The Matrix

There’s a great deal that can be said about the Matrix: its similarity to a host of other films also published in a year period of its 1999 debut (Dark City, Three Kings, Eyes Wide Shut, Being John Malkovich, etc.), its introduction of “bullet time” and “wire fu” action sequences into the popular imagination, the way that it both channeled and affected the fashion of the late nineties and early aughts. It’s a film that I’ve seen many, many times (it was, as I suspect of many people, the first DVD that I owned) and one which I thought I had pretty well figured out; however, there is one sequence that recently I’ve been rethinking which has implications across the entire film. When Cipher dines with Agent Smith there is the obvious problem of who is jacking him in and out? The sequence is also followed with Cipher being startled by Neo while sitting in the operator chair, which is soon followed by Cipher’s statement, “I don’t even see the code anymore; all I see is blond, brunette, redhead.” Thus, the only way that this would make sense is if Cipher isn’t actually “fully” present in the restaurant in the way one is if they were jacked in and instead he is simply perceiving the code so fluently it appears to him as if he is within the Matrix. This of course only manages to further confuse the many levels of mediation present in the film and really nails home one of its key tenets: reality and perception are so often far from synonymous.