Ok. It would be a mistake to say the Matrix sucks. It created a new vocabulary of visual effects that is no doubt very cool. I like watching the DVDs with the sound off because then I can just enjoy the way it all looks without worrying about how much the plot drives me nuts.

I will complain mainly about the first one because the plot becomes more and more incomprehensible after the first.

So first. The plot needs you to believe that reality can be fabricated. You have to believe this or the rest of the movie doesn’t make any sense. Neo is unplugged and introduced to a new reality.

It works something like this: The reality you used to know was all made up and wasn’t real. What’s real is this: You are a battery for some evil computer. But the crux of the problem here is this: if you believe, as the plot needs you to believe, that reality can be fabricated then the necessary problem here is what proof is there that this new reality – which makes considerably less sense than the first reality – is any more real? Listen to your heart, I believe is the proof they offer up. The plot requires you to believe simultaneously that while reality can be manufactured that this second reality is real. That’s a difficult trick. Especially when the second reality, a paranoid fantasy, makes much less sense than the first and can be evidenced only by the heart of Neo which was never quite right in the first place. It’s very difficult to cheer for this hero and this new reality because I’ve already surrendered to the posit that reality can be faked.

More significantly, the only character that makes any sense is the villain that wants to return to the former reality. And of course he does. Who wouldn’t? What I mean is this: If I live and think and feel and eat and see and screw and have faith and die and think that I’m free, is it any different than actually being free? Why in God’s name would I want to be shaken from this living dream of freedom to be made to understand that none of it was real? That I didn’t really taste the steak, I just thought I did? That I didn’t really fall in love, I just thought I did? Instead, I’m a battery, I’m a fuel-source for some horrible evil?

If I live and believe and die and think that I’m free, that’s the most any of us could hope for. And if I had my choice I would rather believe that than believe that I’m a fuel source, fighting alongside some horribly misguided paranoid hero in some crusade to unplug all the suffering souls from that reality machine so that they could know too that they were a battery and that they could join the fight against the greatest illusion ever.

In fact, faith is something like that illusion. Even if it’s wrong, or at the least, erroneous, it brings joy and meaning. And a life of meaning and joy makes more sense than anything else I can think of. In fact, now that I think of it, Matrix is very much about the upheaval of faith. But not just that, not just the upheaval and the corrosion of faith but the natural conclusion, a new faith. But the new faith is much worse. Life is wrong. God is wrong. Reality is wrong. And it’s now your job to unplug everybody else, to save everybody else, to convert everybody else. And what a hero’s job that will be. And, if a few innocents are killed (as they often are in the Matrix) well that’s the price of freedom.

Suspension of disbelief is not just difficult then, but dangerous. The movie is much more impressive on mute. But so many movies are. I know I feel better for saying so.

SS