If the original Matrix trilogy is about revelation and discovering your true purpose, The Matrix Resurrections is about the malaise of middle-age, of knowing you still have something to offer the world even though you’ve forgotten what the vitality of youth feels like. It also explores the idea that humanity will only reach its true potential when we build and nurture a pluralistic society. There’s also the idea that our love for one another gives us our true power; it motivates us to be our best selves.
The Matrix Resurrections is all that and much more. It possesses all of the hallmarks I’ve come to expect from any fantastical tale crafted by the Wachowski sisters, although one of the sisters, Lilly, wasn’t involved in this fourth installment of the Matrix franchise. Resurrections is raucously larger-than-life and messy in that uniquely human way that comes when our passions, emotions, and intellect swirl together.
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If you know anything about Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks, you know they’re only interested in pleasing themselves when it comes to their art. (If you don’t know anything about Sparks, you can learn quite a lot, like I did, from the new Edgar Wright documentary about the band, called The Sparks Brothers.) If you know who Leos Carax is, it’s likely you’ve seen his 2012 film Holy Motors, so you know how visually inventive and wacked-out his singular aesthetic is.
This trio of artists have come together to create a sui generis piece of cinema in Annette. A sort of rock opera by way of the French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – Carax also hails from France – Annette is by turns uplifting, depressing, silly, and hopelessly bleak. That wild mixture makes for a heady experience in certain moments, but it also never quite gels into a cohesive whole. Add to that a lead performance from Adam Driver that is, while bold and an example of an actor challenging himself, emotionally distant, which made it hard for me to connect with.
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If you want to find the most polarizing film of 2017, look no further than Darren Aronofsky’s baroque experiment in psychological horror, mother! (which after this point, I’ll refer to simply as Mother). This is a movie that’s impact I suspect will diminish on a second viewing. Unlocking the secret at Mother’s core, which will probably come at a slightly different point for just about everyone seeing it, robs it of some of its power. Aronofsky has made pure allegory here, using an extreme dream-logic aesthetic that is nothing if not simultaneously hypnotic and terrifying.
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