Film Class V: The Matrix and eXistenZ

My last high school film class I showed featured films in which the reality of what we watched and/or what the film characters experienced was very uncertain. The first category included Woman in the Window (1944) and Psycho (1960); the second, The Truman Show (1998) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

The next two films would combine these elemental uncertainties and twist viewers’ minds, leaving them with a feeling that nothing in both the movie and the world could be trusted.

The Matrix and eXistenZ premiered within three weeks of the other in the spring of 1999. To a large extent, eXistenZ was lost in the wake of The Matrix’ box office. The Matrix ($63 M budget) went on to earn $191 M in the States versus eXistenZ’ ($15 M budget) $2.8 M. Both films were cerebral and flouted their ideas. Both were received well critically.

They differed most decisively in structure with The Matrix having a traditional hero, Neo (Keanu Reeves), who answered the call to action and then had to overcome obstacles to defeat the agents of the evil Machine world. eXistenZ is a shapeshifting movie in that the characters change roles and missions depending on the level of reality they are on. Our comfort in identifying the two main characters, Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Ted Pikul (Jude Law), is ultimately undercut a couple times, a strategy that will leave many viewers unenthused.

Essentially, their messages are similar. We cannot be complacent and accepting of the world as it is presented to us. We are being manipulated by unseen forces and, because they are unseen, the films establish elaborate metaphors and symbols for those ‘things’ controlling us.

The Matrix is epochal in scope and contains original action sequences that have been imitated (especially by the film’s two sequels) many times but never quite as satisfyingly. The stakes are the highest: the survival of mankind. The “One” who can help the most and destroy mankind’s delusions is Neo, a combination Christ (redeemer; the One) and Buddha figures. Indeed, much of the dialogue resonates with Buddhist teaching:

Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. What truth? There is no spoon. There is no spoon? Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

or

Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

These sound like the koans of Zen. In fact, outside of the idea of redeemer, Christian teaching is not offered in the film except as it might conjoin with Buddhism. There is a nod to the Old Testament by naming the rebels’ submarine the Nebuchaunezzar and the rebel stronghold (mentioned but not seen until the sequels) Zion.

The goal of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), Neo and their fellow subversives is to destroy the control that the machines have over humans. Morpheus tells Neo that the “Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this [a Duracell battery].” They are trying to beat a system but people “are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on [it], that they will fight to protect it.”

Yet, the people they are fighting are Agents of the Matrix, computer-generated bodyguards of the System. The Agents are invested with superior fighting qualities that Morpheus and his band stand no chance of defeating them – until Neo had arrived. Beat the Agents at their own game.

eXistenZ’ characters are essentially trapped in a world of games. The nature of the games are completely mental. The players are plugged into their modules through their spines. The modules are pliable as flesh. The set up for the film is a gathering for a test group to try Allegra’s new game, eXistenZ. Unfortunately, this test group doesn’t prove to be the base reality. In fact, eXistenZ exists inside another game, transCendenZ and, ultimately, it becomes impossible for us to determine a real perspective on their actions.

eXistenZ aligns with The Matrix in one important area: its attitude toward authority and the toxic potential of manipulating human consciousness. When Allegra and Pikul enter the game, a strong anti-authority theme emerges. There are certain people who believe game makers like Allegra must be stopped, just as Morpheus’ crew must undermine the makers of the Matrix. Only, the ‘authority’ in eXistenZ remains undetermined.

The film’s ending suggests that the world we have watched is all a Game. In a sense, the games stand for or represent the film. The film’s plot and intentions are equally difficult to isolate. Yes, they come from David Cronenberg, the director, who has explored this territory in Videodrome (1983) and Naked Lunch (1991), and has had a critique of technology in Scanners (1982) and The Fly (1986). It’s almost as if he’s asking us to distrust the act of watching movies and embracing them as strictly diversions from reality.

The Matrix contains a strong anti-technological streak but does so by using a highly sophisticated film technology to create its many wonderful effects. Even the ending has it both ways. We hear a phone ringing and being answered. The voice is Neo’s:

I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

Then Neo takes off like Superman and soars into the sky. For a film that relies on mind conquering matter, it still revels in the spectacular, that is, cinematic magic. This magic becomes a certainty.

Whereas, “a world where anything is possible” is actually the world at the end of eXistenZ, and the characters don’t appear to be redeemed from a controlled world but, rather, are paralyzed by the fact that the borders between realities has dissolved. And the audience is right there with them.