I know it is a little late to give a review for this movie, what with Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions having hit the world this year.. However I have always wanted to pen down my thoughts on this movie, so here I go..
Imagine the world.. Everyone going about with their jobs everyday.. catching the latest movie.. having a cup of coffee in their favourite joint... It all seems so normal, and so real... or is it??
Matrix tells us the story of Neo aka Mr Thomas Anderson, played by Keanu Reeves. By the day, he lives in the world I just described... But he finds something amiss.. something wrong.. by night, he goes by the identity of a hacker, called Neo, wherein he hears of the Matrix and of Trinity(Carrie Anne-Moss) and Morpheus(Laurence Fishburne)...
What follows is a story of such gigantic and enigmatic proportions that only a human mind could have conceived something like this...
What is the Matrix? That is the question that drives Neo’s quest, but quest for what?..
For enlightenment. for freedom...
Matrix is the world pulled over our eyes by the machines.. But why? In the ultimate battle between man and machines for the conquest of the world, the humans blackened the sky, cutting off the Sun as the source of energy for the functioning of the machines.. Thus the machines became dependent on another resource of energy... the human mind..
The human mind is capable of producing energy and the machines created the Matrix to enslave humanity.. to draw energy for their survival..
The human brain functions by receiving pulses or signals from external agents.. the Matrix is a program that interacts with the human brain by sending random signals and thus, creating an imaginary world that is formed by the accumulated interactions of the electrical signals of all the enslaved human minds..
Morpheus and Trinity are humans that have been been freed(unplugged) from the Matrix and are now fighting to save humanity from the machines.. They are in search of the One, (notice the Neo is an anagram of the One), ... who according the prophecy will free mankind...
Morpheus and Trinity meet up with Neo in the Matrix where Neo takes the famous red pill and gets freed from the Matrix.. Oracle helps them from within the Matrix by showing them the way..
The Oracle tells Morpheus that he will find the One, which leads Morpheus to believe that Neo is the One, since he found Neo..
The Oracle tells Trinity that she will fall in love with the One, which leads her to believe that Neo is the One, because she has fallen in love with Neo..
The Oracle tells Neo that Morpheus believes that Neo is the One, and in this belief, will sacrifice his life to save Neo, thus leaving Neo with a choice - of choosing either his life or Morpheus’s life..
During one such meeting with the Oracle, the sentinel programs(called Agents) capture Morpheus, who sacrifices himself to save Neo, just as the Oracle had told Neo.... The Agent programs are extremely powerful and their mission is to destroy the anomalies (read Morpheus, Neo, Trinity etc.) within the Matrix..
So now Neo is left with a choice - to save Morpheus’s life or to save his own.. He is convinced that he is not the One, so makes his choice, he decides to go back into the Matrix to save Morpheus..
What follows is one the most magical fight sequences in cinematic history.. Following which Neo saves Morpheus.. As a result of this, Morpheus’s belief that Neo is the One is re-affirmed... Morpheus and Trinity manage to get out of the Matrix but Neo is left behind alone due to circumstances, and he is left alone to fight the Agents...
Now, no humans have ever managed to fight the Agents, they always end up hitting thin air and end up dead, BUT still the Agents are programs.. they operate on a certain set of rules or codes, while a human mind is bound only by self-set boundaries.. This was what Neo had to start believing.. and there trapped in the Matrix, he realized that he could and had to fight the Agents..
During the course of the fight sequence with the Agents in the Matrix, Agent Smith(Hugo Weaving, Douglas Jardine of Bodyline fame), shoots Neo thereby programatically killing Neo.. if a human dies in the Matrix, he dies in the real world as well, because the human body cannot survive without its mind..
Trinity, back in the real world, resuscitates Neo’s mind, thus bringing him back to life...
Then it happens, Neo starts believing.. he starts believing the he is the One...
He no longer sees the world, he sees the Matrix, he sees the code... He disseminates the Agent Smith program by hacking into it...
With this ends the first installment of this epic, Neo becomes the One, he starts freeing the humans in the battle against the machines..
I have tried to be as emotionless and as simple as possible in this entire review.. But one cannot recount a story so magical and amazing non-chalantly.. Matrix is an extremely complex movie to understand because of the numerous philosophies involved like that of Maya, of Karma, of choice, and if you think you understand the movie, wait till you see the second installment, Matrix Reloaded, wherein whatever you gather from the first part goes for a toss.. I hope to write reviews for them sometime soon, maybe Review Reloaded and Review Revolutions.... ha ha :-)
Please let me know if you find anything amiss in the review!!