Inside the Matrix (three parallel essays here)


At the beginning of the sequence, a man lying in the fetus position, tries to extract himself from some sort of sticky, certainly organic material, because of its pink color. His body is linked with metallic cords, similar to umbilical cords. The man is therefore represented as a fetus, naked and bald, floating in placenta.

He looks around and discovers plenty of other similar individual cocoons. He realizes he is not alone.

This is the moment when the soundtrack music gets heavier, the voices of the choir indicating the grandeur of this dark place (machines do not require light) which makes a strong impression on the man.There are two colossal coils generating electric flashes of lightning in front of him. Suddenly a big, fly-like machine makes its way towards the man, observes him and disconnects the cords.

Electricity is the source of energy that makes machines work. Humans in their cocoons generate electricity, which, through the cords, is being sent to the coils, prototypes of huge batteries. 

Because the man is awake, he is using all of his resources, so he is no longer useful for the machines. As a consequence, the fly-sentry simply gets rid of him. He is sucked down together with the placenta in a kind of sewage pipe.

In no time he wakes up onboard the Nebuchadnezzar, Morpheus’ ship. This is when we understand that the man who escaped from his bondage to the machines is Neo.

This page was contributed by Loïc Guillermet and proofread by C.C.

A red, transparent membrane fills the screen : someone moves inside and tries to tear it away. We are in a close place ; sounds are like under water, like in another strange world. 
A reverse shot shows Neo escaping from this pink cocoon. He takes off a tube from his mouth and deeply breathes. Like a baby, he is naked, pale, smooth-cheeked, and vomits a sticky liquid. Spider-shaped power cords are plugged into each part of his body. All of this is womb : cocoon, placenta, umbilical cord, everything. Neo is living a new birth, this time inside the Matrix. 

He looks around him : panoramic shots show rows of cocoons. There are thousands of them, similar to Neo’s. Through his eyes, we discover the infinity of the Matrix, full of lightnings, without beginning and without end. 

Both the impressive opera music with its choruses and the upward and downward shots make you feel dizzy. Horrified, the new-born man discovers human living conditions inside the Matrix.
A long downward shot on Neo interrupts this description. An insect robot swoops down on him. Noticing that Neo has waken up, the spider unplugs him. The terror and pain on Neo’s face are reflected by the cold inhuman screen-eye of the robot. Aware of his condition, Neo is no more useful for the Matrix : like dishes, he is flushed with the liquid inside a long pipe into muddy water. Exhausted and weak, he is drowning when a friendly robot picks him up from the water, to a trinity of lights, to the rebels’ ship...

This page was contributed by Nathanaëlle Minard and proofread by bm.

 

"WOW!!! I really can't believe that it's our world! Nothing and nobody will make me believe it!" That was my first reaction. I really was sitting silent for some time. I still can't understand that our world is only a computer program we made for ourselves.
But to be frank, I've always suspected that something's wrong with our world, with our life and planet.  It's something that we can feel, but unfortunately, we can't realize all the gravity of the situation.
What can we see inside the Matrix? Some of us prefer not to see anything and not to think it over. But now we're face to face with all these problems. In the film the reality is described in an awfull way. I can't insist that it's really so. It's the author's imagination, of course. But it's a very deep metaphor. People are slaves, they're only the source of energy. People are grown like plants. And what can we see in our reality? Can these two worlds be compared? The definite answer is "Yes". We're becoming slaves of machines. THEY do EVERYTHING for us. We do nothing for ourselves, we do nothing at all. We're like plants that are grown in the enormous fields inside the Matrix. We die exhausted and nothing tells the world that we existed. We're thrown away.
Do we really want to live in the Matrix? Of course, not. But we're born, we're used and we die. That is all, that's our existence. This scene is a warning. It describes our modern world not in the exaggerated way. We should think and change ourselves. But how? It's another question.

This page was contributed by Lesya Naumenko
from the Moscow State Linguistics University.