Chronic Murmuring

The Matrix Weekend

It's going to take a lot of armtwisting, weeping and gnashing of teeth to convince Paige to take me to see The Matrix: Revolutions this weekend. After all, we're broke and on a brand new budget that essentially does not allow movies. (Luckily, Vision Video down the street rents all non-new releases for only a dollar, which does fortunately fit into the budget). But, seeing as how it's my birthday and all, I think we might be able to work it out.

Many of the reviews I've scanned so far have been negative. But interestingly, but a lot of them seem to say that this one falls far short of the original, giving me the impression that what they're essentially doing is carrying over their same hatred of the second movie to the final installment. Lots of people hated the second movie. But in my opinion, the second movie separated the men from the boys. It was not a disappointment, but to me, showed more depth and creativity than the original. I feel particularly honored to place myself among the few who found the second to have outdone my expectations. And since Reloaded and Revolutions were filmed simultaneously, and given the Warchowski brothers the benefit of the doubt that there was some coherency to their vision of the trilogy, I'm expecting that the third is going to be as satisfying as the second, if not moreso.

In the end, I'm expecting this to be one of the better philosophical movies made (counting the trilogy as a single narrative, that is), as well as one of the more profound theological movies ever made. The movie is so many things. For one, it's a dynamic movie, in that it is perfectly a half-dozen different genres at once. It is the good-vs-evil trilogy, wherein a single character must rise to become the very thing he always felt uncomfortable becoming. This places it squarely with The Godfather and Star Wars. It's a love story between a messiah and his people, but even more importantly, his bride. Trinity - the deeply feminine and sensitive, yet bones-hard-kick-ass-tough-as-nails lady-chick, who reminds me of my wife in every way. Neo - who exists to give his life for his friends. And it's a kung fu action movie. People make funny criticisms of the kung fu in the movie which, to me, betray their own lack of appreciation for kung fu in general. I've heard at least a couple of people cricitize the movie on the grounds that the kung fu is really nothing more than Hollywood fodder. One, that's ridiculous. Hollywood rarely pours itself into designing fight sequences as elegant and as extended as these. And two, beneath the surface of those critiques is usually a level of ignorance that is easy to detect to the one who genuinely loves kung fu movies. Kung fu action movies are really nothing more than a kind of modern-day ballet. It's a type of dance. I would bet that the same people who love and appreciate ballet and other forms of performance dance, are secretly the same people who love John Woo, Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns or Saturday morning samaurai hour on IFC. There's an elegance and sweetness to each of the Matrix fight sequences - even the massive Agent Smith-vs.-Neo fight, which used some CGI at parts, in the second installment. If you can't see that, then of course, all you see is violence - but violence is only secondary to kung fu. Principally, these fight scenes are about grace, control, and tempered justice.

But lastly, I think The Matrix fits our generation and it fits film. The Lord of the Rings, as a narrative, is glorious, but it belongs to another medium altogether. Part of its brilliance couldn't be carried over into the film version due to the inherent constraints of the medium. For instance, there is very little about the purpose of stories and song in the movie versions, whereas this idea is very important in the books. But The Matrix is different. It is cyber-punk, GenX, Nine Inch Nails, soundtrack-driven cinema. The fight scenes, the awesome soundtrack, the cool clothes, the stunning stunts - these are all cinematic effects. They belong in film. The ethos is formed out of the sub-culture of post-80s hacker-geek and cyberpunk. You have to understand that Neo is an archetype, not just of messianic mythology, but also of every guy who uses, as one of his primary outlets, technology and visual narrative to express and understand himself. So Neo is both Jesus and me, in other words.

And this is, I think, the real success of the movie - it takes the viewer into the transcendent ultimate story of the universe (the story of Jesus Christ) while simultaneously taking the viewer into themselves. Stories do this - or at least good ones do. They are simultaneously about God and man, and in that sense, mirror Calvin's insight at the beginning of the Institutes in which he noted that all knowledge invovles knowledge of the self and knowledge of God. To put it more pointedly, The Matrix is good because it is sacramental. Its story, and the experience of the story itself, connects our story with the story. And as a bonus, we get to watch Morpheus, Neo and Trinity kick some nice ass.

So, here's to hoping that this weekend, I'm in the sanctuary of the cineplex, watching this movie.