1999
was to be a huge year for science fiction. A movie event was on the way that
was about to blow the metaphorical socks off of just about everyone and define
a new generation of movie geeks. There was just one little surprise. That movie
turned out not to be George Lucas' return to the Star Wars mythos, The Phantom
Menace, but a strange cyber thriller called The Matrix.
The Matrix as
an immediate proposition isn't easy to grasp (indeed, intuitively, the
marketeers made a boon of its ambiguity with a teasing "What is The
Matrix?" campaign). Reality is virtual reality, a monstrous programme
called The Matrix generated by an evil empire of man-built artificial
intelligences who rule the dystopian horror of the real world. Mankind's entire
existence is being hardwired directly into human brains, while the machines
imprison them in womblike pods, tapping their neural cortex for battery power.
There is,
though, a band of rebels who have broken free and are intent on liberating
humanity from their unsuspected bondage by downloading themselves into the
manufactured dreamworld. What they need is a messiah. Enter Thomas
"Neo" Anderson (Keanu Reeves) — the archetypal reluctant hero who
may, if he can be convinced, have just the cyberchops to undo The Matrix.
Former construction workers, the brothers Wachowski harboured their vision for
five and a half years, working their way through 14 drafts of the screenplay
and, as comic freaks, projected their vision onto 500 elaborate storyboards.
After the
witty slice of lesbian noir (now: there's a genre) Bound, they looked to be
hotshot tyros for the future. However, no one could have foreseen the
hyperspace jump that was to be their cinematic vision for The Matrix. With the
concept sly enough to allow almost anything — this reality is virtual —
superpowers are permissible (leaping from tall buildings, dodging bullets,
hyper-kinetic kung fu). To represent this, they tapped an emergent visual
technology known as flo-mo, a process which allows a seemingly impossible
time-jamming graphic where Keanu freezes mid kick while the camera rotates
dizzyingly around him. Dazzlingly versatile, it presented an entirely new type
of visual lexicon. The Matrix looked like nothing you'd ever seen before at the
movies.
Reeves' Neo
is a reactionary part, but it plays on his sculpted beauty, and dressed up in
patent leather and designer shades he evokes an effortless cool. The burden of
explanation falls to Lawrence Fisburne's Morpheus, the man is a well of
gravitas and no matter how ludicrous his expounding it still rings with an
ironclad conviction. The bad guy fraternity (all MiB in suits and the
obligatory shades) are defensive programmes led by the unearthly clipped tones
of Hugo Weaving — also able to toy with the fabric of The Matrix.
And entirely
on the surface — a grim noir sheen somewhere between a Depeche Mode video and
Blade Runner's retrofitted near future — the movie operates satisfactorily as a
good against insurmountable odds of bad axis. But if you think The Matrix is
just brainless action, think again. Beyond the gawping pleasures of its flo-mo
prowess and the more obviously reverential stylistic nods (Alien, Blade Runner,
Film Noir, German Expressionism, Star Wars, 2001) the Wachowski's script is a
labyrinth of classical references melting into William Gibson's cyberpunk
milieu.
Lewis
Carroll's Alice In Wonderland is broadly expressed (the whole film an ironic
reversal of Alice's adventures: Neo passes from safe, reassuring virtual
reality into a bizarre, unpredictable real world). Elsewhere you can tot up the
clever-cleverness of Marx, Kafka, Zen, and Homer's Odyssey. Quite deliberately,
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard's sizzling page-turner Simulacra And
Simulation can be seen lying open at the "On Nihilism" chapter in
Neo's apartment. The becapped Wachowski brothers are clearly into Baudrillard's
influential theories of postmodern theology, terrorism and hyper reality.
Just a
Keanu-in-shades-kicks-arse movie? Don't think so. And then things get really
fun — try The Matrix as Christ allegory.
It works. It
was first released in Easter 1999. Reeves' character's full name is Thomas
"Neo" Anderson — Thomas as in Doubting Thomas; Anderson means
"son of man"; Neo means "new" or "change" and is
an anagram of "One". Then there is the rebel team as disciples (with
Joe Pantoliano's duplicitous Cypher as Judas) and the fact that Neo "dies"
for 72 seconds on screen (translate that into 72 hours and it's three days)
before being born again by the power of Trinity (Anne Moss)'s love. Hogwash,
perhaps, but it grants The Matrix a measure of analysis that is hard to deny.
In the end,
though, the Wachowski's triumph is a much more immediate, much more visceral
one. They've amalgamated comic book morality, the Hong Kong action tradition
(orchestrated by guru Yuen Wo Ping), a prime chunk of Hollywood star, cyberpunk
paranoia and a visual effects revolution to creatre a new brand of movie. In the
clearest sense of the term The Matrix is a classic, not only a great movie, but
a film that simultaneously redefined its own medium. Forever.
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