has been concluded through
this final sacrifice. Here we have some good old Christian allusions.
First
of all the long cassock looking robes he is wearing, our Neil. Second his
sacrifice for the survival of humanity. But there will be no resurrection, no
rebirth of the world because his girl friend dies before him. No Mary Madgalene
secret. And then there will be no surviving procreating couple to reinvent
humanity. Humanity has been saved for a while. No Apocalypse. But a victory in
the war against the machine like in Frank Herbert, but the machines are not
destroyed, the equilibrium of this mechanized world is not changed, there is no
promise of a savior one day.
The Christian allusion is thus reduced to a dire minimum. The meaning is
also reduced to a dire minimum : for humanity to go on enjoying life we have to
get rid of all machines, productive work and pollution far away from us and we
have to have a few courageous and inspired warriors that are ready to sacrifice
their lives for humanity to go on living. In other words good old traditional
patriotic courage. That does not make this trilogy the piece of imagination
that will revolutionize the world, but it is an entertaining film. And if you
really get into it try to identify all the allusions to Stephen King's novels.
I can tell you there are many.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 3:03 PM