An annoying sermon

Rating: 5/10 (6 March 2011)

I guess everyone has once seen a church service young American denominations-style. It's like female choir is singing, someone's playing synth or guitar, and a priest in front of them shouts "God is love", and "Jesus loves you." The lambs shout back these things and all other stuff which is familiar to everyone who has heard something of Christianity.
"The Matrix" has very much in common with such ceremonies. An action movie with an original aesthetics and slow motion can be interesting to watch, just like listening to gospels is sometimes an unalloyed pleasure. But the problem about "The Matrix" is its annoying sermon. With an incredible solemnity and wannabe-prophetical intonation we're fed with an alloy of the most common places philosophy knows. The famous "There is no spoon" phrase - Neo's pupils widen, now he understands everything. A stupid watcher is supposed here to make two or three thinking operations and feel satisfacted for being smart. The intention is simple - or I give too much credit for Wachowskis, maybe this half- philosophy is really the ultimate one for them.
It's possible to associate solipsism and platonism with a modern virtual reality concept cleverly and softly. Wachowskis, however, do it boldly and pushily. Even the spoon quote is not enough, they also use messiah figure, i.e. Neo himself. Now it's a serious business. Neo's gonna show people what they don't wanna see (quote-unquote). The film starts to fail in amusement at once because Neo hogs the story's blanket; however, film's grandiloquence increases to an unbelievable level.
Thus, "The Matrix" is an example of movie which is trying to seem what it's not. Wachowskis try to insert their simple story of people in stylish black coats into as many classical contexts as possible: here we have Nebuchdenazzar, and messiah, and also Morpheus, - whilst the ideological concept is more like of a high school student's essay on a subject of philosophy, compiled in one night before deadline. That's what is the word "tedious" exists.
Nevertheless, it occurred to be the rightest thing. (By the way, effectiveness of such model is well-known: in literature it's exploited by Richard Bach and Paolo Coelho, to name a few.) More than ten years have passed, and still millions of Wachowskis' lambs singing and dancing, and repeating whatever the siblings say. "There is no spoon," chant Wachowskis. "There is no spoon," echoes the congregation deliriously.