Re-Reloaded
I saw the Matrix Reloaded again tonight in 60 foot IMAX glory. There is the ongoing backlash against the film -- arguments that the film isn't nearly as good as the first. And, now having seen it three times, I will hold to my position that you're not paying attention. Yes, the first movie revolutionized what is possible in film, but Reloaded has the luxury of already having invented the wheel. They don't need to change the world; they just need the opportunity to show you how the New World can be in the hands of Those Who Know.
The Wachowski Brothers have a plan, and it is a grand plan indeed. The first film opened your eyes, the second one will make you think about which reality is real, and the third will show us that our imaginations are the only reality that matters. The trilogy is an 21st century alchemical puzzle. There is a code to be deciphered here.
Here's a couple of specific observations gleaned during this viewing:
(1) The viewscreens in the Architect's room are the same as the viewscreens by which someone is observing Neo in the interrogation scene in the first film. It's just a transition in the first film, a board of screens which leaves us to think that someone is observing Neo in the cell before the Agents arrive, and is nothing more. But, when you see these screens again at the end of Reloaded, you realize who has been watching Neo. Whereas we once thought it was meant to be us, it is now clear that it was the Architect.
(2) When the Keymaker dies, his body is arranged in the traditional pose of the Tarot Magician. One hand raised towards Heaven, one hand pointed towards the ground. If Neo is the Fool, then Keymaker's pose suggests progress towards enlightenment.
(3) Both the Architect and the Oracle speak in carefully calculated language which give the audience the impression they are saying something, when in actuality, Neo is the one who actually posits facts and decisions. The Oracle is especially oblique in the first film and it is as the Architect says: 99% of the participants in the Matrix persist in the illusion when they are given the perception of choice.
The Merovingian is the only radical thinker of the bunch. "Know why you act" is all that he is saying. Move beyond the illusion of choice and actually learn to think for yourself. Morpheus is a zealout and, under the illusion of being free, he is actually one of the most trapped characters. He believes in the inevitable destiny of the prophecy and that every action is preordained to occur in the inexorable course towards that destiny. His diction becomes stilted and robotic in this film because he is losing the ability to be a free thinker. Whereas Agent Smith grows a sense of humor because he is becoming, for lack of a better word, more "human."
I think Councillor Hamann's "no point" in the Engineering Section will become the ultimate point. There is a tantalizing detail of future history in the Second Revolution short of the Animatrix, where the machines, having become self-aware, come to the United Nations seeking recognition of their individualized existence. Mankind refuses to see the machines as equals -- we made them after all -- and, well, things fall apart.
Of course, we fail to see the ironic parallel. God made us and is up there waiting for us to become enlightened enough to approach Him as an equal. You think He'll turn us away? Nope. That's the whole point of the human experiment.