THE MATRIX RELOADED

MATRIX RELOADED, THE (vt THE MATRIX 2, working title). Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, dir., script, exec. prod. USA [and Australia]: NPV Entertainment, Village Roadshow Pictures [Australia], Warner, Silver Pictures (prod.) / Warner (US dist.), 2003. Owen Paterson, prod. design. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, featured players. 138 min.

Sequel to THE MATRIX and the central film of the Matrix trilogy. Walter Benjamin concerned himself with The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935); the Wachowski brothers here consider questions of reality and identity in a world of electronic reproduction, including the cybernetic virus-like cloning of the still-villainous Agent Smith and the possible cycling of human/machine history (a handful of cycles of the sort described by Koheleth in the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes [1.9-18], and by Friedrich Nietzsche's Zarathustra in Also Sprach Zarathustra [1883-85]—in a thought experiment on how the Superman "could accept [infinite] recurrence [of his life] without self-deception or evasion" [paraphrase from Britannica 2002 CD, "Nietzsche, Friedrich"]). Note the traditional "Grand Inquisitor Scene" between Neo and The Architect—an avatar of some Central Computer?—before a wall of TV screens reproducing, among other images, Neo. Less philosophically high-flown but perhaps more significant, note the music and mild orgy among humans, and love-making between Trinity and Neo, in Zion while awaiting the attack of the machines: the cold and rather mechanical humans of the film still are capable of passion and the bonds of love. (Contrast scene at the Merovingian's S&M-ish club in MATRIX REVOLUTIONS). Note also: (1) The male-gendered Architect's telling Neo that he, the Architect, with his cold lust for order (Erlich's formulation), was the father of the Matrix, while the grandmotherly Oracle program, with her intuition, was the mother. (2) The conversation between Neo and the Councillor on human/machine relationship and Neo's idea that the key thing is Who's In Charge—and the setting as a postmodernization of the underworld in Lang's METROPOLIS (q.v., also MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME). (3) Appearance here of Agent Smith as virus and of independent programs as characters, both good and bad (developed in REVOLUTIONS). Rev. insightfully—although without the "spoiler" of discussing the "Grand Inquisitor Scene"—by Adam Gopnik, "The Unreal Thing," Critic at Large section, The New Yorker 79.12 (19 May 2003): [68]-73.

5. DRAMA, RDE, 15&16/V/03, 26/VI/03, 14/II/05