By Hitesh Joshi • Feb 7th, 2008 • Filed under: Film Review, Hollywood, Movies, Thought

Hitesh Joshi reflects on Matrix Reloaded

The Wachowski brothers fascinated the world with their 1999 classic The Matrix, with its unprecedented visual effects & refreshingly original screenplay. And if you thought the first one was a mindbender, the sequel has so much more complexity to deal with. So much so, that I had to literally rewind many of the scenes to get a sense of the dialogues, some of which are downright mind-boggling.

The all-star includes Keanu Reaves (Neo), Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus), Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity), Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith), & Gloria Foster (The Oracle) – who are the mainstay of the original flick – and many new faces, including Helmut Bakaitis (The Architect), Harry J. Lennix (Commander Lock), Jada Pinkett Smith (Niobe), and some eye candy in the form of Monica Bellucci (Persephone). There are many more characters, aptly personifying the complex plot and storyline.

Just to give a context, the original movie ends with Neo finally discovering what the Matrix is and starting to believe that he is The One, who will save Zion, the last human inhabitancy on Earth. Matrix Reloaded begins with the now famous green code-rain, first forming the words “The Matrix”, and then “Reloaded.” Trinity is shown fighting security guards inside the Matrix, she eventually falls off a building, and is hit by a bullet before a scene showing something hitting the ground. Next, Neo wakes up from this dream and sees Trinity lying beside him in bed. And in vintage Wachowski style, you are left at the edge of your seat wondering where we go from here.

The plot is much more complicated than the first part. And I will try to avoid going into the intricate details as much as possible.

There are many more battle ships, commanded by many more captains, a council of law makers, and a whole generation of people freed from the Matrix living inside Zion, plus many new characters within the Matrix itself. The depiction of the human Resistance in the form of Zion epitomizes one of the underlying philosophies of the movie – a civilization so advanced, and yet living a basic human life, struggling to fight its own creation, and dealing with fundamental beliefs & choices.

This time, the Sentinels are digging towards Zion to destroy it, while Neo, Trinity, & Morpheus are advised by The Oracle to find the Keymaker, who will help them reach the Source Code, the heart of the Matrix, to stop the destruction of Zion. When the Oracle asks Neo what he sees when he dreams of entering the Source, he says he sees a bright white light and then the death of Trinity. After leaving Neo with a reassurance to believe in himself, The Oracle makes a hasty exit. This is followed by an amazing fight sequence between Neo & Agent Smith, who has somehow survived death from the first part & learned to copy himself, like a virus. Neo has developed a capacity to fly like Superman, which he uses to escape from Smith & his myriad clones.

To simplify an elaborate plot, the plan is for Neo to fulfill his destiny as the One by searching for the Keymaker (who is captured by Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), another rogue program within the Martix) and use him to enter the Source, before the Sentinels destroy Zion. The interaction with Merovingian is one of the sequences with complicated dialogues. One of them goes like this: “And this is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it, we fight to deny it but it is of course. Pretend it is a lie, beneath our poised appearance the truth is we are completely out of control. Causality, there is no escape from it, we are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only peace is to understand it, to understand the why.”*

Neo manages to forcefully capture the Keymaker, albeit with a little help from the sexy Monica Bellucci playing Persephone, the wife of Merovingian. But as they try to escape with the Keymaker, they are followed by Merovingian’s goons, which ensues in a spectacular action sequence on a free way, with breathtaking special effects. New characters simply called the Twins are something to watch out for. Meanwhile, Agent Smith has managed to corrupt / copy himself onto a human called Bane and this clone manages to come back to Zion, effectively as a spy copy of Smith within humans.

After much (virtual) destruction and killing, Neo & Morpheus finally manage to reach the door leading to the Source with the help of the Keymaker. Inside, Neo finds the Architect (played by Helmut Bakaitis), the one who designed the Matrix, the manifestation of artificial intelligence. And what follows is an amazing revelation by the Architect: that Neo is an anomaly within the Matrix – designed to be perfect – and the Architect fails to understand why this has happened. The Answer, according to the Architect, was discovered by “an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche,” which of course is the Oracle. Neo also discovers that there were 5 versions of him before this, all of whom failed to save Zion. But this, his sixth avatar, so to speak, is the most “promising, believing,” and driven by “choice” & his “love” for Trinity.

Meanwhile, Trinity, who was asked by Neo to stay outside (because he had seen her die in his dreams), enters the Matrix to save Neo fearing his death.

“Which brings us at last to the moment of truth wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed and the anomaly revealed as both beginning and end,”* says the Architect, leading Neo to his final choice. One door which will lead him to save Zion, & the other back into the Matrix to save Trinity. Neo chooses to go back into the Matrix, saves Trinity after a Superman like flight to catch her, and ends up coming back to the “real” world of Zion. And ironically, the last scene shows him lying in a bed waiting to recuperate, along side the body of Bane, the human who has been infected / cloned by Agent Smith.

The movie ends with the words “To Be Continued,” with Zion not yet saved from the attack of the Sentinels. This will happen in part three, Matrix Revolutions.

What fascinated me the most about this movie was some of the brilliant dialogues by the Architect, delivered with concise precision, and yet so difficult to fathom!!

Sample this:
“Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts, I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control.”

“Your 5 predecessors were by design based on a similar predication, a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One, while the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific, vis-à-vis love.”

“Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.”

I have tried to simplify the story as much as I could. You can draw your own conclusions. This movie is a must watch for anyone who has ever questioned – what is the meaning of life, what is reality, why do we exist, what is my purpose, why should I “believe” – and many other fundamental queries. Although you may not realise the answers to any of these questions, the movie will definitely leave you with an inquiry about life. My only suggestions are that please watch the original movie and then see Matrix Reloaded. And secondly, watch it when you have enough time to sit back, pause, & reflect on some of the amazing concepts / philosophies / linguistic barrage it throws at you.

It is worth the intellectual stimulus you are bound to experience.

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