THE MATRIX
Dir : The Wachowski Bros.
Starring : Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie Anne Moss

What is the Matrix? That is the question asked throughout most of the film. It's a stunning, visual feast. The extraordinary visual effects, combined with Hong Kong style action scenes, amplify the scifi feeling of the film. From the opening scene, where Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) performs a jump kick on a police officer, the scene freezes and does a 360 degree rotation around her before continuing, to another scene where Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) are in a computer generated environment, where suddenly everything around them is frozen in time, yet they move about and talk freely, to yet another scene, where Neo dodges bullets in slow motion, the visuals never end. And within all this excitement is woven an intricate storyline that questions dreams vs. reality.

Neo is a computer programmer by day and a hacker by night, but is troubled by dreams he cannot understand. He seeks a man called Morpheus, a legendary hacker who is considered "the most dangerous man alive." They meet through Morpheus' agent, Trinity, and Morpheus reveals to Neo that the world he knows is nothing more than a computer generated reality created to make slaves of the human race. Morpheus believes Neo is the "one" who will be able to set them free.

Within this cyberthriller, the religious analogies are as frequent as the special effects. We can start with the characters' names. Morpheus is named after a god of dreams. Trinity is a reference to the Christian religion. The name Neo means one. In the opening sequence, she performs extraodinary feats, miracles if you will. The three main characters, Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity are themselves a reference to Christianity. Morpheus is like the father figure. Neo is the son, the "chosen" one who will bring freedom. When we're first introduced to him, a buyer refers to him as his "personal savior...his own Jesus Christ." And Trinity is the connection between the two...she found and brought Neo to Morpheus. Cypher is the "Judas" of the group. He hands Morpheus over to the Agents for a price, like Judas handing Jesus over for 30 pieces of silver. Tank and Dozer are brothers...there were two sets of brothers among the 12 apostles. Tank, like Peter has his doubts at first, but still puts his trust in Neo as being the "one."

When Neo is removed from the Matrix, it is as though he is being reborn. His physical body needed to be "rebuilt." When he first meets Neo, Morpheus offers Neo, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, a choice of two fruits : one that will erase the terrible truth that he has learned, or one that will set him "free."

Morpheus' ship is named the Nebuchadnezzar, after a king of Babylon who was perplexed by a dream he could not understand. Aboard this ship, Neo learns that the last city of free humans is named Zion. This is a parallel of the biblical city, the City of David after buildign the Temple. In the Bible, Zion refers to "the traditional place where the true remnant, the Israel of faith, is to be gathered in the Messianic reign." It is also referred to in the Book of Revelations. Neo also learns that those that are not free are slaves to the Matrix, much like the Hebrews in the book of Exodus.

In explaining the Matrix, Morpheus asks Neo how one defines reality. He says that if reality is based on sight, smell, taste, and touch, then it is reality is nothing but signals to the brain. This is a statement concerning faith and religion versus science. Science cannot prove religious acts. They cannot be explained through physical senses. Throughout the rest of the movie, this theme is touched upon again and again. All in the maturing of Neo. When Trinity and Cypher talk, she asks if he has become a believer. Later, the Oracle tells Neo that he's not the "one" because he's waiting for something. In the final fight, Morpheus says that Neo is beginning to believe. All of these are statements about faith and religion.

And of course, Neo had to make the choice of sacrificing his life for that of Morpheus'.

Note that most of these observations are based on Christianity. I know there are other analogies to other religions as well, however, I'm not knowledgable in those, so I cannot make any comments about them.

The story was first written for a comic book, but those Wachowski bros. decided to make it into a film. They're fans of Hong Kong cinema, so naturally, they wanted to use those kinds of action scenes within this complex storyline they created (which is supposed to be a trilogy by the way). Well, after finally getting the green light (took about two years to convince Warner Bros. heads to do so), they went and got Yuen Woo Ping, one of the best HK fight choreographers and directors (who's worked on Jackie Chan's Drunken Master and Jet Li's Tai Chi Master among many others) to do the action scenes. He agreed on the condition that no stunt doubles would be used and the actors had to train for four months in advance with him. (For the most part, they didn't use doubles, but accidents and injuries do happen, so some doubles were used after Carrie Anne Moss hurt her ankle, and Keanu his neck.) They went through several big name actors for the lead before getting someone who'd agree on those terms and it was Keanu. Yuen did a good job with all the actors, and they look great in the fights. The trademark "wire-fu" is often used for the superhuman fight scenes, as characters run up walls, fly through the air, and punch through walls. By defining the world as a computer simulation, where, as Fishburne's character, Morpheus puts it, "Rules apply like gravity. But some can be bent...others broken," they create an excuse to used the popular wire-kung fu that is most often seen in Hong Kong fantasy films. A homage to John Woo's balletic gun play is also used in one sequence, as Neo and Trinity mow down baddies and millions of bullets fly.

Aside from the great fight sequences, the main attraction of this movie is the cinematography. There are a lot of rarely used camera tricks that really enhance the scifi feeling of the movie. Freeze frame, 360 degree rotation, bird's eye and worm's eye views, and slow motion shots are all used. And you're hit with this from the opening sequence, where Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) fights off some policemen : she jumps to do a kick...the scene freezes and does a 360 rotation around her before continuing. It's used again towards the end in a gunfight scene which has to be seen rather than explained. Another scene involves Keanu and Laurence Fishburne walking through a simulated event, where they freeze all the people around them. While everything else is frozen, Keanu and Laurence continue to move about and talk. Plus there are of course the slow motion bullet scenes shown in the trailer.

This combination of action, effects, and story all give the movie it's unique visual. There aren't many movies out there that take it to this level.

-JoE-
©1999 JMR