| USA, 2021 | Mainstream/Author Work | Action/Mindfuck | Trailer |
The sudden resurrection of the Matrix franchise, after all these years without anything that could hint its happening, has provoked a bunch of different reactions from the audience. Aside of two trailers and some teasers, there has been practically no big marketing campaign to promote this Christmas’ blockbuster. This is a strange practice, considering how influential over the early millenium pop culture this franchise has been; and how its name resonates and echoes in the minds of millions of spectators all around the globe.
I may presume that this echo may be currently more powerful than any other externally-induced advertising. Lana Wachowski for sure knows the monstruous resonance her masterwork has produced, and perhaps preferred to stimulate the curiosity of the potential fans, so they gather in the screening rooms, using memory and sudenness rather than benefitting from a money-and-noise-based Hollywoodian scheme. Partly because of this, I like to label Resurrections as an author work whilst maintaining its mainstreamness. Its presence following the powerful resonance left by its predecessors and the big names accompanying it are enough to confer this movie some dignity.
After digesting the experience yesterday, I came to the conclusion that this combined sudden and thought-based nascence of Resurrections in theaters is appropriate. The whole work relies powerfully on memories, thought processes and impact. What characterized the previous entries of the franchise was their cold, sterile, nihilistic ambiance, painted with a green layer of century-end informatics. These movies were baffling, disorienting, cold-hearted, ruthless and edgy, leaving the audience with a blown-up perception. Resurrections couldn’t be more different. This movie embraces us, and mesmerizes us with its irreal reality. The ugly, uncomfortable green layer is substituted by a gentle blue and warm yellow of ambient-set LCD screens, where colour is saturated. The Matrix has become humanity. We find memories of the characters we grew up with and loved everywhere without feeling them as forced fanservice. We are drawn to the world presented here.
This change of focus is, unexpectedly, also the source of its intrigue. As it had to be, Resurrections is still baffling, but in a way that, this time more intensely than ever, we are unable to distinguish it from reality. With its calming, oniric ambiance, it gently leads the audience to doubt if the previous stories did really take place, or if we also are part of the collective delusion. Resurrections involves the audience within its questions and mindbreaking establishments like no other fiction has been able to, so far I can remember. This is a true success on a metacinematographic level.
As this movie heavily relies on the past, the reflective tone is considerably acuter than in its previous entries. Corresponding to the lore established at the end of Revolutions, the themes of predestination and decision are further elaborated on the direction of what transcendence means, and how the perception of a single life form can affect all its surrounding atmosphere and world (which is incidentally what cybernetics are). The writing, whilst falling into conventional pits in many occasions (which is not bad per se) manages to extend itself even out of the screen, giving a new twist on the mindfuck that characterizes the franchise, and maximizes the impact of this movie.
Resurrections still flaunts impeccable action scenes, but the movie knows this is only a convention, having to follow the established premises of its history. The action is reduced to shorter doses, whilst the personal journey of the resurrected Neo is the only thread we need to follow. The violence is clean and ethereal, almost like a soft skill that pierces with efficiency and rapidness, unlike the excessive and over-the-top, WOAH!-inducing scenes of the past. A past that still matters whilst it has been clearly overcome.
The fourth, reloaded Matrix is a mature and matured work made by the passion of a creator that respects her heritage and ideas and wants to transmit this new phase of her creativity and spirit to her legion of followers. It is also conscious of its peculiar circumstances of sudenness and memory, and treats its audience with respect whilst leading them to new levels of mind porn. It loses in an organic, physical, bodily level we can relate better with, just to advocate for a new cinematographic reality that might feel gentle but also bizarre, odd, irreal. But this is exactly what a resurrection means, in the end: lose to win.