The Matrix @25: Queering the Canon

by Cláudio Alves

Happy Easter! Happy Trans Day of Visibility!! Happy 25th anniversary to The Matrix!!! As luck would have it, these three occasions coincided this year, making for a lovely little cinematic celebration. After all, The Matrix is probably the most famous work by trans filmmakers – the Wachowski sisters – and Neo's journey can be seen as an allegory of gender identity. It was somewhat devised as such by its closeted auteurs who've reclaimed their work's intrinsic queerness after it became a powerful reference for the MRA movement and the alt-right. Like many misappropriated movies, The Matrix doesn't deserve its fans. Or, perhaps more accurately, a good portion of its fandom doesn't deserve The Matrix in all its glory.

But Neo isn't just a queer icon. He's also something of a Jesus figure, a Messiah for our cyber-noir future, bedecked in fetish fashions, armed with kung fu moves and impossible firepower. And like Christ, he is risen…

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The shortest review you will read of "The Matrix Resurrections"

by Nathaniel R

Cons: I didnt understand a lick of The Matrix Resurrection (did you have to memorized the first three?), especially the last act "rescue" involving brain switching which played like a techno-babble illogic exposition in order to give us a botched Sense8 body-switching visual. On the other hand, writer/director Lana Wachowski claiming such ownership from behind the camera felt satisfying despite playing at times like meta snark. Definitely did not enjoy the suggestion that therapists are evil even though the cat with the bell was damn cute. 

Pros: Absolutely loved Jonathan Groff as the new "Mr Smith". Witnessing Keanu & Carrie-Anne fall back in love was a good time; they've always looked sensational together and age-appropriate, too, so that was a rare doublesexy 50something thrill. This has been my review. 

Yours?

Best Shot Season Finale: The Matrix (1999)

I'm not proud to say so but I'd probably take the blue pill. 

BEST SHOT

It's not that I reject reality so much as that I keep misplacing it. It's easy to forget about it you're drawn to the fantasy. My spirit animal is Cecilia in The Purple Rose of Cairo, what can I say?

So here we are completing another season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot and again I've scheduled the final episode for the very moment I'm about to leave the country giving me no time whatsoever to produce anything like a suitable Season Finale with enough pomp and circumstance. [Note to self: Season Six must end before the suitcase has come down from the shelf for the Toronto International Film Festival.] So I'll make it up to you with a little look back at Season 5 in a couple of days.

But that image above, more than any other... apart from the cascading green symbols as visual motif (remember when that screensaver was all the rage?), is what I think of when I think of The Matrix. It needs us to embrace utter fabrication and complicated fantasy for the film to work and yet, as its narrative throughline it demands that Neo completely reject the same for cold hard wet and slimy truth. Is this what the dystopian genre is inherently for, to present dark truths about humanity and our future in the comforting garb of the unreal while screaming "REALITY!" as it pretzels itself back into fantasy like the greatest of contortionists?

I think so. 

Here's what the 12 other Best Shot Participants chose as their defining image. 

THE MATRIX (1999) BEST SHOTS
click on the image for the corresponding article 

The Film's The ThingAntagony & EcstasyFilm ActuallyEntertainment JunkieSorta That GuyLam Chop ChopPop Culture CrazyVideo ValhallaCinematic CornerDancin' Dan on Film
Allison TooeyBest Shot in the DarkTeo Bugbee

What image defines The Matrix for you? Do you see it here?

How long has it been since you've seen The Matrix?

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...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: MEMENTO

"What are you going to do when you find him?"In honor of cinematographer Wally Pfister's recent Oscar win (Inception) and the 10th anniversary of Memento's theatrical release (today), we're looking back on Chris Nolan's breakthrough for the season 2 debut of Hit Me With Your Best Shot.

Memory and its malleability are the skeleton themes which Memento's inky flesh clings to. Leonard (Guy Pearce), who has lost both his wife and his short term memory to a murder/rape, is out for revenge. He tattoos "facts", quotes intended, onto his skin to remember them and he also takes polaroids; these repetitive shots of skin and photography are the movie's signature images. My "best shot" naturally combines them both.

The most ingenious thing about the screenplay's reverse construction is that as you become acclimated to it you start to wonder how each scene will begin in order to get to where you know it's already ended. The same thing happens with the polaroids. After a few of them are revealed you begin to wonder how each was taken. So in addition to Memento's overarching mystery "What exactly happened with that murder?" you get the continually evolving mini-mysteries of what the hell is going on has just gone on?

The final crucial polaroid, which is actually the first in true chronology is this spookily cheerful one of Leonard, pointing to his chest. This is a space we already know he has left empty on purpose, for (maybe) hen his revenge is complete. But that's too literal as he's also pointing to his heart. He looks nothing like the Lenny we've come to know.

Look how happy you were.

Lenny flips it over but no clues await him on the other side. The clue we're looking for this late (i.e. early) in the game is not what happened but who Lenny is or has become. Later in the narrative (i.e. earlier in the film) he'll turn the photo over again while talking to a cop about how no one trusts him. It's an especially telling moment as it's the only time he's not looking for clues by flipping a picture over. "We all need mirrors" he says at one point in the film but he obviously doesn't want to see this particular reflection.

Chris Nolan has returned to these themes of self deception and adjusted memory in subsequent films, but it works best in Memento. Returning to this impressive calling card ten years later,  the biggest shock to the memory is how much fun it is. Each scene involving Dodd (Callum Keith Renne of Battlestar Galactica fame) in particular has a bracing dark humor.

This sense of humor is not referenced to imply that the film fails to intrigue or haunt with its disturbing undertow. It's just that Nolan's subsequent films have often been clever without exactly being "a gas" (just occassionally gassy). I'd be hesitant to call Memento Nolan's best film without rescreening The Prestige but it sure makes a strong claim.

Do I know you?
I urge you to check out these entries. I'm usually pretty proud of my own pieces for this series but I still felt a bit of the old disconnect with Nolan (I've always had to look at the critical reception of his work at a certain remove) and honestly I think some of these accomplices have outdone me with their pieces. Bravo.

FACT 1: Pussy Goes Grrr chose a vulnerable fleshy moment.
FACT 2: My New Plaid Pants sees the symmetries and the fog of memory.
FACT 3: Cinephilia & Sass remembers Sammy Jenkis.
FACT 4: Okinawa Assault identifies the bullet casing as totem.
FACT 5: Serious Film doesn't trust Teddy's lies.
FACT 6: Movies Kick Ass doesn't trust Nolan's eyes.

and my apologies... I forgot to link to...
FACT 7: Amiresque is waiting for Natalie to come into focus. Beautiful choice, Amir!

late arrivals!
FACT 8: Against the Hype knows that Memento knows from irony; "it peddles unabashedly in it."
FACT 9: Luisergho finds the facts touching.

Next Wednesday...
We'll be gazing at two bonafide immortals, Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando, in the well-Oscared classic A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951). It's part of our weeklong celebration for the Tennessee Williams Centennial. If you've never seen it, talk about a perfect opportunity to fill that void in your life. Will you join us?