The Matrix: Resurrections

 2021, d. Lana Wachowski - digital purchase

I liked, but didn't love, the Matrix, but I did watch it quite a few times prior to the release of the sequels. Once the trilogy was complete, it would be over 15 years between viewing Revolutions in the theater and the trilogy as a whole. Until that rewatch last year, I didn't want more Matrix, I didn't think it had any relevant place in our culture, at least not one that wasn't a raw, toxic nerve. But the rewatch showed me there was definite depth, codified messages, and critiques (both overt and subversive) of our culture that continue to resonate, if you just look past the tedious exchange of gunfire and distracting display of special effects.

After the rewatch, I understood Revolutions as a double entendre, both in the dramatic change of a system of order, and of something moving in cycles. While the trilogy was one cycle, in the end it was quite clear the cycles weren't necessarily over, just changing. In that conceit, I was intrigued by what the next cycle could be, and how it could be different.

Resurrection shows us that, yes, the past cycle did break, but there is a contingent that can't forget how the cycles were, as well as another contingent that has exploited it for even more control, and still another faction that found liberty for themselves but in their comfort gave up on the idea of liberty for all. And then there are the believers, the ones who choose to see, and confront the new cycle they're in, to try and break it, so that things stop revolving and move forward once again.

There's a lot of subtext to this film. There's a meta narrative (working both at the surface and far deeper) of Warner Brothers forcing the Wachowski's hands into returning to something they had left behind, lest it be rebooted completely out of their influence. There's the subject of identity that seems like Lana Wachowski's raw, exposed nerve until she flexes it, showing it instead a muscle. There's a love story that seems as much about loving one's self and accepting one's past as it is about loving someone else. At some point I stopped seeing Neo and Trinity as two separate people but two parts of one whole.

The film defiantly wrestles control away from those that only responded to the trilogy's aesthetic of guns and trenchcoats and bullet- time. It doesn't really care about "cool", and it literally rebuffs bullet-time. Do Neo and Trinity ever even handle guns? It's not as interested in its action sequences (I wonder if that was more Lilly's speciality) as it is it's various story, themes and subtexts, but it's a better film for pouring its energies there than trying to find the next bullet-time effect that only distracts from the story's true core.

I have to wonder, should another Matrix come from Lana (or Lilly or both) whether it will be a meta narrative about accepting that they wont always be able to control the Matrix narrative. This film ends with Neo and Trinity (together as Lana's avatar) setting about rewriting the Matrix's reality, but at some point The Matrix will be out of their hands and the reality as written in the future (with recasted Neos and Trinitys, as there were recasted Morpheus' and Smiths here)?

I think this one's my favourite of the series.

I still think Keanu is a little wooden boy actor, I was confused by Smith's role in the story, I thought some of the special effects looked dodgy, but I didn't care.  In some situations, a film is either going to be about getting the story across or just being a visual spectacle.  Lana foregoes dressing up her empty calories and really leans into the heart.  All the familiar faces from Sense8 reminded me that the Wachowskis now seem to think it much more important to feeding the mind and heart than the eyeballs, and I don't think they're wrong.