more philosophical fodder

Rating: 6/10 (14 November 2003)

The whole NYC crowd laughed throughout the movie. Every time the noise
and action died down enough so that the dialogue had to fend for itself, it
proved to be laughably lame and wooden, and everyone in the theater was
reminded that there weren't a whole lot of actors on the Matrix payroll. On that level, Matrix Revolutions was a failure. I mean, Keanu Reeves is bad enough,
but I kept expecting Ben Affleck to walk onto the set and start reeling off gritty, recycled, heroic, military-action-flick one-liners, all without ever losing that silly smirk that he always has on his face.

But I realize that the accomplishment of the Matrix film might lie elsewhere (I mean, besides the visual style, which remained stunning, even in this poor
conclusion to the series). I think what the W brothers have given us is a
metaphor empty enough that everyone who sees the movie, from third graders
to PhD's, can argue at length about "what it means." All those grad students, IMDBers, bloggers, comic book fiends, and technogeeks out there can state with utter conviction that the Matrix is really all about _______, and they can all be right! That's the beauty of the trilogy. It's an incredibly rich and complicated network of signifiers without any definable connection to any set of signifieds. Another way of saying this is that the Matrix is so filled with ambiguous symbols that it can mean virtually anything, which means that, in the end, it means
virtually nothing, in and of itself.

I've heard it myself. I've listened to two reasonable, intelligent adults argue about specific moments in the film and what they mean in terms of the
constructed, mediated nature of reality. The fact of the matter is (at least I think it's a fact) that the movie can be used to support nearly any ontological position imaginable. What the W brothers have created here is not a statement so much as a vocabulary.

I guess that could be either positive or negative, depending on one's point of view. On the negative side, I keep thinking of the Yeats poem, "Second
Coming," which foresees the end times, when the "best lack all conviction."
Maybe the Matrix trilogy is a true product of our age--an incredibly consuming (time, money, creative effort, careers, etc.) venture that looks great but says nothing. On the positive side, maybe it's a good thing to give people a
philosophical language that is both accessible and flexible, without the
complications of history (as is the case with religious vocabularies) or
intellectual elitism (as is the case with most academic, theoretical vocabularies).

I'm still trying to figure this out, but I guess the Oracle would tell me that I already know the answer; I just have to understand my choice (or something
suitably cosmic and empty like that).
P.S. I would be remiss not to include in a list of Matrix accomplishments the opening of the cast to all genders and ethnicities. It is good to see strong, and sometimes even interesting, characters of many colors and sexes. I like that about the movie.