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I found this last night, it's an interesting read so I figured I'd post it. When the guy mentions Zorak he's referring to his friend.
The original text can be found here: http://old-oligarch.blogspot.com/
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In the war for Zion, you get as much high-tech special effects as you expect from the trailer of the last movie. Staggering amounts of simulated evil machines vs. human-powered machines fighting each other in vast industrial regions. They also spared no expense on the "Machine City" scenes or Niobe's incredible ride on the Hammurabi.
But the remaining philosophical questions are by far the more important for the merit of the film. Those questions included:
1) Will the movie ultimately side with a realist perspective, or a subjectivist one? Will the ostensibly "real" world we see in Matrix 1 & 2 turn out to be just another mental construct? More importantly, will same be said about the values and meaning of human life within the real world. Is it matrices all the way down?
2) Will the movie endorse free will or determinism? While only evil characters endorse fate (Agent Smith, the Merovingian), the movie hasn't said the final word on this yet.
3) What is Neo's purpose? The answer to this question is critical to the interpretation of both Matrix 1 andMatrix 2. As I said in my second post on Matrix 2, Neo has failed to grasp his purpose / his destiny by the end of the second movie. The Oracle constantly tries to guide him to realizing his own raison d'etre, which she cannot tell him, but he must discover for himself (but he clearly hasn't yet). Likewise, the Merovingian continually mocks Neo for not understanding his reasons for acting. My original comments are the most concise:
"The Merovingian berates Neo for coming to him just because other people (Morpheus, the Oracle) have told him to do so. Like other pitiful human beings (the girl who eats the cake), Neo has failed to escape the ubiquitous dynamic of cause and effect. He does not act with his own innate sense of purpose, according to goals of his own design, like the free programmers do (such as the Architect, Merovingian, Agent Smith). If the third movie is going to solve anything important, it is this question, and with relation to Zion.
"Heretofore, Neo has acted simply out of reaction to the amazing events of being drawn out of the Matrix, unplugged, and launched into a battle whose scope and purpose he has yet to fully comprehend. What will Neo's telos be? What positive goal will he end up adopting as his mission, rather than simply staving off evil? Moreover, until Neo makes sense of the purpose of life outside of the illusory world of the Matrix, it is hard to give a complete answer to Cypher's Dilemma at the end of the first movie, which is the major question of that film. (Cypher is willing to take the red pill, forget he was ever unplugged, and live happily ever after in the illusion of the Matrix -- a privilege he gets in exchange for betraying Neo.) "
4) Is there a coherent explanation for all the Christian allusions? And Gnostic allusions? I have never sided with critics who have claimed that all these allusions are thrown into the movie for "wow value" and to add the facade of depth. There is clearly the potential for a profoundly religious message in the movies, and there is also the bourgoning Messianism in Zion, as a growing minority of people place their hopes in Neo.
5) Is the philosophical / religious message of the movie ultimately sound? In the final analysis: How syncretic is it? How Gnostic is it? How "Eastern" is it? How modern is it?
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| quote: | OK. Straight into spoilers. Indeed, I'm not going to spend too much time on telling you the plot. You'll have to see it for yourself. I'm diving straight into my apologia for the movie, since I liked it, and Zorak did not. I am writing this before reading anything else, so I'm curious to see how other people reacted to movie, but I won't let that bias my own assessment.
The entire philosophical value of the movie rests on the words and actions in the Super Burly Brawl, the in-house name given to the final, apocalyptic fight scene where Smith and Neo trade blows on the order of megatons, exploding buildings, causing earthquakes, and generally behaving like meteors until they settle down to some mano-a-mano dialectic at the end.
Getting ready to assess the film, I realized that the pressure on the third movie was intense. In my mind, the Wachowskis faced a dichotomy, having raised so many philosophical questions which are central to the Western tradition. Would they chicken out and run? Would they prove critics correct who claim that all the religious allusions are merely window dressing designed to make the film look "deep"? To avoid endorsing a worldview, the Wachowskis could have provided an intentionally ambiguous ending and hid behind that dishonest old disclaimer of authorial responsibility: "the audience must figure it out." This would be lame. Matrix: Rev was not lame. They took a side. They took the right side. Thus the movie gets my unqualified thumbs up.
But let's not skip ahead. Before seeing the film, I thought to myself: If the Wachowskis do offer a definitive answer to the central philosophical questions -- if they do show us a Neo who understands the nature of his mission as Messiah -- we should not expect this answer to be a better answer than the Gospel itself. Let that sink in for a minute, because I think it's key. If you're Christian, don't be disappointed if the Matrix doesn't offer you an alternative narrative of the salvation of man or the next best thing since Nietzsche. Rather, be happy. The Matrix: Rev doesn't give us a radically new story, but a radically new way of telling it. If Neo is the Messiah, the best possible outcome for the movie would be to depict a Christlike Messiah. And in large measure, that is what we get. If Zorak or others are disappointed by this, they can explain why.
To take my earlier questions one by one:
1. Will the movie ultimately side with a realist perspective, or a subjectivist one? Agent Smith's speech at the end of the Super Burly Brawl makes it clear that the movie endorses the side of realism. There is no matrix within a matrix. More importantly, Neo explicitly affirms (while Smith denies) the existence of an absolute good, truth and freedom, as well as the unconditional goodness of love. Smith asserts that all these things are merely human constructs: arbitrary, changeable, ephemeral constructions "just like the Matrix," and Neo emphatically denies it. Then he triumphs over Smith. Booyah.
Whoever wrote Agent Smith's monologues redeemed the crappy speeches in Matrix: Reloaded. The only speech to miss the mark in Revolution was Trinity's final scene. Why can't they write for a woman with depth? Niobe had more depth. Sheesh.
2) Will the movie endorse free will or determinism? Here again, the movie clearly endorses free will. Both the Oracle and Neo make critical decisions based on their own belief in the reality of human freedom and the non-existence of fate. We've seen this before in the second movie. (When Neo first visits the Oracle, she says he is not The One, but when he returns after his showdown with the Architect, she says he is The One. Likewise, Neo alters what has seemed to be Trinity's inevitable death at the end of the second movie.) But the ultimate endorsement of freedom vs. fate hangs in the balance as long as the two pro-determinism antagonists are in play: Agent Smith and the Merovingian. In the Super Burly Brawl, it is clear that Neo's decisions to journey to the Machine City and to keep fighting until death have destroyed the inevitability of the future which Smith says he has repeatedly foreseen, a future in which Smith is victorious.
3) What is Neo's purpose? Neo realizes that as Messiah / The One, he must ultimately die to bring about the universal salvation of mankind. Moreover, Neo dies for the sake of agape -- not philia or eros.
All of the personal motivations for Neo to continue on his mission are progressively stripped away: Morpheus' faith has already collapsed by the end of Reloaded. The continual hope offered by the Oracle dies after Smith kills her. And in the end, Neo loses the hitherto ultimate motivation of Trinity's love.
Zorak was unhappy with the decisive dialogue between Agent Smith and Neo when Smith relentlessly asks Neo why he won't stop fighting. Just a few lines ago, Smith has savaged all the higher-order universals: Goodness, Truth, Freedom, Purpose, Love. Neo's reply is clearly framed as the raison d'etre of human existence. And from among these five he chooses to emphasize -- Ack! -- freedom.
At this point, I got very concerned for the sake of the movie. It seemed to veer -- at this pivotal moment -- in the direction of voluntarism or existentialism. Was the movie endorsing a view wherein the answer to the meaning of human existence lies in the fact that we are free to ask and to answer this very question for ourselves? Was I seeing the existentialist glorification of the unanswerable mystery of man's freedom as the meaning of life itself? Was Neo, in effect, repeating the gayest Rush line ever: "I choose free will"? Or was I seeing the typical post-Enlightenment elevation of the will as an end in itself? "What is the meaning of life, Neo?" "The fact that we can do whatever we want, Smith."
But don't conclude that the movie blew it just because Neo emphasizes freedom as the key to the meaning of human existence in his speech. Remember that while Neo is giving this speech in the Matrix, he is also, in the Machine City, performing an equally important act.
There, in the heart of the fortress of death itself, Neo has chosen, out of pure agape, to spread his arms out in the form of the cross and to allow the machine to jack into him. Likewise, moments later in the matrix, Neo accepts the fatal blow from Agent Smith whereby Smith "overwrites" his code onto Neo, since Smith believes that he will kill Neo just as he has killed the Oracle. The parallels to the Passion of Christ in this scene are unmistakable. Neo allows himself to "become sin" in order to permanently destroy "sin." Just as the Lord takes upon Himself, in mind and in body, the entire experience of human disintegration and depravity, so too Neo is pumped full of machine ports and he allows himself to be completely subsumed by the inky black hatred of Smith's code which violently burns to destroy everything human. In so doing, Neo "destroys death" from the inside out. To paraphrase Gregory of Nyssa, Neo places the bait of his suffering humanity on the hook of his indomitable spirit. When Smith takes the bait, and Neo dies, Neo reconciles all things in himself -- "the equation is balanced." The Machine pronounces "It is Done." (I.e., "It is finished.") The dragging away of the body clearly parallels the deposition from the cross.
So I don't think that Neo's actions in the Machine City permit us to interpret his reply to Smith in the Brawl in a purely voluntaristic or existentialist way. One must interpret both speech and act together. Moderns are right insofar as they emphasize the importance of freedom over determinism, and that emphasis is a key theme of the movie. But freedom is only the "efficient cause" of the moral life, so to speak. In order to have a complete account, you must have a "formal cause" and "final cause" as well, and we see these portrayed unmistakably in Neo's actions: self-sacrificial love. Freedom and self-sacrificial love together give a complete answer to the movie's central question, but the Wachowskis don't want to preach to you, nor hit you over the head with it, and so the point about self-sacrificial love is less prominent in comparison to the explicit endorsement of freedom. If the importance freedom in itself was the sole message of the movie, there would be nothing to separate Agent Smith or the Merovingian from Neo, but it is clearly Neo's belief in an absolute truth and his willingness to die to redeem mankind that sets him apart and allows him to defeat Smith.
On the Christian vs. Gnostic side, therefore, Revolutions definitely came down on the side that salvation is not only for a chosen few elites who possess the esoteric knowledge of the Matrix. Rather, salvation is through self-sacrificial love and faith in The One. We see this concretely in the actions of the minor characters in Zion: Niobe, Link's wife Zee, Morpheus, and the young boy all make professions of faith in Neo before their Zion-saving actions in the film, and they all do so out of motivations of love. Compare the behavior of Cmdr. Lock on the other hand.
Moreover, Revolutions prevents the viewer from adopting any dualistic philosophy of flesh vs. spirit. In the first two movies, the great emphasis on Neo's superpowers gained through self-knowledge and mental mastery of the matrix exalt the spirit so much that one is left to wonder whether The Matrix was a lesson in unalloyed Platonism. But witness the awesome speech given by Bane, the traitor who is possessed by Agent Smith, and his thoroughgoing hatred for the flesh and all incarnate beings! Compare that with the attitude of Neo, Trinity, Morpheus or the Oracle regarding the frailties and finitude of human nature.
So IMHO, you can't ask much more from the movie philosophy: The Messiah is crucified in a one-and-for all act of comprehensive victory over the tyranny of sin and death. Since chances are likely I'll write more on the subject, I'll leave it at that for now.
Some concluding observations:
Zorak hates the optimistic, happy ending. I don't know why. It is a divine comedy. We've seen Hell and Purgatory (or at least Limbo) already in the film. At the end, we don't see heaven, but we do see an earth redeemed from the tyrannical domination of The Machines and flourishing in an era of peace. (Just as the death of Christ inaugurates the New Covenant, which is an era of spiritual peace free from the tyranny of sin.) Two things are clear in the closing exchange between the Architect and the Oracle.
First, just as the Oracle has come back to life despite her apparently death when Smith "overwrote" her, and again, the scene with her lifeless body after Smith is destroyed, so too we have hope that Neo may return someday. Second, We also are told that the balance of power between machines and man may also become unbalanced at some time in the future. This is an analogy to the Second Coming of Christ and the resurgence of tribulations before the apocalypse. It also explains my standing question of why Neo is clearly #6. (We are told there have been 5 "Ones" before him.) Since 7 is the perfect number when things come to completion, and not 6, I was wondering in the second movie whether the young boy who admires Neo so much might be the 7th One. Not so. When Neo comes again, his second coming will be as the 7th One.
The young boy, IMHO, is St. John: the youngest apostle, the beloved disciple. We see him rushing out to evangelize Zion when he realizes that Neo has saved the city. |
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