A future worth fighting for

Hey, as political visions of the human future go, half-naked bodies of many races movin' and groovin' together is a hell of a lot better than most. As anarchist foremother Emma Goldman reputedly said -- and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Wachowskis had this in mind -- "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

(Actually, this oft-repeated and oft-altered line is apocryphal, as feminist scholar Alix Kates Shulman makes clear in an article on the subject. What Goldman really wrote, although less succinct, might be even better as a maxim for fighting the Matrix: "I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. If it meant that, I did not want it. 'I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.' Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world -- prisons, persecution, everything.")

No one who watched "The Matrix" with even 10 percent of his or her brain engaged could have missed the fact that, at least potentially, it was a social and political allegory of tremendous resonance. Predictably, the major media coverage of the film, in 1999 and subsequently, has focused on its technological marvels and understood its more radical, even dialectical dimension as some kind of smug, ironic gamesmanship. The Wachowskis' real innovations, conventional wisdom holds, came in the "Bullet Time" sequence or in their appropriation and expansion of John Woo's action-movie vocabulary. The apparently contradictory fact that this same big-budget action movie, distributed by a gigantic infotainment conglomerate, suggested that our entire culture was an illusion and that we had been hopelessly enslaved and cut off from real life by our own technology was conveniently overlooked.

In "The Matrix Reloaded," with its affectionate but faintly satirical portrait of the ruling council of Zion -- a collection of robe-wearing crones and stately older men and nattily attired people of color that reminded me of a school board meeting in Berkeley, Calif., where I grew up -- the Wachowskis come ever closer to outing themselves as lefties. OK, they're lefties with a sense of humor and a capacity for self-criticism and an intellectual bent that sometimes gets them tied in knots. But, hey, those are the best kind.

One of the most striking aspects of this film's depiction of Zion is its racial composition; more than half the population seems to be black or brown, and the community's leaders are predominantly black men. (Don't miss radical African-American scholar Cornel West, in a brief role as a member of the council! Or boxer Roy Jones Jr., as a hovercraft captain!) No one ever mentions the racial dynamics of Matrix-resistance, and it's not directly germane to the plot in any way, but it makes the standard "integration" of the science-fiction future, as pioneered by "Star Trek," look like the tokenism it really is. Inside the world of the Matrix, on the other hand -- which is to say our world -- we hardly ever see nonwhite people, except for Morpheus himself and the cryptic Oracle (the late Gloria Foster), whose Matrix identity is that of an older woman in an inner-city housing project. The "agents" of the Matrix, of course, are all white men in narrow-lapel suits with little earphones and sunglasses; they look like LBJ's Secret Service detail, with a dash of Blues Brothers.

The Wachowskis have also put relationships between their black characters front and center in "The Matrix Reloaded," perhaps frustrating those who'd like to see more screen time for Neo and Trinity. Morpheus has a rival in Zion, the by-the-book Commander Lock (Harry Lennix), whose girlfriend, Captain Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith), keeps making eyes at Morpheus, who's in fact her ex. A new member of Morpheus' crew, Link (Harold Perrineau), seizes the Homeric opportunity to replace his lover's two brothers, slain in the first film, even though she'd rather he stayed home. Seen against the backdrop of Zion society, Morpheus himself becomes a far more complicated character; charismatic and unflappable as ever, he's also something of a hothead outsider whose evangelical obsession with Neo may be interfering with his better judgment. There isn't a ton of room for nuanced acting in these overcrowded films, but Fishburne remains the standout, supplying depth and melancholy alongside the almost architectural beauty of Reeves and Moss.

What we don't know -- and aren't likely to figure out, at least not until the final chapter of this trilogy, "The Matrix Revolutions," reaches theaters in November -- is whether the crunchy, liberated, polysexual and anti-racist society of Zion is really as free from the all-consuming software code of the Matrix as it thinks it is. (Reportedly, the filmmakers wanted the unusually brief interlude between sequels to be even shorter, no more than a couple of months, but the honchos at Warner Bros. refused.) As I say, between the show-stopping fight scenes in "The Matrix Reloaded" the Wachowskis are almost relentlessly devoted to muddying the waters. For one thing, there's a widening schism among the rebel population, between the small group led by Morpheus who believe that Neo (the liberated human formerly known in the Matrix as computer programmer Thomas Anderson) is the One -- as in, you know, The One -- and a skeptical majority who aren't convinced. (Let the historians figure out how closely this stuff mirrors the split between Jews and early Christians living under the Roman Empire.)

Next Page: A moment of orgasm makes "The Matrix Reloaded" into a saga of human passion

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