Heir to Philip K. Dick’s visionary work, the Matrix saga has brought an iconic blend of science fiction, mystic and myth to cinema. In spite of the public who expected a nostalgic remake, the fourth chapter Resurrections develops all the strong points of the saga and offers us a lucid analysis of this beginning of the millennium.
In a masterful meta-cinema operation in the first part of the film, Lana Wachowski criticizes the Hollywood machine eager to continue the story after the success of the original trilogy. A comparison between two different perspectives that separates the true myth from the simple narrative: on the one hand the saga understood as a narrative structure formed by manipulable elements that must follow a canon; on the other hand, the unfolding of a plot already present in the collective sphere, which the artist’s intuition draws from the most essential and profound elements of the spirit of an era.
Not by chance in Resurrections the original trilogy is a video game created within the Matrix from the fantasy of Thomas Anderson, aka Neo. Lana emphasizes simulation in simulation, as if to say that the path of the hero of the old trilogy, centered on the Chosen One, is actually an illusion of perspective. If we consider that Resurrections was written by Lana with David Mitchell, author of the sublime Cloud Atlas, and Aleksandar Hemon, with whom the Wachowskis worked on the Netflix series Sense8, the games are done. Continuous reincarnations, clips from the original series wisely inserted to break the continuity of the screen, the faces of the characters that wear new avatars. If a saga were reducible only to interchangeable plots at will to please one’s ideology, then the new Disney trilogy of Star Wars it would not have been a disaster where a bunch of people swing lightsabers at random, saved only in part by the intervention of Dave Filoni, one of the few who understood the underlying myth. The true artist, on the other hand, lets the work arise from necessity, understands which are the mythological strands that take shape through his own imagination, and leaves them free to express themselves outside the laws of the market.
This means going beyond symbolic first impressions. For the Wachowskis The Matrix it is the allegory of a trans transition, but this is only the personal sphere of the myth. From the individual need it leads to collective and impersonal levels. A possibility that the director recognizes in Resurrections, when in the opening lines Anderson and the developers discuss the ways in which the saga has been interpreted. Queer politics, criticism of fascism, all valid but not exhaustive answers, which Lana takes up again to ask us to dig deeper. Too many simulations weigh down the imagination and give rise to paranoia that lead to superficial, denial or conspiracy interpretations. Not for nothing in this incarnation Anderson is a programmer who questions his own imagination. Virtual reality, entertainment and capitalism. The offices of Deus Machina refer to the way in which the virtual demiurge, in the words of Edoardo Camurri, locks us up in alienating (virtual) spaces and disperses our concentration making us addicted to dopamine and distractions. Video games, apps and social networks create a plurality of images that isolates the individual in a sea of illusory representations. A tight critique of the metaverse and gamification of social media. Bugs, a young believer awakened by the radiant presence of the Chosen One, confesses to Neo, “They’ve taken your story, something that matters a lot to people like me, turning it into a banality. What better place to bury the truth than an ordinary videogame? ».
What is the story? It may be useful to follow the book by Paolo Riberi, Neo’s awakening, published by Lindau, where the Matrix quadrilogy is covered following the stages of the journey of the hero of Joseph Campbell. The story of Neo and Trinity has changed the lives of many people because it touches on millenary themes such as the relationship between free will and destiny, or the relationship between time and eternity, but also because it resumes initiation into other realities common to different traditions. Following Campbell’s monomith, Riberi’s book is the first to identify the archetypal motifs of the entire saga as a whole (The Matrix, Reloaded, Revolutions And Resurrections). Initially the saga is centered on the typical male imagery. The appeal to the call and separation with the initial state of ignorance, supernatural help and the crossing of the threshold towards the other reality, its rejection, the encounter with the Mother Goddess and reconciliation with the Father, the test final and the gift, the journey towards the Light of knowledge, the apotheosis and the ascent to a new condition that brings together the human and the divine.
For Riberi Morpheus is the guardian of the threshold and the mentor of Neo, a figure who introduces the hero to the other reality with the name of the Greek dream god who can take on any form. Trinity is the mystical bride of the Messiah, the one who guides the destiny of the hero, whose name is not so much a reference to the Christian Trinity but to the lunar Triune Goddess who appears in the mythological motifs of the Greek Three Fates or the Norse Three Norns. The Oracle is the Great Mother, the mediator between all characters, while Agent Smith is the Double and the antithesis of the hero, the egoic aspect of him. The whole trilogy takes up the same motifs on different levels, synthesizing together the Buddhist and Hindu currents, the Judeo-Christian myth and the interconnected society of the last century.
In other books like Red pill or black lodge? Riberi had already traced the history of the Matrix to the Gnostic currents, esoteric cults born at the beginning of the Christian era, which pushed the individual to free himself from the illusory nature of material reality and from the action of evil powers who wanted him to be subjected to the course of events, to draw enlightened knowledge and thus transcend the mortal condition. These Jewish-Christian myths, inherited from the Middle East, are the basis on which the initiatory orders of Freemasonry in Europe developed, whose symbols and rituals are recalled by various sagas of contemporary pop imagery. Also in Neo’s Awakening Riberi examines the Masonic symbols included in the saga. The two-headed eagle that towers over the door of the Oracle in the first film takes up the two-faced Roman god Janus, the knowledge of the past and the future, and is used at the highest levels of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. In the last part of Revolutionthe death of Neo is accompanied by a cross of fire in the middle of the hero’s chest and by the mystical vision of a rose of light that refers not only to Dante’s Paradise, but also to the order of the Rosa + Croce, the initiatory coven invented by the pen of the German theologian Johannes Valentinus Andreae.
Again, the Keymaker’s key in Reloaded, with which Neo can open the door of light that will lead him to the architect, for Riberi he takes back the ivory key given to the Masonic secret master with which he can access the Holy of Holies, in Judaism the holiest place in the temple where only the high priest can enter to meet the god. In the case of the Architect of the Matrix there is in fact a Gnostic reinterpretation of the Jewish god, presented in his purely calculating and rationalist aspect, cruel and incapable of loving, whose name also recalls the Architect understood by the Masons as the supreme creative principle. In the book, the passage of the baton between the Architect and the Analyst indicates the god who implements the characteristics of the Oracle (understanding of unconscious processes, emotional and spiritual needs) subjecting them to his own purpose. With Laurent de Sutter, we can call the Analyst the personification of neurocapitalism. Control the psyche to be productive, quell spiritual needs with the rationalization of the psychic process, including psychotropic drugs and coffee.
It is easy to understand how Matrix has inspired several conspiracy theories and ideologies woke. Biblical references are countless. Ample space in Riberi’s book is dedicated to the couple of Eletti introduced in Resurrections. Each messianic figure has his divine bride, Neo and Trinity are like Christ and Magdalene, the goddess who embodies universal divine energy, and therefore the two together mirror the perfect Man of medieval Jewish mythology, the androgynous Adam Qadmon which according to the myth brings together the masculine and feminine aspects before the two natures are separated and expelled from Eden. Trinity’s divine power is present from the first film, with the difference that it is not as spectacular as Neo’s. In Resurrections, Trinity experiences the same initiation as Neo, showing that the spirit of the time today requires the harmony of the masculine and the sacred feminine. As Riberi says, the couple’s wonderful dance in the sky at the end of the fourth film sanctions hierogamy, the union of the two primordial divinities. Unlike all the elect who have preceded him, Neo’s incarnation is different because she understands love. An overcoming of the holy ascetics of the Western tradition, who sought holiness by despising the relationship with women, like many men today, as opposed to that of the Provençal cantors who instead devoted themselves to the sacred feminine.
Resurrections is a slap in the face to all the redpillati who expected a copy of the original trilogy made to measure for them, with action scenes, bullet time at full throttle, yet another hero with which to pump the ego to feel real males, in other words the eternal return of the same. It is no coincidence that Déjà Vu is the name of the Analyst’s black cat, who wears blue glasses of the same color as the pills designed to offer you a reassuring lie. Lana winks and makes a sharp critique of memetic neurocapitalism, where men who believe they are Chads are actually slaves to the system and want the classic submissive woman, who is given the sop of feeling independent with the illusion of gender equality. Like Tiffany, a liberal version of Trinity, a welder wife with a passion for motorcycles and mother of three children, who she lives a life tailored to the expectations of her husband Chad. The criticisms leveled at the moving ending of Resurrections, where both the Chosen ones dance free in the sky. Evidently when the redpillates took the pill, the Matrix graphics glitched. Following Riberi, the great sagas of pop culture are mirrors on the living myth that informs the values of a society, they do not give you what you want but what reflects the truth of the collective imagination regardless of the wishes of the individual. «Can’t you control her?» Shouts the Analyst at Neo who assists Trinity by stroking Déjà Vu. No. This is the art of mystical marriage, the quintessence of the alchemy of love. The awakened woman who discovers her nature as a Goddess and messiah together with the hero who awakens to Buddhahood.