They say art imitates life imitates art. If that is true, I am pretty ashamed to be an Indian when it comes to movies. I’d be quite ashamed to be an American for more or less the same set of reasons. But in that domain of art there are exceptions that make me hopeful and make me hold my head quite high...
So, having seen many B-films from Hollywood and after all the dhishum-dhishum nonsense and the sickening similarity of all songs in which all the jhopadpatti people dance in perfect harmony to some hybrid choreography that eludes my sense of art, I was thrilled to watch the Matrix. It has its dhishum-dhishums , but it’s in a context that is perfected in the art of story-telling, cinematography and, of course, deployment of artistic licenses vis-a-vis science and science fiction.
I have read a great deal of science fiction and seen a great many renditions of science fiction stories by Hollywood. The Matrix ranks among the best in this league. The plot centers around a bleak and sinister future course in the conflict between humans and machines (well, computers, I guess) where all but a handful of humans have been subdued. Having overpowered humans, machines recognized the efficiency of the human body in converting chemical energy into electrical energy (the details of the science escaped me here). In order to tap into this energy conversion each human being has been reduced into to a cell (’’battery’’). Given that humans have a brain which needs intellectual stimuli to stay alive, the ’’matrix’’ is concocted - a computer program which feeds electrical impulses to the brain and which simulates a ’’normal’’ world for the vast farm of human cells. If the world was destroyed, it wouldn’t evoke the same intense response as to see humans living in a dream world, a mirage, which is nothing but a computer program that gives them the false sense that everything is allright (hmmm, now why does it sound like a lot of us DO live in the Matrix?? ;-) )
There are holes from the science point of view, but the way these concepts are portrayed in the movie are breath-taking. There are things I did not like in the film - like this woman in the small human colony, called the Oracle, who has knowledge of the future. I found that whole concept somewhat silly although my wife thinks it was quite nice. The movie is about the struggle of the small team, and one man in particular, to beat the machines at their own game - that being the fact that reality is what you are willing to believe. If you discard the limitations of your mind, you are without limits and can overcome anything (yeah, I know, that’s stretching it a bit and makes it sound like some recent Bollywood diatribe).
The movie has its own unique flavor of comedy - I do not normally laugh as hard when someone has called out the name of a ’’Mr. Anderson.’’
I am surprised Bollywood idiots (and with apologies to the real idiots of the world) have not come up with a cheap and stupid imitation of the film. Sushhhh....I may be speaking too soon.