Hi friends,
Going to keep this week's newsletter a simple one, mostly because I got vaccinated (yay!) a couple of days ago and spent almost a whole day just lying in bed trying to recuperate.
A few days back, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I decided to rewatch The Matrix (1999). I say "rewatch" but that's a tricky term because even though I've watched this film so many times that I've lost count, in many ways it was like watching the film for the first time.
The reason for that is, as a kid I had a DVD copy of The Matrix and would play it multiple times a week, usually for no particular reason except for how cool I found it at the time (upon rewatching I can confirm that it is still, in fact, cool). When you're about 6-7 years old you don't particularly remember any of the films you watch or what they are even about. In fact, I only realised that robots were involved and that the whole point of the matrix was to harvest human beings for energy when I rewatched it. In my defense, I used to fast forward through all the "boring, talking parts" of the film and go straight to the action scenes.
Speaking about the DVD, I remember it having this wonderful DVD start menu where it would begin with Morpheus saying "Welcome to the real world" and would feature a highlight slideshow from the film with intense music in the background before you could choose whether to play the film or watch special features. I miss that kind of interactivity with media, something that isn’t there in streaming services (ironic because I watched it again on Netflix).
Watching it again was a unique experience because I was learning new facts about things I was intimately familiar with. Sort of like reading for the first time the theories and rules to a game you’ve subconsciously been playing all your life. So any time there was dialogue or exposition, I was sitting their wide-eyed learning something new about the universe, and any time an action scene came on, it was deja vu. I could feel my hands moving along with the actors’. I knew every beat, every rhythm of the fight, every move. I knew them, because I used to imitate those moves as a kid while watching the show (or at least, mimic them as best as I could).
It was exhilarating seeing all those iconic scenes again after more than a decade, From Trinity's first scene with the cops with her jump-kick, to the red pill vs the blue pill scene, to the "I know Kung Fu" scene and the almost dance-like fight scene with Neo and Morpheus, and the final "He is the One" climactic scene.
You know how people say life changes when you look at it from a different perspective? That was what happened with me in a way. It seemed like I myself was out of the Matrix and was seeing things differently for the first time. The quote about bending the spoon really seemed to hit home after that.
Barring a couple of scenes, the CGI also held up really well for a film more than 20 years old. And my god, those fight scenes. Even now they put some of the present-day movies to shame. The famous rooftop scene where Neo bends over backwards to dodge bullets is, to this day, the coolest thing I've seen in film. I'm only surprised I didn't break my back as a kid trying to imitate that move each time it came on.
A couple of months ago, I read an article that said that the movie was actually a trans allegory, which was also confirmed by the directors (Lana and Lily Wachowski), who are also trans. Watching it with that piece of information in mind really brought out many more nuances in the film. The film itself is about individualistic self-determination and about the mind transcending the limits of the body. There are, however, some concrete examples in the film too that can be easy to gloss over. All the characters reject the names they are born with in the Matrix and take on their own identities outside of it (Neo, Trinity, Morpheus etc.). Throughout the film we see Agent Smith, who is, for all intents and purposes, the "villain" of the film, constantly refer to Keanu Reeves' character as "Mr. Anderson", refusing to acknowledge him as a new person, and in the subway scene Neo says, definitively, "My name is Neo" before "defeating" Agent Smith. Another example is the character Switch. The Wachowskis wanted the character to be a male in reality and female in the Matrix, but that idea was shot down by the producers.
Looking back at the film after 20 years, it's hard to imagine anyone other than Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Ann Moss and Laurence Fishburne playing those characters. But at the start, Will Smith and Sandra Bullock were the first choices to play Neo and Trinity respectively. Johnny Depp was also considered while Brad Pitt and Val Kilmer declined the role. Carrie-Ann Moss even twisted her ankle at one point, but didn't tell anyone because she didn't want to be recast.
All in all, those choices ended up to be good ones. And even though the sequels were a bit underwhelming, I can't wait for The Matrix 4 to come out.
Stuff I’m Listening To:
This week, I've been thinking of slow-burn songs. Specifically, songs that start out slow and then build up to a crescendo, usually culminating in a scream blasting out emotion and ones that tell a whole story along the way. Such songs don't follow the traditional template of a verse, chorus, bridge and chorus again, but is almost prose in a musical form. Some prime examples are:
Links of the Week:
Don’t Eat Before Reading This - A New Yorker article about food by the late Anthony Bourdain
Flower Share by falseknees - falseknees draws the best birds I’ve seen and this latest comic is a funny and gorgeous example of that
This beautiful artwork by Deborah Lee featuring a sublime colour palette and sci-fi elements
That’s it for this week. Take care!
Raef