My Matrix

My Matrix

Jakarta city still feels a bit empty after the Lebaran holidays. Traffic is relatively light. Maybe it is because there are many people who are still not back from their kampungs or holiday destinations yet.

The theatres here are just showing The Matrix Revolutions--which I managed to catch when I was back in KL last week. I watched Matrix Reloaded at least three times in the cinema but Revolutions did not impress me as much. I am not compelled to watch it again.

The first two parts of the Matrix trilogy to me was more fun because more of the action took place inside the Matrix, whereas Revolutions is set mostly in Zion and Machine City. To me, the key fascination with this trilogy is the world of the Matrix. The Zion scenes look like it's shot in some abandoned Star Wars set, with extras who could easily have walked into either film without a change of costumes.

My movie-going experience this year hasn't been that interesting; I didn't watch as many movies as I used to. I keep a list of all the movies I've seen in my PDA--it only totalled up to a miserable 24 for this year. The only memorable movies I could find from the list is Monster's Ball, which won Halle Berry the Best Actress Oscar in 2002 and The Hours (which won Nicole Kidman the same award the following year).

I also enjoyed The Quiet American, starring Michael Caine. Any movie that has Christopher Doyle as cinematographer is not to be missed. All the movies he did together with Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai are among my personal favourites. It is amazing that I have not even started raving about Wong Kar Wai's movies in my blog yet. I guess I'll save that for some future posting, because there's so much to write about.

Watching a movie to me is as important and as educational as reading a book. "Watching" is not an accurate word to describe the activity; as I've mentioned in a previous posting, movie is an experience. A good movie creates a world where you want to reenter again and again--like the Matrix.

Scenes from my favourite movies are always replaying themselves in my head. I consider them a legitimate part of my living experience and they help shape my view on life.

Like the people trapped in the world of the Matrix, sometimes I cannot distinguish illusion from reality: Everything mingles and inter-affect one another in the kaleidoscopic world of my mind. It is from this synthesis of images, ideas and emotions from books, movies and real-life experiences that that I create my world.

I don't deny it could be a warped vision of the world--my very own Matrix. But then again, all of us carry within our heads, our own personal Matrices.