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COMING IN SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2004:
David O. Russell interviewed about his new film I Love Huckabees
Amy Taubin on Mike Leigh's Vera Drake
Tarnation, My Architect, and the rise of the therapeutic nonfiction film by Paul Arthur
Chuck Stephens on 50 years of films from Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers' studios
Legendary Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Kubelka's new film Poetry and Truth by Alexander Horwath
The current state of cinephilia by Olaf Möller
The videos of Cameron Jamie by Gary Indiana
SURFACE TO SURFACE: THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS
Part Two
Reviewed by Thomas Zummer
a Film Comment online exclusive
Sense and Logic, Error and Annoyance
Why would one put the most important, and most fragile, element of a war machine into the single most vulnerable and least protected position? I am of course referring to the APUs, the large anthropomorphic robotic machines that serve as a primary line of home defense in Zion. Each requires a human operator; the interface is primitive, little more than a "full-body data glove" (compare this technology with Zion Control, a simulation seen briefly in The Matrix Reloaded); aside from the dual offensive weapons, the only protection is a roll bar! While this sort of apparatus might be appropriated in a pinch (as when Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley does just that with a similar apparatus in Aliens) the likelihood that such devices would be purposely designed and mass-produced as fighting vehicles is extremely remote. While there is some suggestion of detournement (of survivors in Zion adapting certain older technologies to their own purposes) in The Matrix Reloaded, this notion seems to have been abandoned in The Matrix Revolutions. To what end? Perhaps it is better to ask: to what effect? These cumbersome, familiar, machines are activated, coming to life in imitation Ray Harryhausen stop-frame lurches, to line up in a paired column, where they give, in unison, a salute, raising their prosthetic fists in the air in defiance. They then march off to take up their various "strategic" positions. As the first of the machines, diggers and sentinels, penetrate the interior of Zion's dome, the APUs - like bizarre mechanical cowboys - "draw" their weapons, and begin firing in rapid, constant, double-fisted, volleys, at the invading machines. The constancy, direction, vectors, and timing of interactions between antagonistic machines, the interplay of the camera's POV and cutaways, define this space as more akin to that of a gamespace than anything else. Is it possible to recover some sense from this which supports either the "reality" of Zion as a territory outside of simulation, or do we stay within the conceit of the (possible) narrative and reformulate Zion as a secondary simulation? Both seem to be rather problematic - and unsatisfying - positions, given the established protocols relating simulation to dissimulation. The stupidity of making of Zion into such a simulation so thoroughly undercuts the verisimilitude of the primary simulation - The Matrix itself - that the whole premise, between the real and the illusory, and even between different levels or strata of simulation, collapses. Why, for example, would the subjects of one "world," whose simulated images knowingly or unknowingly abide by (most of) the protocols of the real within one simulation, give themselves over to one within which they are parodies of the real? Any "real-world situation" necessary to ground the difference between simulation and dissimulation simply disappears.
There are other such odd moments in The Matrix: Revolutions. Why should an artificial intelligence have to take on human attributes-in the form of a massive, writhing "mask," a "simulated" human face made up of thousands of smaller, more elementary, machines, in order to communicate? Is it just to reference The Wizard of Oz, a notable cinematic simulation dissimulated? Perhaps, but the unmasking of the "all-powerful" wizard, one might recall, also took place within a dream or delirium. At another point Agent Smith, under assault by Neo, who is linked in collusion with the machine intelligence at the Source, begins to become confused at the height of his apparent triumph. It is a remarkable moment, the inverse of the "auto-deconstruction" demonstrated by HAL, as he is systematically disengaged, in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Smith's confusion is manifest at the beginning of the continuum of his demise, and not, like HAL, at the very end. What are we to make of this?
At the very end, after the sacrifice of Trinity and Neo, we see the City from a wooded park, a beautiful - and artificial - image of a city at dusk. Green and blue filters have given way to a yellow filter, and Sati, in the form of a small child, the last of the exile programs, is asked if she did that. She nods, and says "For Neo." What has happened? Are we in another Matrix, a subsequent iteration of the same, caught indeed in an eternal recurrence, or are we in a different space entirely? We have seen the spaces within The Matrix multiply and differentiate, just as various entities - simulations - have. There are all sorts of spaces, from the limitless white expanses of the pre-Matrix in the first film, to various "back doors" and secured territories, links and conduits - the spaces governed by the Merovingian, or the Architect - to Zion Control, a simulation that must have somehow differentiated itself from The Matrix proper. And finally, among all of these fissioning, volatile spaces, and their diverse foreign and native populations, one might ask a simple question: where is The Matrix?
Still, there are some moments which are utterly and strangely sublime. The pure and motile abstraction that occurs as the camera zooms in to focus on the swirling mass of sentinels, is framed perfectly, an exquisite instant of loss, a sensory overload. The cartographic "front" mapping the city streets in a long-distance overhead shot, as Agent(s) Smith flash and wink out of existence is also beautiful. Agent Smith, flying through the air above the City in dark glasses and an Armani suit, in the rain, is ridiculous and transcendent, still another form of the sublime.
Back to (Some) Basics
"The Matrix is everywhere."
-Morpheus, The Matrix, 1999
Everywhere and nowhere. It's easy to forget that the discourse on simulation has quite a long history, and that even in its modern, secular forms (Deleuze, Lyotard, Baudrillard), it issues from profoundly religious strata. There are any number of examples, both obvious and subtle. For example, the etymology: The proper names Thomas Anderson/Neo. "Thomas" has origins in both Greek and Hebrew, and means "a fissioning, a division or split" and at the same time "doubled," "plural" and "twin." Anderson, "son of Andrew," where "Andrew" is the Germanic form of the Greek root "andr," Andros, or "man." "Neo" means new, therefore "a new split/doubled Son of Man." It is hard to defer a reference to a Christ-figure. Especially one whose coming is foretold, who dies, and comes back, to Zion - Jerusalem - the spiritual city of the faithful, with the power to redeem a portion of tattered humanity. "Neo" is also an anagram for "One." One who has been preceded by a Dreamer, a "voice crying in the desert (of the real)," named Morpheus (Sleep) who commands the Nebuchadnezzar, a craft named after a Babylonian king (3) who was so affected by a dream that upon wakening and being unable to remember the dream, pursues its recovery at all cost and to the destruction of his kingdom. There is, to be sure a bit of Platonism here, and maybe a bit of the Manichean as well (at least in the dual and demiurgic relation between Smith and Neo). Smith's double "Bane," from the Old Teutonic "banon," means "a slayer or murderer; one who causes the death or destruction of another." "Smith" a proper name, in spite of its commonality, names nothing, like all proper names. "Smith" is a generalized nomination for an anonymous, ubiquitous, category of individual(s), a name holding place for a name, i.e., a simulation of a name, like "John Doe."
There is also the issue of revelation. "Monster," from the Latin "monstrum" originally meant "something marvelous, originally a divine portent or warning," also an "incredible or repulsively unnatural degree of excellence," and "an abnormality." It is also the root for "monstrance," meaning a "demonstration or proof" and also the name of the specific vessel in the Roman Catholic church within which the host (the transubstantiated body of Christ) is enframed and displayed, revealed to the public. When the machine intelligence manifests (under the name Deus ex Machina), it appears in a circular space within a vessel framed by radiating spires, rising in front of Neo. It is unmistakably the form of a monstrance, a "marvelous appearance" of a "god out of a machine."
Involuntary Memory
The Matrix is itself a machine. The frontality of its exposition as virtual machinery is a driving force of its narrative. Similar "exposures" occur in other films - Total Recall, eXistenZ, Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor, Fight Club, Vanilla Sky - which trace the intricacies of play between simulation and dissimulation. Still, it's The Matrix which is positioned as a "philosophical blockbuster," implying some extracinematic relevance to the contemporary world. Perhaps it's because it's so facile in its references and use of philosophemes, the kernel themes of contemporary philosophy.(4) Or it may just be its fetishized style, and fanatic attention, the sheer mass of its market presence and fan base. Or perhaps it is a strange and new hybrid form, something between science-fiction and philosophy, a form of philosophical fiction-like "kung-fu in Plato's Cave." Perhaps, as Gilles Deleuze says,
It is not a question of a difficulty or comprehension: concepts are exactly like sounds, colors, images, they are intensities, suitable or unsuitable, which one accepts or does not accept: Pop-philosophy. There is nothing to comprehend, nothing to interpret.(5)
The Matrix: Revolutions is a satisfying, even beautiful, film. But in the end, the radical ambiguity of the "possible worlds" of The Matrix, is anchored, fixed, compromised. No longer a Rorschach field which absorbs determinations and interpretations into a conditional, open, field, it is less compelling, less mystifying, and in the end less satisfying for having become so predictable, and so familiar, so quickly. All of the uncanniness - the force of familiar strangeness - has been dissipated, and here we are, left with the tatters of the same old myths, the same old stories. Here we are, "in the desert of the real itself," transfixed within the very cartographies which had preceded, even engendered, the territiory we have traversed, even as we thought it a simulation of something else.(6)
Notes
1. See: "The Precession of Simulacra," in Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994]; See also: "The Tensor," from Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993]; Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, [New York: Columbia University Press, 1999]; "Copy/Simulacrum," Severo Sarduy, Written on a Body, trans., Carol Maier [New York: Lumen Books, 1989]
2. "This is not a spoon," is a play on words, a reference to the well known painting by Rene Magritte, of a pipe, under which is written in a laborious schoolish penmanship, the words "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," "This is not a pipe." See also Michel Foucault's brilliant and delightful book This is Not a Pipe [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983].
3. The story of Nebuchadnezzar can be found in The Bible, Daniel 2: 1-49.
4. See Elie During, "Introduction. La matrice à philosophies," in Matrix machine philosophique, Alain Badiou, et al, [Paris: Ellipses, 2003]. There is the persistent rumor that Keanu Reeves and other actors in The Matrix were assigned mandatory reading materials, among them Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, (see above) and Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization, [Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994]. The Matrix trilogy is a pastiche, a vast combinatory of elements from classical Western mythology - Hesiod, Plato, Plotinus - Buddhist, Hindu, and other, philosophical and scientific, sources as well.
5. From Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues [Paris: Flammarion, 1977]:
Il n'y a aucune question de difficulté ni de compréhension: les concepts sont exactement comme des sons, des couleurs ou des images, ce sont des intensités qui vous conviennent ou non, qui passent ou ne passent pas, Pop-philosophie. Il n'y a rien à comprendre, rien à interpréter.
6. As a final note, I usually try to see any film I am reviewing several times. First, to see it without any presuppositions, second to see if what I write is making any sense (it is difficult to be exacting on one view), and then I usually like to see it again, to see if I was right in my speculations. This time I picked up a pirate DVD version of The Matrix Revolutions - I was traveling out of the country and it was my only opportunity to see it in a timely fashion. It had obviously been shot off a screen during a public projection, since the camera occasionally tilted and wobbled, people coughed or whispered, and on several occasions bodies or the tops of the heads of audience members occluded the frame. There was also a generous amount of ambient sound. Once the tape must have run out, since there was an unaccountable gap in the conduit between worlds scene with Neo stranded at the Mobil Avenue stop. All in all, it was one of the more interesting viewings, a simulation (and dissimulation) of the cinematic, entirely in keeping with the themes of The Matrix.
© 2003 by Thomas Zummer
BACK TO PART ONE
