# Matrix, The (1999)

### reviewed by
Curtis Edmonds

by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org

"Our tragedy today is a general; and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?"

William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Lecture, 1950

Faulkner wrote those lines in the years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the early days of the Cold War, back when the threat of nuclear apocalypse was real and powerful. Today, that threat has subsided, leaving us free to concentrate on the problems of the spirit without fear of imminent destruction.

Unless, of course, you're in Hollywood.

In Hollywood, the question isn't "When will the world be blown up?" but "How can we blow up the world?" In the Decade of the Digital Disaster, Hollywood has the technical means to blow up the world a dozen times and still have everyone out of the theater in time to catch Seinfeld reruns. The only limits to the scope of the apocalypse are the imagination of the screenwriter and the creativity of the technical wizards. Together, they can wreak all sorts of havoc, whether with a large-scale asteroid or a small-scale virus.

The Matrix, if nothing else, deserves credit for the most creative apocalyptic scenario so far. The Matrix plays on two of the themes of the 1990's: the fear of an impending environmental collapse and the realization that people are getting stupider as their machines get smarter. Eventually, we are to believe, people get so stupid that they destroy the environment, forcing a new generation of super-intelligent machines to build... The Matrix.

What is the Matrix? Well, not to give away too much, but The Matrix is a giant planet wide virtual-reality simulation in which humanity exists. As long as you accept the reality you're given, you're in good shape. Once you question that reality, however, things start to happen. You're no longer completely bound by that reality. You can leap tall buildings in a single bound, for example. Of course, once you start doing that, the Men In Black come after you. (In The Matrix, the Men In Black have guns instead of neuralyzers, and they can leap bigger buildings than you can.)

The alternate universe of The Matrix is a fun place to be. It's rendition of the post-industrial apocalyptic landscape is stylish and as well-conceived as anything in genre classics like Aliens or The Terminator. It's populated by smart, resourceful villains and really scary-looking alien ships. It has a good sense of humor and some insanely well-choreographed action scenes. The Matrix has everything going for it except for one thing: it isn't very good.

The Matrix manages to be less than the sum of its parts. It starts out as a top-notch sci-fi thriller, in which super-hacker Neo (Keanu Reeves) learns the secrets of The Matrix and escapes its evil clutches. But The Matrix betrays its promising beginnings. The last half of the movie is just your standard cheesy superficial action movie. While it has very good computer-driven special effects and some cool stop-motion sequences, it's ultimately a tedious whirlwind journey where the clichés fly faster than the bullets. (Fans of the lets-put-down-our-guns and fight-man-to-man cliché and the fight-you-never-backed-away-from-anything-in your-life-fight cliché will feel at home in The Matrix.)

As in other movies in the Digital Disaster genre, the acting isn't that great. Most producers simply can't afford to hire talented actors and do high-tech effects at the same time. (Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise's rumored Minority Report project may be the exception that proves this rule.) Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, leader of the human resistance, is the best of a bad lot, but does little other than provide atmosphere and profound-sounding speeches. Carrie-Anne Moss has the Michelle Yeoh love-interest-with-an-attitude role, but she does a lot better at acrobatic computer-enhanced fighting moves than dialogue. The rest of the pirate crew can't disguise . The rest of the pirate crew might as well have Starfleet red shirts on for all they add to the proceedings. Only Australian actor Hugo Weaving, as the leader of the Men In Black, makes any kind of impression.

Detractors of Keanu Reeves will enjoy The Matrix more than most. The Matrix seems designed to maximize Keanu's strengths and minimize his weaknesses, like talking. (Fittingly, Reeves does his best acting in a wonderful scene where he is deprived of the power of speech.) He does an awful lot of chopsocky, especially given his twig-boy physique. There's nothing especially horrible about his performance -- he's about as good here as he was in Speed, which may be about as good as he'll ever be -- but one gets the feeling that this is a movie that calls for more. Reeves has his entire reality ripped away, a situation that would be tailor-made for driving most people completely barking mad, but it doesn't seem to affect him that much. He doesn't even ask that many questions, even, accepting the new reality he's given with little curiosity.

But the real problem with The Matrix is not the weaknesses in the plot or the acting. Where The Matrix is very concerned with blowing things up, it pays little attention to the "problems of the spirit" that Faulkner defined. While there is some debate in the movie about whether a comfortable virtual existence is better than an arduous real existence, there's not a lot of human warmth or interplay in the movie. Everyone in the movie seems stiff, almost lacking in affect. It's almost as though everyone is trying hard not to outact Keanu (which must have been a strain). There are a lot of punches thrown in the latter half of the movie, but there's no emotional impact to counterbalance the fight scenes. We can gaze at amazement at the detail of the set design, and marvel at the technical artistry needed to create the movie, but without some form of emotional resonance, somewhere, it's not worth much. The Matrix promises us a good, filling meal but only serves us eye candy.

To quote Faulkner again, The Matrix "has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing". Instead, it settles for a CGI conflict with an out-of-control video game. Nothing wrong with that, for people who like such things, but anyone looking for a real movie will leave The Matrix disappointed.

    --
    Curtis Edmonds

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