Take the Red Pill!

Rating: 10/10 (6 July 2018)

Really good films often work on multiple levels. The best art is art that is profound enough to make us think, yet abstract enough to allow for multiple interpretations. The Wachowski brothers' film The Matrix does that and more.
Keanu Reeves plays a computer whiz named Neo. When Neo starts getting messages from his computer, his life is turned upside down. A woman named Trinity contacts him because the great cyber-rebel Morpheus (Laurence Fisburne) is looking for him. When Morpheus and Neo finally meet, Morpheus explains that reality as we know it is a cyber-illusion. The "machine" has taken over the world and is literally feeding on human energy, while the humans are oblivious having been placated by their virtueless virtual reality.
One approach to this film is to see it as an excellent example of postmodern art and as an analyis of postmodern society. Our first clue to this interpretation is the book Neo hides things in-entitled Simulacra and Simulation. The concept of simulacra refers to the blurring of the line between reality and fiction-a copy for which there is no original. If we see The Matrix through this lens, the film becomes an interesting parable about modern society. This blurring of the line is a common theme these days (EDTV, Celebrity, Mad City, The Truman Show, Wag the Dog), and this film is an engaging addition to a growing body of work. Invite your favorite philosophy professor or social theorist and you can spend a few hours afterwards discussing phenomenology and the social construction of reality.
At another level, we can approach The Matrix by analyzing "the machine." If you just got back from a weekend of training with the Michigan Militia, the machine can be seen as intrusive government that is manipulating the media to blind us to reality. For those of us who lean a bit left of center, the machine can be seen as the capitalist world system that exploits the poor, and ravages the impoverished nations of the earth, but keeps us plugged in by fantasies of the good life.
For the less political, there are a number of religious and spiritual themes sprinkled throughout the movie. Morpheus and Neo end up looking a bit like John the Baptist and a Messiah figure respectively-including the proclamations by Morpheus that Neo is "the one" (which is an anagram of Neo). In other scenes, Morpheus comes across like a New Age Zen master, or Yoda with an attitude.
If all this work at multiple meanings makes your head hurt, the final alternative is to approach the film as a well-written action/adventure science-fiction film. There are some outstanding special effects and some interesting action scenes. In the end, it is the complexity of the multidimensional story that makes this movie work. A definite thumbs up for one of the more interesting stories so far this year.