Last weekend I decided it was time to burn through the DVD queue instead of sitting wordless at my computer. But when I opened the latest rental, The Good Fairy (1935) -- no, I can't remember why I rented it -- the disc was broken. We ended up watching The Matrix (1999) instead because when a black and white Willam Wyler / Preston Sturges comedy starring Margaret Sullavan is denied you, what other movie will do? LOL.
Warner Bros had sent the BluRay and The Boyfriend remarked that we hadn't seen it since opening night in 1999. It seems like one of those movies we've all seen a million times but in my case that's only because it became such a pop culture staple. Not even its gobsmackingly terrible sequels could shake its grip on the zeitgeist.
The Matrix's modern blend of Alice in Wonderland, gun fetish porn, visual effects bravado, and technophobic dystopia was just what people craved in 1999 when the internet was so obviously and rapidly changing the world. It's tough to even think of a world without the web now but in the early 90s it was still something like a strange and unusual toy... unnerving even if you were hopelessly analog. Watching the movie now in 2012 is kind of a retro shock.
Six observations while watching the movie in 2012...
1. The movie is badly dated by its nineties understanding of computers. If there's one single object that most defines and dominates the movie (besides the gun) it's... the telephone. Just 3 years later Steven Spielberg's Minority Report would prove remarkably prescient and predict that computers would go completely wireless and touch screen. The Matrix won four Oscars including both Sound awards and in scene after scene the now antiquated sounds of landline phone rings and modem connections dominate the sound mix in nearly every sequence.
2. The movie is very very green though it was clearly blue that won the color wars at the movies. I feel like cheering every time an action movie doesn't use blue filters. It's so rare now.
3. The visual effects are still pretty spectacular, even if the instant "wow" of those three dimensional frozen in space camera spins have been all but drained of energy by their sheer abundance in everything from commercials to infotainment shows to countless movies in the subsequent 13 years. For me the image that was most (literally) impactful was the helicopter sequence which features a dangling Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), weirdly rippling buildings, and spider-web like glass shattering.
"There is no spoon."4. The actors are super fun: Hugo Weaving is sublimely inhuman as the the computer program known as "The Agent"; Keanu Reeves unique status as the most enjoyable, beautiful, and loveable of all Terrible Actors makes him a bizarrely perfect choice as the blank slate techno geek "Neo" (an anagram for "The One" because few sci-fi movies ever dare go without a Neo-Christian Salvation Myth); Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss are both appropriately stylized, minimizing their inflections in their line readings to adapt to Keanu Reeves vocal limitations and the movies own concept of humans who aren't exactly emotionally expressive once they "wake up" in a dead world ruled by Artificial Intelligence.
5. The violence porn leaves an especially sick aftertaste, given that we're told again and again that mankind is trapped and imprisoned and innocent (we don't know that the world we live in is a false construct) and yet the "heroes", who The Agent queasily correctly labels as "terrorists", are constantly slaughtering other humans even when they don't need to in the action sequences. The Wachowski Siblings film each death and the bullet fallout with loving "violence is so cool!" detail and slo-mo hipster posing.
6. The Matrix's action sequences won Zach Staenberg the Best Film Editing Oscar at the time and that was a smart move on the Academy's part. Of all the ways in which The Matrix is now dated his editing work is the most pleasurable and, alas, bittersweet. You can actually follow and understand all of the action sequences! Imagine it!!! It's one of the great failings of the modern cinema that action sequences are now virtually incomprehensible (unless James Cameron is directing them) with their insistence on intense closeups and supersonic shard-like cutting. Here in The Matrix every beat and movement is blissfully choreographed and legible, and the camera allows you to see the movements of the lithe actors in all their sleek costumed glory.
...they know kung fu.
Would love to hear your personal experiences with this movie in the comments. Have at it.