Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Matrixtva!
The second last day of my stay in Mumbai, I thought it was time I saw �Reloaded�. So Anita, her sister, Vipul, his friends and I went to watch the movie. I am a fan of The Matrix: the variety that would indulge in hours of debate about the intricacies of �Zen and the art of Simulacra�. This made Reloaded even more disappointing.
Kingsley has an excellent commentary about the appalling loss of standard in this sequel. As the days pass, my bitterness towards the movie only increases. I feel like an errant kar sevak of The Matrixtva who would kill the Wachowski brothers for their sacrilege.
So much has been said about the philosophy of the movie, even the quasi-religious nature of the modern myth-epic and I have nothing more to add. Despite Reloaded-the expanding mythology, Reloaded-the movie was sad!
One main drawback is the fact that unlike in the original, visual exposition is negligible, whereas verbal exposition is painfully and boringly all that there is to the storytelling. Why did they have to make a movie; they could have simply written a book. The only visual elements are set-piece action sequences that are nothing more than eye-candy. What�s the English word for �thegattal� Kings? What horrible choreography of action. Except for the highway sequence, the rest of the scenes were badly choreographed and badly cut; especially the clone fight. For heaven�s sake watch Samurai Jack or the films of Akira Kurosawa if you want to know what action choreography is.
A big disappointment was Zion that turned out to be something begotten out of an illegitimate affair between �Star Wars� and �Goa�. Another disappointment was the un-slick dialogue that Kingsley has discussed about.
Probably the biggest Zen lessons for the viewer from Reloaded would be the ones in renunciation of glory, voluntary self-abasement and in the iconoclastic destruction of the myth, prompting a lot of soul-searching. Matrix and Reloaded are the parts of a confusing koan for the faithful like me: how could the same people have made both these movies?

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