Given that I have watched this movie in its entirity for three out of the past four nights (entirity being defined as the film itself, not the special features, many of which I have yet to even discover), I figure I may as well make an official entry. :)

Alright. Well, this time, I really wasn't even planning to watch it all the way through. Honest. I just put the disc in and hit play as a means to check that everything was functioning properly and looked right after all the equipment had been transported back to the lair. Who would've thought my eyes would find themselves focused on the screen, metaphorical glue drying with each passing second, and my hand somehow unable to make itself reach the two centimeters required to hit the stop button? ;)

And so it came to pass that Bitscape was once again sucked into the virtual world, remnants of the blue pill circulating into his bloodstream, his muscles on the verge of atrophy as he veged. First the chair, then the bed, the floor. But of course, he could never go completely limp, because his body would instinctively perk up whenever an engaging scene hit the screen. Therefore, regressing into a state of lethargy was not on the menu.

Ok, so saying this was a great film -- a masterpiece -- would be redundant at this point, despite the eternal veracity of such a statement. Summarizing events and describing scenes would also be fairly pointless. Those who have seen it know what it is. For those who haven't watched, the fun of discovery should not be spoiled. (But who hasn't seen this one by now? You'd either have to be amish, or a much, much more vigilant boycotter than yours truly to have managed such a feat.) Therefore, just an observation or two.

Of course, the dialog throughout the film is laced with profundity. While many conversations, of course, convey a literal meaning in the context of the story, they can also be taken to apply to life in a more abstract, metaphorical sense. The most obvious of these to me, and also perhaps the most striking, is Neo's initial meeting with Morpheus. As Morpheus describes The Matrix to Neo ("The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work. When you go to church. When you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.")

I suppose a large part of the brilliance of this movie is the way it constantly hints at ideas and philosophical concepts which go far beyond the concrete plot of the story. Even peripheral, offhand, casual comments made by the characters, when looked at closely, can open up whole other cans of worms and lead to tangents, which -- all put togther -- invoke the viewer into a mode of questioning. Examine anything and everything. But be warned: no simple or conclusive answers are within sight.

For example, look at the scene immediately following Cipher's decision to betray the crew of the Nebuchandezzar. He eats a juicy, delicious, steak (which my mind now cannot seem to disassociate with a recent slashdot poll. Moo!), makes his treacherous deal with Agent Smith, and then we cut to the plain, bland breakfast ("bowl of snot") eaten by the rest of the crew. After the tasty wheat conversation -- itself quite a profound and humorous little exchange -- Mouse ends the argument about the woman in the red dress with a memorable line: "To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human."

This could almost be taken as implicit support of the motives behind the Cipher's decision. In fact, it's a flat out endorsement of such a philosophy. To take the blue pill. Yet we don't see Mouse trying to get plugged back into The Matrix for a life of eternal bliss. Why?

(If you think I'm taking this all too seriously, you're probably right. It's what I do. :) )

I shall ponder this and other questions as I drift into sleep. And where will I wake up? Only Alice would know.