What is The Matrix?

Rating: 10/10 (4 April 1999)

What is The Matrix?
You cannot be told - The Matrix is something you have to experience for yourself.
What is reality? Is it something you can Taste? Feel? Smell? What if these senses can be manipulated, and it can be proven that those things you experience as real are simply constructs - computer programs which stimulate you just as you would be stimulated by the actual. What then?
The time then comes to have a different measuring stick for reality. If you can be manipulated to believe something is true which is not true, what other defense is there but to exercise free will - to be able to bend what happens and how things work to your view of how things should be.
In order to do that, you must understand how things work. And you must believe in who you are.
These are just some of the themes of this film - an important science fiction movie masquerading as a John Woo, Hong Kong action-adventure film, plugged into a video game. What may be lost the first time you see this is how The Matrix makes fun of these genres - the main character, a computer hacker named Neo, goes through the classic kung fu movie arc - from student, to teacher to master, but then he transcends the game entirely, by finally holding off his foe with one hand, as he goes to the next level of the game. This subversive humor plays throughout the movie, as it sneaks up on you with Big Questions, which resonate more and more in these days of moral relativity... for example, currently in the Real World ethnic Albanians are fleeing Kosovo. Why? The U.S. says they're fleeing Serbian ethnic cleansing. The Serbs say they're fleeing NATO bombing. Who's right? Ask the people fleeing!
In order to be able to find the answers, you have to know the right questions, and The System which is running when those questions are being asked.
And that system is The Matrix.