19.08.1999

System failure

James Robertson reviews 'The Matrix'

This is a mainstream Hollywood film. This is no proof of quality of course, though ‘arthouse’ or ‘intellectual’ films are not necessarily better. Like many of the mass forms of entertainment, however, it has food for the mind as well as for the inner schoolboy/girl.

Here are the basics: Mr Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is a humble computer software employee who is arrested one day by agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) and his FBI-like organisation. Anderson is told that he is leading a double life: by day he is an office worker, but at night he is engaging in virtually every computer crime in the book. In particular, he has tried to contact Orpheus (Larry Fishburne), described by Smith as a “terrorist”. After Anderson gives Smith the finger in response to the agent’s call upon him to turn informer, a bug is planted on him in a nightmarish scene. Anderson then wakes up - apparently it was only a nightmare.

Afterwards, Anderson is contacted by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) who takes him to see Orpheus after disposing of the bug. Orpheus offers him a choice of pills: if he takes a blue pill, he will be able to go back to his old life. If he takes the red pill, the painful truth will be revealed to him. Anderson, now renamed Neo, takes the red pill. (Incidentally, the choice of colour might be significant.)

He then learns that humanity is being used as battery packs by a race of machines who have conquered them. They are not allowed to learn of their slavery, however, because the machines have built a vast computer programme called the Matrix which constructs a false reality for humans to ‘live’. Orpheus leads a small group of humans who are trying to fight the Matrix and who are constantly in danger of being hunted down and destroyed.

To reveal more would do a disservice - however, it is clear to me that the film can be interpreted as a parable of false consciousness. It would be wrong to paint the film too red, but the Wachowski brothers made some attempt at social criticism in their earlier film Bound (1997). The two main characters in that film are women who rip off the mafia - the first woman (Jennifer Tilly) is the mistress of a mafioso who rebels against him and takes up with Corky (Gina Gershon), an ex-con who had been jailed for ‘wealth redistribution’.

Marxists should enjoy The Matrix. Look forward to ‘System Failure’!

James Robertson