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Okay, before we start, let's try to avoid getting into whether or not we liked the movie(s).
A thought:
If the forthcoming part three, The Matrix Revolutions, is to succeed with anything like a happy ending, it will have to produce nothing less than the appropriate answer to the dilemmas of revolutionary politics today, a blueprint for the political act the left is desperately looking for.
Actually, there is no solution to these dilemmas. The apocalyptic notion of a revolution which ends history (like a war which ends war) is a chimera; no such beast exists. Change continues, and there is no 'final state' of human evolution - except possibly extinction. The answer in the real world is that freedom is an activity, that justice must be persued but can never be won, that each case must be taken on its own merits and not filtered through a system whose function, ultimately, is to prevent society from having to engage daily in difficult ethical and personal decisions.
In other words, apocalyptic revolution is a weak and appealing substitute for the unending hard work of living; the notion is derived from religious systems and stems, I suppose, from the naive (childlike) desire that one day, all injustices would be redressed by God (or by Mum), and I'll get my tricycle back from Billy O'Toole, but will have to return Jonny Finch's football album - but all our sins will be forgiven and we'll live happily ever after without trying or changing.
I had hoped that we might see the beginnings of a detente between man and machine in the second film: it seems that there is a hint in this direction. Perhaps we're going to see that in Revolutions, with the Smith/Hitler agent(s) forcing Neo and the machines together. That would be a shame, in that we'd be seeing a previously revolutionary force working to preserve the status quo, but a positive thing, in that we'd see a previously oppressive force setting aside an old paradigm and working with the slaves against a common foe. Interesting that we've already seen a massive balkanisation on both sides: where there were monoliths, there are now fragmented and bickering (dis)Unions. Only Smith appears to be able to remain true to his identity as nemesis, and that's because he is an endless series of iterations of the same thing. Although we know that his programme is subject to alteration - perhaps he will end up divided against himself.
Ultimately, though, the movie will end - perhaps on a high note, perhaps not. The real world - and yes, there is one - will continue. Imagine the aftermath of Neo's victory in the world of the Matrix films: I doubt we'll see any issues raised about how to demilitarise a huge force of angry soldiers and rebels from Zion now that there's peace with the machines. Can they be reintegrated with the rest of the human race, whom they hold in contempt ("coppertop")? Will Neo and the others face an accounting for the numberless lives they have arbitrarily snuffed out in their excursions into the Matrix? (A crime especially grotesque when you think that they could readily restrain rather than kill with the significant advantages they possess.)
The myth of a conclusion, of a goal, is the blight of social remodelling projects. The Matrix films, so far, show no sign of proposing a fiction which explores that problem. |
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