How Quentin Tarantino Creates Suspense in His Favorite Scene, the Tension-Filled Opening Moments of Inglourious Basterds

in Film, Writing | April 13th, 2017

We all have a favorite Quentin Taran­ti­no scene, but the direc­tor of Pulp Fic­tion, Kill Bill, The Hate­ful Eight, and oth­er movies that can seem made out of noth­ing but mem­o­rable scenes also has one of his own. “My favorite thing I think I’ve ever writ­ten is the scene at the French farm­house at the begin­ning of Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds,” Busi­ness Insid­er quotes him as say­ing in a pan­el at San Diego Com­ic-Con. “The scene Taran­ti­no refers to is the very first one of his bru­tal World War II epic” where­in “SS Colonel Hans Lan­da (Christoph Waltz) arrives at a remote dairy farm in France that is sus­pect­ed of hid­ing Jew­ish peo­ple. Lan­da sits down with the farmer (Denis Meno­chet) and ques­tions him about the where­abouts of the Drey­fus fam­i­ly.” A “tense and sneaky psy­cho­log­i­cal mind game” ensues.

You can learn exact­ly what makes those open­ing twen­ty min­utes such a minia­ture mas­ter­piece in the Lessons from the Screen­play video above. Draw­ing from psy­cho­log­i­cal research on the nature of ten­sion and sus­pense, series cre­ator Michael Tuck­er high­lights cer­tain “key com­po­nents of ten­sion expe­ri­ences,” includ­ing uncer­tain­ty, insta­bil­i­ty, and a lack of con­trol, and shows how Taran­ti­no uses them to height­en the ten­sion as much as pos­si­ble through­out these sev­en­teen min­utes.

“It’s like the sus­pense is a rub­ber band,” Taran­ti­no says in a Char­lie Rose inter­view clip includ­ed in the video, “and I’m just stretch­ing it and stretch­ing it and stretch­ing it to see how far it can stretch.”

Taran­ti­no also uses a suite of tech­niques that movie­go­ers have come to asso­ciate specif­i­cal­ly with him, such as long stretch­es of dia­logue that go off on extend­ed tan­gents (“Part of my plan,” he says in anoth­er inter­view clip, “is to bury it in so much minu­tia about noth­ing that you don’t real­ize you’re being told an impor­tant plot point until it becomes impor­tant”), the charged con­sump­tion of food and drink, and the poten­tial for car­nage at any moment. “The fact that the audi­ence is aware they’re watch­ing a Taran­ti­no film adds to the sus­pense,” says Tuck­er. “We know there will be con­se­quences, and that Taran­ti­no has no qualms about show­ing vio­lence.” And after the tour de force of its open­ing, the movie still has well over two hours of pure Taran­tin­ian cin­e­ma to go.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Films of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Watch Video Essays on Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dogs, Kill Bill & More

Watch 34 of Quentin Tarantino’s Visu­al Ref­er­ences to Cit­i­zen Kane, Blade Run­ner, 8 1/2 & Oth­er Great Films

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

Decod­ing the Screen­plays of The Shin­ing, Moon­rise King­dom & The Dark Knight: Watch Lessons from the Screen­play

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Very First Film, La Cravate, Based on a Novella by Thomas Mann (1957)

in Film, Literature | April 10th, 2017

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky may have rede­fined the film-view­ing expe­ri­ence for a cou­ple gen­er­a­tions of art-house thrillseek­ers, but he did­n’t start his cre­ative jour­ney in cin­e­ma. Decades before he sent his audi­ences on the mind-alter­ing fea­ture-length trips (whether or not they came pre­pared for them with their own mind-alter­ing sub­stances) like El Topo and The Holy Moun­tain, he wrote poet­ry, worked as a clown, found­ed and direct­ed a the­ater troupe, and after relo­cat­ing from his native Chile to France, stud­ied mime and per­formed with Mar­cel Marceau. Only then had life pre­pared him to make his first film, 1957’s La Cra­vate.

Telling its sto­ry in vivid col­or but with­out words, the short (which also goes under such titles as Les têtes inter­ver­ties, The Trans­posed Heads, and most sen­sa­tion­al­is­ti­cal­ly The Sev­ered Heads) draws on Jodor­owsky and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ skills devel­oped in the per­form­ing arts to con­vert into cin­e­mat­ic mime Thomas Man­n’s 1950 novel­la The Trans­posed Heads: A Leg­end of India. Nov­el­ist Rayo Casablan­ca quotes Jodor­owsky describ­ing the tale as one of “a woman who has an intel­lec­tu­al hus­band, who is very weak phys­i­cal­ly. She also has a mus­cu­lar but idi­ot­ic lover. She cuts the heads off of the two men and inter­changes them. She remains with the mus­cu­lar body and the head of the intel­lec­tu­al. How­ev­er, after a cer­tain time, the body of the ath­lete is soft­ened and the body of the intel­lec­tu­al becomes vig­or­ous and mus­cu­lar.”

Mann, in Jodor­owsky’s read­ing, “want­ed to thus say that it is the intel­lect which makes the body,” but for near­ly fifty years, his own visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion went unseen. Not long after its pre­miere at Rome’s Cin­e­ma Auteur Fes­ti­val in 1957 it went miss­ing, pre­sumed lost, until the sole print­’s redis­cov­ery in a Ger­man attic in 2006. Final­ly, Jodor­owsky’s fans could see not just his direc­to­r­i­al debut but his first star­ring role onscreen, with a sup­port­ing cast that includ­ed the Bel­gian sur­re­al humorist Ray­mond Devos. The film’s moral, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher, “is nev­er to lose your head over unre­quit­ed love, but find some­one who loves you as you are,” but as with all of Jodor­owsky’s works, feel free to take from it what­ev­er mes­sage finds its way into your head.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Watch Mar­cel Marceau Mime The Mask Mak­er, a Sto­ry Cre­at­ed for Him by Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky (1959)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

New Jim Jarmusch Documentary on Iggy Pop & The Stooges Now Streaming Free on Amazon Prime

in Film, Music | April 8th, 2017

FYI: Jim Jar­musch’s new doc­u­men­tary Gimme Dan­ger–his “love let­ter” to punk icons Iggy Pop and The Stooges–is steam­ing free right now on Ama­zon Prime. If you have Ama­zon Prime, you can start stream­ing the film here. If you don’t, you can sign up for a 30-day free tri­al, watch the doc, and then decide whether to remain a sub­scriber or not. It’s your call. (Note: they also offer a sim­i­lar deal for audio­books from Audi­ble.)

Hav­ing the watched the film just last week­end, I’ll say this: Gimme Dan­ger is worth the watch. But it just scratch­es the sur­face of what Pop and the Stooges were all about. To go deep­er, I’d rec­om­mend pick­ing up a copy of Please Kill Me: The Uncen­sored Oral His­to­ry of Punk (now released in a 20th anniver­sary edi­tion), which gives you a more com­plete and raw account of the rise and fall of this influ­en­tial band.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Watch Marcel Marceau Mime The Mask Maker, a Story Created for Him by Alejandro Jodorowsky (1959)

in Dance, Film | April 7th, 2017

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, as any­one who’s wit­nessed a movie of his play out onscreen might guess, has steeped him­self in the mys­ti­cal arts, but it would take an astute view­er to guess that he received some of his ear­li­est train­ing in the field of mime. Dur­ing his time in Paris in the 1950s, the Chilean-born film­mak­er, yet to shoot a sin­gle frame but hav­ing already run his own per­for­mance troupe back in San­ti­a­go, began study­ing under Éti­enne Decroux, not only a mas­ter of mime but a mas­ter teacher of mime. Jodor­owsky then joined and went on a world tour with a mime group led by one of Decroux’s espe­cial­ly promis­ing stu­dents, one Mar­cel Marceau.

Few today could think of mime with­out Marceau’s name com­ing to mind, and none could think of Marceau with­out hav­ing at least a sense that the man rede­fined the art. Per­form­ers had, of course, used their bod­ies to word­less­ly evoke dif­fer­ent ele­ments of the human expe­ri­ence since antiq­ui­ty, but Marceau — who could take his view­ers through an entire human life in four min­utes — brought it to anoth­er lev­el entire­ly.

Some of Jodor­owsky’s fans might say the same about the direc­tor, and in the video above they can wit­ness per­haps the two men’s only sur­viv­ing cre­ation: Marceau’s 1959 per­for­mance of The Mask Mak­er, a piece Jodor­owsky thought up for him.

“Jodor­owsky would say, ‘Mar­cel, will you accept if I give you an idea for a sto­ry?’ ” remem­bered Marceau in a late inter­view. “I replied, ‘Of course, if the idea is good.’ Jodor­owsky said, ‘What do you think of a man who tries on dif­fer­ent masks show­ing a vari­ety of emo­tions? He puts on a laugh­ing mask that gets stuck on his face; he tries des­per­ate­ly but it will not come off. He has to blind him­self to take it off his face.’ I did the chore­og­ra­phy myself, and then we shared the rights for this pan­tomime.” Two oth­er Marceau-Jodor­owsky works in mime fol­lowed, The Saber of the Samu­rai and “anoth­er cru­el tale” called The Eater of Hearts.

At once shocked and moved, accord­ing to Pro­ject­ed Fig­ures’ “Brief Guide to Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky,” by the “excess of vio­lence” in these mime rou­tines, Marceau nev­er­the­less per­formed them with what looks like the fullest com­mit­ment to the con­cept. Jodor­owsky in turn made use of what he’d learned from Marceau even as he switched arts and began mak­ing films. The influ­ence shows in his very first short film, 1957’s La Cra­vate, a word­less phys­i­cal per­for­mance for the cam­era. His­to­ry has­n’t record­ed whether Marceau ever watched it, but he’d sure­ly rec­og­nize his for­mer col­lab­o­ra­tor’s sen­si­bil­i­ty in the con­tent: it also goes by the Eng­lish title The Sev­ered Heads.

A 1975 ver­sion appears below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­cel Marceau Mimes the Pro­gres­sion of Human Life, From Birth to Death, in 4 Min­utes

How Mar­cel Marceau Start­ed Mim­ing to Save Chil­dren from the Holo­caust

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Derek Jarman’s Daring 12-Minute Promo Film for Marianne Faithfull’s 1979 Comeback Album Broken English (NSFW)

in Film, Music | April 6th, 2017

Note: There are a few not-safe-for-work scenes in the film.

The world of music video was in its infan­cy in the late 1970s. MTV had yet to exist, and pro­mo­tion­al films for sin­gles were seen as use­ful for the times when a show could­n’t book a band to play live, or the band just didn’t play live any more. Into this world fell many a com­mer­cial direc­tor, used to the pro­mo­tion side of the pro­mo film busi­ness. But there were also direc­tors like Derek Jar­man, the punk­est of UK direc­tors at that time. This new for­mat paid the bills in between fea­tures, and let him exper­i­ment.

Though he would go on to work with the Pet Shop Boys and The Smiths, Jarman’s first pro­mo video is above, for three songs from Mar­i­anne Faithfull’s mas­ter­piece of a new wave album, Bro­ken Eng­lish (1979).

Faith­full had been out of the pub­lic eye for years, hav­ing spent a lot of the ’70 try­ing to kick her drug habit. The anger and cyn­i­cism of this album, her cracked but com­mand­ing voice, and the elec­tron­ic sounds were such that many for­get she released two oth­er “come­back albums” before this one. On Bro­ken Eng­lish she force­ful­ly rewrites her own his­to­ry as an artist, not con­tent to be seen as a drug casu­al­ty or Mick Jagger’s ex-girl­friend.

Jar­man was known at the time as the con­tro­ver­sial film­mak­er of both the homo­erot­ic Sebas­tiane and the anti-Roy­al Jubilee, which more than any film at the time encap­su­lat­ed the UK punk scene. It’s both bru­tal and roman­tic and charm­ing­ly D.I.Y.

The Bro­ken Eng­lish pro­mo film fea­tures three songs, brack­et­ed by black and white footage of Faith­full wan­der­ing around Lon­don and play­ing Space Invaders in a local arcade. The first, “Witch’s Song,” is the clos­est to Jarman’s short films dur­ing that peri­od: lan­guid, ambigu­ous­ly gen­dered young peo­ple, apoc­a­lyp­tic dock­side ruins, reflect­ed mir­rors, occultism and debauch­ery. The sec­ond, “The Bal­lad of Lucy Jor­dan,” fea­tures scenes of domes­tic­i­ty dou­ble exposed and/or pro­ject­ed over footage of Faith­full. The final one, for the title track, is a short col­lage of 20th cen­tu­ry fas­cism and car­nage, fea­tur­ing Hitler, Mus­soli­ni, Oswald Mosley, British strikes, and self-immo­lat­ed monks.

The two artists got along so well that she record­ed the theme song for his film The Last of Eng­land, fea­tur­ing a very young Til­da Swin­ton.

Both Jar­man and Faith­full went on to suc­cess­ful­ly rein­vent them­selves, but for the 21st cen­tu­ry view­er, they are also both worth redis­cov­er­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Very Young Mar­i­anne Faith­full Sings Her First Hit, ‘As Tears Go By’ (1965)

Watch David Bowie & Mar­i­anne Faith­full Rehearse and Sing Son­ny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” (1973)

Jean-Luc Godard Shoots Mar­i­anne Faith­full Singing “As Tears Go By” (1966)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Graphic Designer Redesigns a Movie Poster Every Day, for One Year: Scarface, Mulholland Dr., The Graduate, Vertigo, The Life Aquatic and 360 More

in Art, Film | April 5th, 2017

No scene in a movie counts for as much as its open­ing, but even before its first frame pass­es through the pro­jec­tor, its poster has already made the real first impres­sion. This remains basi­cal­ly as true in the era of dig­i­tal cin­e­ma as it was when film actu­al­ly passed through pro­jec­tors. But while film­mak­ers only occa­sion­al­ly go back and retool their past works — not that the expe­ri­ence of, say, George Lucas and the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy vouch­es for the prac­tice — film posters can eas­i­ly under­go any num­ber of revi­sions through the decades. What cinephile graph­ic design­er would­n’t want to take a shot at cre­at­ing a new face for a favorite movie?

Last year, the Syd­ney-based design­er Peter Majarich took shots at 365 of them, cre­at­ing one new poster for an exist­ing movie each and every day. “The feat is a huge under­tak­ing,” writes the Cre­ators Pro­jec­t’s Diana Shi, “but Majarich’s final prod­ucts nev­er give the impres­sion of last-minute cre­ations; instead, they show off an acute atten­tion to detail and a bold, dig­i­tal-influ­enced style. The inven­tive­ness of each poster reveals how much of a cinephile Majarich real­ly is.” His selec­tions include “a pool of zeit­geist direc­tors, Oscar win­ners, and art-house films with cult fol­low­ings.

A ren­der­ing of De Palma’s Scar­face is a sub­tle assem­bly of white pow­der to stark­ly draw out Al Pacino’s pro­file. While what looks like a body of com­plex cod­ing lan­guage forms the blank-star­ing face of Ali­cia Vikander’s lead in Ex Machi­na.” You can browse all these at A Movie Poster a Day, see them dis­played in sequence in the video above, and buy them on his design com­pa­ny’s site.

Their simul­ta­ne­ous aes­thet­ic and cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ences will please design- and film-lovers alike (groups hard­ly sep­a­rate on the Venn dia­gram any­way), and while many con­sti­tute good visu­al gags, the best pro­vide new per­spec­tives on even much-watched favorite movies.

For Wes Ander­son­’s The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou, Majarich depicts the emo­tion­al sub­mer­sion of its sea­far­ing pro­tag­o­nist; for Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go he works only with the title itself imbu­ing the type with the com­bi­na­tion of shock and dread on dis­play in the film; for David Lynch’s Mul­hol­land Dri­ve he uses a pink-skied land­scape of the tit­u­lar Los Ange­les road lead­ing off, as Lynch’s work often does, to who knows where. After you’ve seen the first 286, you’ll come upon a selec­tion that will hard­ly sur­prise you: Gary Hus­twit’s Hel­veti­ca.

via Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­er Reimag­ines Icon­ic Movie Posters With Min­i­mal­ist Designs: Reser­voir Dogs, The Matrix & More

40,000 Film Posters in a Won­der­ful­ly Eclec­tic Archive: Ital­ian Tarkovsky Posters, Japan­ese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

Down­load Vin­tage Film Posters in High-Res: From The Philadel­phia Sto­ry to Attack of the Crab Mon­sters

A Look Inside Mar­tin Scorsese’s Vin­tage Movie Poster Col­lec­tion

The Strange and Won­der­ful Movie Posters from Ghana: The Matrix, Alien & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Stream 72 Hours of Ambient Sounds from Blade Runner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopian Future

in Film, Games, Sci Fi | April 4th, 2017

As reflex­ive­ly as we may now describe the 2019 Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner as “dystopi­an” — and indeed, as vivid a mod­ern dystopia as cin­e­ma has yet pro­duced — who among us would­n’t want to spend at least a few hours there? Much of the sur­face appeal is, of course, visu­al: the rainy neon-lined streets, the indus­tri­al fear­some­ness, those tow­er-side video geisha. But no film tru­ly suc­ceeds, at cre­at­ing a world or any­thing else, with­out the right sound. We may not con­scious­ly real­ize it when we watch the movie, no mat­ter how many times we’ve seen it before, but the son­ic ele­ments, all care­ful­ly craft­ed, do more than their fair share to make Blade Run­ner feel like Blade Run­ner.

And so the best way to put your­self into Blade Run­ner’s world may be to sur­round your­self with its sounds, a task made much eas­i­er by “ambi­ent geek” Crysknife007, whose Youtube chan­nel offers a playlist of ambi­ent noise from Blade Run­ner places. These include Deckard’s apart­ment, the Tyrell Build­ing, the Brad­bury Hotel, and oth­ers, each of which loops for a con­tin­u­ous twelve hours. (The com­plete playlist above runs for 72 hours.) Some of the loca­tions even die-hard fans of the movie might not rec­og­nize, because they come from anoth­er exten­sion of Blade Run­ner’s real­i­ty: the 1997 PC adven­ture game that has a new cast of char­ac­ters play out a dif­fer­ent sto­ry in the pro­to-cyber­punk urban set­ting with the same neces­si­ty for just the right sound to cre­ate just the right atmos­phere

Crysknife007, who as an ambi­ent musi­cian goes under the name “Cheesy Ner­vosa,” seems to have a side line in this sort of thing: last month we fea­tured oth­er sci-fi-inspired selec­tions from the same Youtube chan­nel like the sounds of the ship’s engine from Star Trek: the Next Gen­er­a­tion and the TARDIS from Doc­tor Who. But it’s Blade Run­ner, as Thom Ander­sen says in his doc­u­men­tary Los Ange­les Plays Itself, that “con­tin­ues to fas­ci­nate. Per­haps it express­es a nos­tal­gia for a dystopi­an vision of the future that has become out­dat­ed. This vision offered some con­so­la­tion because it was at least sub­lime. Now the future looks brighter, hot­ter, and bland­er.” But even as the real 2019 draws near, what­ev­er the future actu­al­ly ends up look­ing like, we at least know we can keep it sound­ing inter­est­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Philosophy of The Matrix: From Plato and Descartes, to Eastern Philosophy

in Film, Philosophy | March 31st, 2017

Do you take the red pill or the blue pill? The ques­tion, which at its heart has to do with either accept­ing or reject­ing the illu­sions that con­sti­tute some or all of life as you know it, became part of the cul­ture almost imme­di­ate­ly after Mor­pheus, Lawrence Fish­burne’s char­ac­ter in The Matrix, put it to Keanu Reeves’ pro­tag­o­nist Neo. That film, a career-mak­ing suc­cess for its direc­tors the Wachows­ki sis­ters (then the Wachows­ki broth­ers), had its own elab­o­rate vision of a false real­i­ty entrap­ping human­i­ty as the actu­al one sur­rounds it, a vision made real­iz­able by the finest late-1990s com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed spe­cial effects. But the ideas behind it, as this Film Radar video essay shows, go back a long way indeed.

The first and by far the most respect­ed of the tril­o­gy, The Matrix “large­ly inter­prets Pla­to’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave. Imag­ine a cave. Inside are peo­ple who were born and have spent their entire lives there, chained into a fixed posi­tion, only able to see the wall in front of them. As far as they know, this is the entire world.” The Wachowskis ask the same ques­tion Pla­to does: “How do we know what our real­i­ty real­ly is?”

When they have Mor­pheus bring Neo out of his “cave” of every­day late-20th-cen­tu­ry exis­tence, they do it in a man­ner anal­o­gous to Pla­to’s Anal­o­gy of the Sun, in which “the sun is a metaphor for the nature of real­i­ty and knowl­edge con­cern­ing it,” and the eyes of the fear­ful few forced out of their cave need some time to adjust to it.

But when one “unplugs” from the illu­sion-gen­er­at­ing Matrix of the title — a con­cept now in con­sid­er­a­tion again thanks to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the “sim­u­la­tion argu­ment” — a longer jour­ney toward that real­ly-real real­i­ty still awaits. The sec­ond and third install­ments of the tril­o­gy involve a dive into “reli­gious phi­los­o­phy from the East,” espe­cial­ly the idea of escape from the eter­nal soul’s rein­car­na­tion “into oth­er phys­i­cal forms in an infi­nite cycle where the soul is left to wan­der and suf­fer” by means of a spir­i­tu­al quest for “enlight­en­ment, by unit­ing body and mind with spir­it.” This leads, inevitably, to self-sac­ri­fice: by final­ly “allow­ing him­self to die,” Neo “is reunit­ed with spir­it” and “becomes the true sav­ior of human­i­ty” — a nar­ra­tive ele­ment not unknown in reli­gious texts even out­side the East.

These count as only “a few of the philo­soph­i­cal ideas the Wachowskis explore in the Matrix tril­o­gy,” the oth­ers includ­ing Robert Noz­ick­’s “Expe­ri­ence Machine,” Descartes’ “Great Deceiv­er,” and oth­er con­cepts from Kant and Hume “ques­tion­ing real­i­ty, causal­i­ty, and free will, not to men­tion the obvi­ous com­men­tary on tech­nol­o­gy or a sub­mis­sive soci­ety.” Of course, philo­soph­i­cal explo­ration in The Matrix involve count­less fly­ing — and grav­i­ty-defy­ing — fists and bul­lets, much of it per­formed by char­ac­ters clad in reflec­tive sun­glass­es and black leather. Per­haps that dat­ed­ness has prompt­ed the recent announce­ment of a Matrix reboot: though the styles may change, if it hap­pens, the ideas would no doubt remain rec­og­niz­able to Pla­to him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Are We Liv­ing Inside a Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tion?: An Intro­duc­tion to the Mind-Bog­gling “Sim­u­la­tion Argu­ment”

Philip K. Dick The­o­rizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Com­put­er-Pro­grammed Real­i­ty”

Daniel Den­nett and Cor­nel West Decode the Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix

The Matrix: What Went Into The Mix

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.