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S T H E M A T R I X (1999, Wachowski Brothers) a film about emancipation from the tyranny of machines, of freeing reality from the captivity of illusion; or, is it about being captured by the illusion of such an emancipatory tale? I argue here that The Matrix plays these two possibilities off against one another. In many ways it looks like a conventional kick-ass/machine action movie, although one whose spe-cial effects are undeniably impressive. However, in other ways the film is full of gaps and uncertainties, making it difficult to decide what it is really about. Whilst this may lead towards a view of the film as insubstantial, my contention is that The Matrix is about the possibility of playing the role of a hero. It plays a game with both its characters and its viewers, a game in which reality and illusion are equally open to question.One of the central structuring devices of The Matrix is an exploration of the rela-tionship between humans and technologies, a concern common to many science-fiction (SF) films. Indeed many initial responses to the release of The Matrix noted the opposition between alienating technology and the emancipatory struggles of the human figures. Frequently, the resolution of this conflict has been perceived as a relatively straightforward reassertion of human freedom over the restrictions of a fully technologised environment.1Such a perception of The Matrix assumes a version of humanism, or at least a view of the human as a being that retains the capacity to fight for freedom and autonomy. This in turn fits with Scott Bukatman’s suggestion that in spite of the increased blurring of the human and the technological, a number of SF films retain the vision of a human figure that can resist the challenge to defini-tions: ‘[T]he utopian promise of the science fiction film – the superiority of the human – may be battered and beleaguered, but it is still there, fighting for validation.’2
David Lavery’s analysis of The Matrix relies on a version of this argument; he suggests that Neo’s role within the narrative is to dissolve the illusion of the Matrix, to give the humans back the possibility of their freedom by re-establishing and validating the real world through the actions of the Resistance.3 In generating this 1
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analysis, Lavery compares The Matrix unfavourably to eXistenZ (1999, David Cronenberg) on the grounds that the latter film maintains an uncertainty about the status of the reality in which the characters find themselves. In the absence of a real Real World, eXistenZ ‘while it does imagine seemingly heroic realists fighting against the triumph of illusion, has no such faith [about the possibility of knowing the real world]. For even they cannot escape from the ever-recursive game of eXistenZ and TransCendenZ.’4 Lavery’s position, like several reviews of The Matrix, not only gives Neo the status of a human who can vanquish machines and be a Messiah, but also assumes that within The Matrix the status of the Real World is certain. In contrast, I argue that The Matrix, whilst very different to eXistenZ, is as full of gaps and uncertainties, and that these gaps and uncertainties lead to a mistrust of the reality status of both the Matrix and the Real World. In The Matrix, the extent of the illusion, or the depth of the rabbit hole, is not the only thing in doubt; so too is the question of where it begins and ends.
In order to think about the uncertainties of The Matrix I draw on the idea of paraspaces. In Terminal Identity Scott Bukatman uses science fiction writer and critic Samuel R. Delaney’s notion of paraspaces to introduce the idea of juxtaposed alter-native worlds. As two worlds (or more) are aligned with each other, the events occurring in one world produce a commentary on events in the other(s). Delaney (quoted in Bukatman) suggests that a number of science fiction writers ‘posit a normal world – a recognizable future – and then an alternate space, sometimes largely mental, but always materially manifested, that sits behind the real world, and in which language is raised to an extraordinarily lyric level’.5 Delaney argues further that the conflicts beginning in the real world can be resolved within the paraspace. Although Delaney is primarily concerned with literature, Bukatman extends the idea of paraspaces to include SF films on the grounds that the spectac-ular elements of many such films raise the imagery to an extraordinary level.6There exist numerous SF films that incorporate within their narratives competing alter-native realities. In some texts the spaces remain distinct, as the paraspace is a place where problems are safely resolved, but which nonetheless have implications for actions in the alternative space. Examples include Tron (1982, Steven Lisberger), Virtuosity (1995, Brett Leonard) and more recently The Cell (2000, Tarsem Singh).
In other texts, the boundaries between the two spaces are blurred, as for instance in Total Recall (1990, Paul Verhoeven), and also eXistenZ. In films where the bound-aries are indistinct, the movement between the spaces engenders not so much the possibility for the resolution of a conflict in an apparently safe place, but instead leads to a questioning of the certainties of each space. In eXistenZ, for example, as the difference between the game world and the real world is increasingly collapsed, the identities of the characters that potentially inhabit those worlds are made uncer-tain. Whilst such uncertainties lead to the exclusion of the possibility of a humanist ego, it does not, however, lead to the destruction of identity. Instead, it leads to a reconstitution of identity, one that takes into account the paradigms offered by the alternative realities.7
Like eXistenZ, The Matrix is a film that plays off two competing paraspaces, but it does so in two different ways. On the one hand it establishes two distinct
worlds, the paraspaces of the Matrix and the Real World. But on the other hand, it frequently undermines the idea that the Real World is anything other than an illusion as potent as the Matrix. If each paraspace is as real or unreal as the other, then the identities of the characters are equally open to question.
‘What is real?’
The Matrix works hard to establish the suggestion that the Matrix and the Real World are distinct. Although only evident through a series of brief sequences, the urban spaces of the Matrix conform to conventional images of a major US city in the late 1990s. By day the city streets are busy, full of people going somewhere, and by night the city is a place of dark corners, clubs and degrees of paranoia. Although this space bears the marks of exaggeration, as everything is a little too busy or too perfectly dark and dank (and a touch too green to be entirely enticing),8 it is the actions of certain characters that finally establish the strangeness of this place. At the first time of seeing, the opening sequence may seem just to be a showcase for the cutting edge special effects that the publicity surrounding the release of the film would have led many viewers to expect – special effects in which time, space and gravity are defied. The use of ‘bullet-time’ photography allows Trinity to hang in the air as the policeman, also suspended in inaction, simply gapes at her unwinding kick, which sends him at speed into the wall.9 The photography of this sequence gives the impression of time appearing to be both slowed down and speeded up – the brief stillness of Trinity in mid-air is followed by the speed of her unwinding kick. The subsequent chase scene over the rooftops is captured in a series of shots that accentuate movement, an effect that adds to the vibrancy of the opening sequence. For example, ‘collision shots’ in which the figures run towards a camera that seems to be moving towards them, rapid cuts on movement, and tracking shots of running figures, alongside the frankly improbable leaps, give this sequence an energy that is underscored by the beat of the music. Only with the revelation of Trinity’s disappearance from the demolished phone box does it become fully apparent that this is a world where conventions of time and space can be disturbed.
And although this disturbance is embedded in the chase sequence, it is only as the image lingers over the rubble of the phone booth, and the absence of a body, that the strangeness of the paraspace called the Matrix becomes inescapable.
A spectator might attribute the extraordinariness of the Matrix to Trinity as some kind of superhero, and suppose the inexplicability of her actions to be the result of special powers. It soon becomes apparent through the Neophyte Neo, however, that it is the space of the Matrix which is strange. What makes Trinity, and other members of the Resistance, different is not any special power but their ability to recognise and manipulate this strangeness.10Neo, as he learns to recog-nise and manipulate this strangeness, also introduces and explains the Matrix for the viewer. And whilst the Trinity sequence presents the Matrix as a place of spec-tacular possibilities, this proves to be something of a teaser. For as Neo begins to experience the powers behind the Matrix, the US cityscape is shown to be an illusion, a virtual construction. Initially, the illusory nature of the Matrix is only 1
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hinted at – such as the computer that seems to communicate with Neo, or the mobile phone that hangs in the air ever so briefly before it falls to the ground when Neo drops it whilst standing on the outside ledge of a skyscraper. But once he has been arrested, the flip-side of this world begins to emerge. The three agents (Smith, Jones and Brown), almost identical in their dark grey suits, dark hair and dark glasses, not only act as the representatives of a hitherto invisible presence, but also inaugurate a series of nightmarish events. But before these begin, a seamless move-ment through a set of monitor screens, along with the shot-reverse-shot sequence between Agent Smith and Neo, which unconventionally includes a sequence of elbow, as well as the more usual over-the-shoulder-shots, creates a slight disturb-ance in expectations. This disturbdisturb-ance becomes full-blown when mediated by Neo’s reaction to the horror of his mouth sealing over, an event that is followed by the insertion of a ‘bug’ through his navel. In the world of the Matrix, the physical body is as open to manipulation as the physical space itself.
The end of the arrest sequence also explicitly suggests that the beginnings and ends of dreams are not always clear. As Neo wakens from what he initially takes as a nightmare, he finds that he is still inside the world of that night-mare. It is significant that just at the moment Neo might seem to be spiralling into an irrational fantasy he is offered a way out of his dilemma. This ‘way out’
both secures his relative sanity and introduces the paraspace to the Matrix – the so-called Real World, a place that acts to finally reveal the illusory and enslaving nature of the Matrix. At first this paraspace seems to be fully distinct from that of the Matrix, as Neo has to take a pill in order for him to make the transition, a transition marked by his passage through a liminal space. The existence of a liminal space, established through a shot of Neo’s tonsils that morphs into a passage leading to a different version of reality, further emphasises the existence of distinct spaces. Here the gloom of the place is as exaggerated as the exhilaration and horror of the Matrix, and the rhetorical status of the Real World is as hyped as that of the Matrix. As Neo re-wakens, metaphorically reborn as he breaks through a membrane, the confusion of this breaking out, the violence of a suddenly encountered new environment is captured in the subsequent close-up sequence.
Unlike most close-ups, which are anchored by framing a specific element of the image, in this sequence there is a jumble of tubes, dripping pink fluid and the motion of Neo’s grasping hands, all of which move across the screen. In contrast to the disorienting motion of these unanchored fragments, Neo’s location is then established through a pair of linked shots. In longer-held medium close-ups, Neo looks over the side and front edges of his capsule. The reverse shots of these two separate looks provide the co-ordinates of Neo’s location, as the capsules seemingly extend into infinity both horizontally and vertically. As the vastness of this construction is accentuated by the rising note of the score, its awesomeness is rapidly displaced into terror as Neo, whose naked vulnerability is enhanced by the absence of hair, is detached and flushed away as waste in another series of rapidly edited shots.
In the following sequences, the substance of this other world becomes more apparent. In itself this world is not a terrifying place; instead, the terror belongs
to the revelation of the extent of the illusory nature of the Matrix as the two para-spaces, that of the Real World and that of the Matrix, generate a commentary upon each other. The Real World is evidently a grungy space of cobbled together and battered machines, old clothing and food that is nutritional but looks like gruel.11 However, subsequently there is a return to spectacle as the quotidian existence of the Resistance fighters is exchanged for a revelation of the extent of this alterna-tive reality. The images and verbal descriptions, ‘the desert of the real’, reverberate with ideas of both apocalypse and environmental catastrophe, not to mention late twentieth century cultural criticism. The full awfulness of the Matrix is finally encapsulated in a digitised and seamless sequence showing humans grown in endless fields.12 Accompanied by the resonant voice-over of Morpheus describing his own discovery of the ‘truth’, the machines are shown harvesting human babies.
As insect-like metallic creatures ‘buzz’ around, as cable coils tighten menacingly and babies pass through conveyor tubes, the movement within the image pauses to allow the rows of capsules to be seen stretching into infinity.
This revelation sequence can be seen as the source of the Resistance’s motiva-tion for the remainder of The Matrix, as its hero, and viewers, are taken down to the depths of the ravaged world in order to ensure that they understand the differ-ence between the opposing spaces. Whilst the Real World may be cold and grungy, it exists in opposition to the Matrix, where humans are reduced to batteries that enable machines to function. Given this scenario it seems to make sense that humans will want to release themselves from tyranny, and that Morpheus is persuasive and utterly believable as a figure whose intentions are honourable in ensuring that Neo will fulfil his potential to be the One. The Real World as a paraspace to the Matrix establishes the latter as a place of enslavement and exploitation. And in contesting the technological ascendancy of the Matrix, the Resistance seems to suggest that the Real World is the better place. Further, the rationale for the position of the Resistance rests on establishing the Matrix as an illusion that is fully distinct from the reality of the Real World. Essentially, the very possibility for humans to tran-scend the machines of the Matrix relies on ensuring that the reality of one world is secured against the illusion of the other.
Within the narrative of The Matrix, then, it is the existence of the paraspaces that apparently establishes a set of oppositions, the Real World as opposed to the Matrix, reality as opposed to illusion, freedom as opposed to enslavement. How-ever, in each case the meaning of each term in these oppositions takes its meaning from its difference from its other. In other words, for the characters within the text the reality of the Real World is dependent on a belief that the Matrix is an illusion. If the Matrix is an illusion, then the Real World must be real. And given no third space to consider, it seems as though the characters have little diffi-culty in accepting this scenario. Once the characters accept this, their identity as Resistance fighters is also secured. Taking Neo as an example, once he believes in the reality of the Real World, it follows that he is free in this world, and further-more, that he is the emancipatory hero who can release other humans from their enslavement.
‘The Matrix can be more real than this world’
As I have already said, in order for the characters within the film to believe, the reality of the Real World must be secured by ensuring the illusory status of the Matrix. Similarly, in order to describe The Matrix as a rather straightforward (though admittedly technologically sophisticated) story in which humans transcend the alien-ating power of technology, it is necessary to believe in the characters’ belief in the reality of the Real World. But given the number of games played within The Matrix, is there any reason to sustain such a distinction?
There are several ways of blurring the distinction between the Real World and the Matrix. One of these is to think about how the spaces of the Matrix and the Real World have equally uncertain claims to reality. On an overt level within The Matrix, the competition between the machines and the resistance is played out through the fight and chase sequences between Morpheus, Trinity and Neo, and the representatives of the machines –the Agents, the sentinels and also Cypher.
This conflict, which seems to further establish the distinction between the realities, is not only evident at the level of the action of the characters, as it is also played out across the rhythms of the narrative – the machinic rhythm is constantly in tension with that of the resistance. One example of this is Agent’s Smith slow-paced speech. His slow enunciation establishes one pattern of progression that seems out of step with the more rapid speech patterns of the human characters. This tension is especially evident in the two interrogation sequences, the first with Neo and the second with Morpheus.
The competition between humans and machines is also played out in terms of who controls the status and rhythm of time and space throughout The Matrix. As viewers, we are given the knowledge (via the interchanges between Morpheus and Neo) that Matrix time is machine set, dislocated from the human tradition of dates, or at least the date system of the western world. Yet the Matrix is recognisable as
The competition between humans and machines is also played out in terms of who controls the status and rhythm of time and space throughout The Matrix. As viewers, we are given the knowledge (via the interchanges between Morpheus and Neo) that Matrix time is machine set, dislocated from the human tradition of dates, or at least the date system of the western world. Yet the Matrix is recognisable as