The Matrix at 20

As the film opens the camera slowly zooms into a series of numbers on a green monochrome PC monitor.  Then it goes even further into a zero...and keeps going, giving the viewer a sense of moving into the Matrix.

Back in 1999, my friends and I were all about The Matrix.  We couldn’t get enough of it.  We quoted the film, discussed the film, and wowed each other with subtle things we noticed in the film.  The movie was simply an extension of our friendship in way that few films I’ve encountered have before or since.

“There is no spoon,” “Free your mind,” “It’s our way or the highway,” “Welcome to the desert of the real” were more than just lines of dialog that resonated with us; they were part of our jokes and our musings.  Everyone I knew that saw the film enjoyed it.  They enjoyed it for many reasons.  It was a terrific, fun action film, it had a surprising, almost bewildering, amount of depth to it, its special effects were groundbreaking, but, most of all, it was cool.

The clothing and sets, the attitudes of the characters, the music, and the cinematography, the puzzling labyrinth through which our hero (and, by extension, the audience) navigates were all trendy, original, more than a little sexy and uniquely stylish.  As one writer at the time put it: “The salient difference between Star Wars and The Matrix is that while the former was instantly duplicable (witness Battlestar Galactica), the latter, in its originality, has thus far frustrated imitators.” (Paul Di Filippo, page 77)

That’s not entirely true.  When The Matrix revealed the innovation of “bullet time” to the world, that effect was copied quickly and universally.  It became a meme in advertising, music videos and other films.  But, the film as a whole remained something distinctively its own brand. 

Now, 20 years later, I can say I’ve seen The Matrix more than any other film ever. Although I have not watched it in awhile, back in the day, especially after it came out on VHS, I watched it two or three dozen.  Jennifer became so obsessed with it that she watched even more times than I did.  It became the “background music” of my life for a couple of years.  I just about had the whole thing memorized, although that recall has dissolved to just a few particular scenes today.  Much like life itself.

The film has aged very well.  Since The Matrix anchors itself in the year 1999 (as well as in somewhere around 2199), the advancement of technology since then does not date it (the way Alien seems dated, for example).  In some ways the film is rooted in the early years of the internet, but in other ways it reaches into a bizarre far future when machines have awareness and human beings are their source of energy.

The film contains an sophisticated web of religious ideas, philosophy, and psychology, which always rates highly with me if it is done well (I reviewed one aspect of this recently).  The Matrix expresses this perfectly.  You can get lost in wandering around all the ideas the film either explores or suggests, among them: “…Zen Buddhism, literature, old cartoons, comics, Jung, gaming, Rastafarianism, hacker culture, Goth, anime, Hong Kong kung fu movies, myth, Gnosticism, Judaism, visual movie and art quotes – the list seems neverending.  There is hardly an original bone in the complex body that is The Matrix, yet its rich reflectional stew is dazzling.  Miraculously, the film not only survives its pretentious freight if meaning, but as a Thrilling Tale of Wonder, it packs a powerful wallop.” (Kathleen Ann Goonan, page 100)

That’s an excellent, broad brush, classification of the film, although it doesn’t touch all the possible conceptual ingredients. There is plenty within the film about Christianity, human authenticity, and eliminative materialism (among other things) as well.  Now, watching it again some 20 years later, I still marvel at the dense entertainment value of The Matrix.  

Uncharacteristically, I’m going to keep the potential philosophical detours to a minimum in this review.  When I first saw the film I knew it had a lot of potential meanings to explore and that was highly appealing to me.  But, I didn’t go to see it because I knew it was loaded with heady metaphors.  I went to see it because it was a fun movie.  So this review is mostly about the fun of The Matrix, even after 20 years.

The first thing you notice about The Matrix is the fantastic original musical score by Don Davis.  (Even the selection of individual musical tracks by various other artists is noteworthy. I particularly like the movie's ending to Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine.)  Right from the beginning the score presents itself at an ominous and relentless pace as we see cascading symbols of green at the resolution of an old PC monitor.  Only later do we realize this coding is the Matrix. 

The opening sequence grips the viewer by the throat and doesn’t let go.  We zoom into one of the computer symbols which creates an peculiar visual effect.  We aren’t sure what we are watching, which will be the case for a lot of the first half of the film.  The score remains strong as Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) kills several routine cops attempting to arrest her and then runs for her life (for reasons that are yet unclear) from “an agent” (we don’t know who/what that is yet either) dressed in a grayish suit with sunglasses (even though it is night).  Both she and the agent perform some superhuman feats and she manages to elude him by diving through a small window between buildings.

Neo is surrounded by his computers, asleep at the beginning of the film.  He will awaken in more ways than one before the film ends.

Things get really tense (living up to the wonderful pounding, driving musical score) when Trinity rushes into a public phone booth (we don’t have those anymore) and answers the ringing phone just as a garbage truck driven by another agent crashes into the booth.  There is no trace of Trinity.  Three agents talk mumbo-jumbo about “the informant” and “Neo” for a moment and leave the audience wondering wtf???

Cut to Neo (Keanu Reeves) asleep as his computers auto-search 1999’s version of the internet for news stories about someone called “Morpheus.”   This is Act One of the film, where we are introduced to a lot of key elements in the story without anything being explained.  We are thrust into some sort of complex reality involving technology and hacking and possibly terrorism but nothing is explained. 

Which is as it should be.  We are basically on the same level as Neo, confused and searching for answers from a complicated puzzle.  Neo’s passion is hacking software.  His “real” name is Thomas Anderson and, during the day, he lives a routine, rather boring corporate cubical life.   But these agents are after him and he is soon captured, interrogated and bugged in the most literal sense of the term.  The agents know Neo is searching for Morpheus, as are they.  They want to use Neo to find the mysterious “terrorist.”

The agents "bug" Neo in an attempt to find Morpheus.  It is a literal, mechanical bug that quickly enters his body through his navel.  He awakens from sleep thinking it was just a terrible nightmare.

Neo meets Morpheus who speaks in riddles to him (and the audience).  There are far more questions than answers at this point.  This is where the cool style of the film begins to be presented.

Morpheus offers Neo a choice between the blue pill and the red pill.  The latter is the path to the Matrix.  Neo chooses that one.

Neo meets Trinity at a club (great rave-like music) and she arranges for him to meet Morpheus but first he is “debugged” by some of Morpheus’ minions.  Neo is honored to meet Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) but the latter insists that the honor is entirely his.  Morpheus believes Neo is “the One.”  The so-called terrorist is cooly attired in sunglasses (even though it is night and raining) a leather trench coat and a green tie, as are his followers though each is stylishly cool in their own way.

He entices Neo by offering to show him what the Matrix is.  Neo is given a simple choice between a blue pill and a red pill.  The blue pill will make him sleep and remember nothing.  The red pill will allow him to discover the Matrix and see “how deep the rabbit hole goes” (there are numerous references to Alice in Wonderland throughout Act One of the film).  Of course, Neo chooses the latter and both he and audience are in for a perplexing surprise.

Neo awakens in a vat of slime with a bunch of electrodes attached to his naked body.  WTF???

All around him are other people in similar vats or pods.  Towers of them.  These are the power plants supplying energy to the machines that have taken over the world.  But neither ho not the audience knows any of that yet.  The film is visually powerfully yet strangely perplexing at this point.

We suddenly see Neo bald and naked in a vat of some sort with all sorts of tubing attached to him.  Of special note is a large connection at the base of his skull.  He starts to remove it but freezes.  With gobs of clear slime dripping off him, Neo beholds seemingly endless towers of vats filled with other people.  Electricity arcs between the towers.  A flying bot of some sort detects that he is awake and unplugs him from his vat, which rinses itself of him, down a series of drainage tunnels into a waste dump where he is rescued by Morpheus and his crew.

After he is rescued by Morpheus and his crew, Neo undergoes weeks of rehabilitation.

Then Morpheus shows Neo what the "real" world looks like.  It has been completely destroyed in a past war between humans and machines.  The machines won.  It is more disorienting than Neo can take and he passes out, refusing to accept it.

Neo's training begins by sparring with Morpheus in a martial arts fight.  This is the first time the audience gets to see how Morpheus can manipulate the rules of space and time within the Matrix.

Next, Morpheus shows Neo the "jump program."  He tells Neo to "free your mind" and easily leaps from the top of one skyscraper to another.  Neo tries and falls.  The crew watches and we learn that no one has ever made it on the first try.  This is the film showing the difficulty of Neo's path and sets up doubt as to whether he really is as special as Morpheus thinks he is.

In another program we meet the "woman in the the red dress."  A famous shot from the film.  She is an programmed distraction.  Definitely.

It’s all very confusing.  But it gets even stranger.  Neo undergoes days, perhaps weeks, of treatment including acupuncture to build up his badly atrophied body.  Ultimately, he meets the rest of Morpheus’ crew, Trinity among them, and learns that he is on some sort of ship (the Nebuchadnezzar) that navigates through the sewer systems of ancient megacities which have long since been destroyed. Act One of the film ends at the height of unanswered questions when Morpheus, for the first time, attempts to explain what the hell is going on and what the Matrix is.  Neo’s mind is blown into utter disbelief.  He simply can’t handle it – which is fine, the audience is making its own transition from baffled ignorance to utter confusion. 

This is a dangerous place for a film to go.  The Matrix could have veered off-course and become a convoluted disaster.  But the narrative holds up well.  There is a complex, not fully defined mystery to all this. The audience is suitably perplexed but still strongly engaged thanks to the superb action sequences and the film’s enticing, techno-sexy style. 

There are clear visual markers to distinguish the real world from the world of the Matrix.  In the Matrix everything is as you and I know it today.  The sun shines, there is great food, excitement and entertainment, the color and tone have a slightly greenish tinge to it, just like the cascading code that the Matrix is programmed in.  In the real world, however, everything hints of blue.  The surface of the Earth has been destroyed and everyone remaining alive lives underground.  There is no sunlight, the sky has been “scorched.”  The real world seems colder and harsher than the Matrix.  In most ways the real world is less appealing than the Matrix.

When Morpheus thinks Neo is ready he and the crew take him to see the Oracle...back inside the Matrix.  They all look and act so badass cool.

As a brief philosophical aside, I relate to this visual distinction in terms of what Nietzsche has to say about the importance of illusion in human experience.  For Nietzsche, illusion is a necessary component in how humans relate to the harsh suffering and meaninglessness of existence.  Therefore, our minds construct beliefs of free will, religion, and art among other things to essentially help us deal with the Truth that lies beyond ourselves, that we are born into.
 
The dualism between truth and illusion is not precisely Nietzschean in The Matrix because the film doesn’t really take the view that life is inherently meaningless.  Rather, it takes more of a Buddhist approach, life is suffering but there is meaning and, more importantly, freedom, to be found.  Nevertheless, the harshness of the real world compared with the appeal of the fake world definitely rings like Nietzsche.  This is a simple example of the rich philosophical tapestry of the film.

Each of the three Acts of The Matrix time out at about 45 minutes.  In Act Two of the film Neo begins his journey of self-discovery as “the One” (the similarity between the words “Neo” and “One” is intentional).   From here on, the confusion lessens, answers start coming, and the action intensifies.  The input connector at the base of his skull is plugged into the ship’s computer and Neo is neuro-fed all sorts of martial arts skills.  He spars with Morpheus to gauge his progress.  Then Morpheus orders up the “jump program,” a simulation of the Matrix where he proceeds to jump from the top of one skyscraper to another.

“You have to let it all go Neo.  Fear.  Doubt.  Disbelief.  Free your mind,” says Morpheus as he easily makes the impossible leap.  Neo is amazed.  He hesitates, keeps telling himself to “free my mind” and jumps…into a fall.  The path Neo has chosen is not an easy one.  And his failures along the way keep both him and the audience wondering whether or not he really is “the One.”

Next, Morpheus takes Neo to see the Oracle (Gloria Foster).  This is a very stylish sequence with most of the crew going into the Matrix, looking pretty badass in their mostly black leather attire and sunglasses and limousine.  But the meeting with the Oracle ends up being more like going to see someone’s grandmother than anything else.

"There is no spoon." Another famous scene from the film.  Neo is lectured by a young "potential" about the nature of reality.  Like the spoon, the film is mind-binding.

The visit to the Oracle turns out more like a trip to grandma's kitchen.  But there is a lot of philosophy in this scene and it sets up the final act of the film.

The encounter between the Oracle and Neo has numerous philosophical aspects (including the famous spoon bending shot) but the bottom line is that she never actually tells Neo whether or not he is the One.  Instead, Neo tells her that he isn’t and, based on what the audience has seen so far, there is reason for this doubt.  Her reply is simply that “you got the gift but it looks like you are waiting for something.”  Neo misunderstand what she says a feels his doubts are validated.

From a narrative perspective, the most important component of this scene comes when the Oracle tells Neo he will have a choice to make.  That either Morpheus or Neo is going to die and it will be up to Neo as to which it is.  For his part, Morpheus, who does not know what the Oracle has told Neo, says that she only told him exactly what he needed to hear.  

The crew has been betrayed.  Earlier, Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) met with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) and made a deal to be reinserted into the Matrix in exchange for the capture of Morpheus.  Cypher hates the bland harshness of the real world and wants to return to the joys of the fake world.  So, Cypher manages to inform the agents of where Morpheus is located within the Matrix during the Oracle visit.  

Morpheus fights it out with Agent Smith...and loses.

This leads to another action sequence with a lot of gunfire and fighting.  Morpheus is captured by the agents.  Cypher manages to make it back to the ship first and attempts to kill off the remaining crew.  One by one, he starts disconnecting each crew member from the Matrix, which kills them since their minds were not returned to the ship first.  But he is killed by a wounded crew member just before he can disconnect Neo.

Cypher betrays everyone, but he is killed before he can unplug Neo from the Matrix.  This would have killed Neo because your mind must first return from the Matrix before you are unplugged.  "The body cannot live without the mind."  Notice the drab, bluish nature of the real world contrasts with the green, lively nature of the Matrix.

Back in the Matrix Trinity and Neo set out to rescue Morpheus.  Trinity walks up a wall during a wild shoot-out scene.  Actress Carrie-Anne Moss actually broke her foot performing this stunt herself, setting filming her scenes back six weeks.

About 90 minutes in we come the exciting, climatic Act Three of the film.  Agent Smith begins his interrogation of Morpheus, who knows the pass codes for the mainframe computers of the rebellious humans (who only appear in the second and third Matrix movies) still resisting the agents and the Matrix. Smith opens with praising the Matrix.  “Have you ever stood and stared it and marveled at its beauty, its genius.  Billions of people just living out their lives – oblivious.”  This is a common refrain of social criticism and postmodernism.

Neo tells Trinity about the Oracle’s prophecy of Neo having to make a choice between himself and Morpheus.  They decide to go back into the Matrix and rescue him from the agents.  Since Morpheus is being held by three agents inside a militarily secure building they need to properly equip themselves with “guns, lots of guns.”  Which leads to a spectacular building lobby shootout scene where both Neo and Trinity fire a wide variety of weapons while turning cartwheels and walking up walls.   When they run out of ammo they don’t bother to reload, they simply throw their guns away and grab more from a seemingly endless supply they have strapped all over their bodies under their stylist trench coats.

They end up on the roof of the building where they face-off with an agent.  Neo literally dodges bullets as the agent shoots at him, though he is partially wounded by one shot.  This is one reason the innovative special effects, which won an Academy Award, were nicknamed “bullet time.”  As the agent approaches to finish Neo off, Trinity appears out of nowhere and, with a gun pointed at the agent’s head, she says: “Dodge this.”  Boom!  Bye bye agent.  This cool, confident and sarcastic line is an example of the humor sprinkled throughout the film that gives the audience a chuckle to break the almost continuous action.

Neo has mastered defying the rules of space and time as he kills numerous guards in the lobby of a government building.  This is probably the most insane action sequence in the film.

Bullet time.  The camera spins 360 degrees around Neo as he literally dodges bullets.

Trinity escapes from a helicopter as it crashes into a nearby building.  The film is pretty much one big thrill ride through its final 20 minutes.

Trinity downloads instructions from the ship on how to fly a B-212 helicopter which they use to rescue Morpheus in one of action highlights of the film.  But, as Morpheus and Trinity return to the ship, Agent Smith shows up again for a final, climatic fight with Neo, where Neo is shot and killed by Smith.  This is another example of how every accomplishment on Neo’s journey is initially met by seemingly insurmountable failure - another philosophic teaching of the film.  And, just to mention in passing, one that fits Nietzsche’s teaching of self-overcoming and “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

In a fairy-tale ending, Trinity (on the ship speaking to the plugged-in, unconscious, real Neo) confesses something she has been trying to tell him since Act Two.  The Oracle told Trinity that she would fall in love with “the One” and Neo must be the One because she loves him.  She kisses him (this rings of Sleeping Beauty, in reverse gender-wise).  Miraculously, Neo rises from the dead (a clear Jesus metaphor) and defeats Agent Smith in a final heroic battle where he begins to see the Matrix not as a beautiful illusion, but as the green cascading code that it actually is.  He becomes the One.

More bullet time.  Neo and Agent Smith fight each other at a subway station.  The agents are all experts at bending the rules of space and time as well.

Trinity kisses Neo to wake him up.  Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty in reverse?

Neo realizes he really is "the One."  He sees the Matrix for what it really is for the first time.  That's bad news for the three agents at the end of the hallway.

Like the build-up of complexity earlier, the ending of the film could have been a colossal, cheesy flop, but it isn’t.  The film simply has too much style and too much of an edge for the softness to be taken as a cop-out.  This brief but spectacular moment of tenderness only serves to complete Neo’s transformation, and to fulfill the audience’s journey as well.  The message isn’t love conquers all.  Rather, it is that love is a transformative power to what comes next.

The Wachowski’s (Andy and Larry then, Lily and Lana now) revealed their cinematic genius to the world in The Matrix.  Though it received mixed reviews at the time of its release on Easter weekend 1999, it went on to gross almost a half billion dollars worldwide and it fundamentally changed the way films are made.  No one can deny the film’s power today, even if many of its themes are borrowed and much of its pioneering visual work has been copied to the point of cliché.  

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  So perhaps it is fitting that a heady, fun, action film about the replication of a “perfect world” should itself be replicated by other cultural forces.  The only sad part is that it was so absorbed by the artificiality of the world that the fundamental messages (we are all "batteries," unknowing slaves supplying "power" to the "system," etc.) of The Matrix never became mainstream.  To that extent, if it was a film ahead of its time, then the heart of it is still waiting for its time to come.