"The Matrix Revolutions" and the irrationality of God

THERE ARE TWO KINDS of movie heroes. The first is an Indiana Jones type who, no matter what the odds, always finds the perfect tool, strategy, or bon mot to get himself through an ordeal. We rarely, if ever, worry for his safety. He lets us live a fantasy of being dashing, self-assured, and utterly confident in our destination.

The second is a Luke Skywalker type, the everyman who is thrust into extraordinary circumstances and rises to the challenge. He makes mistakes; he wonders if he knows what he's doing. His journey is the much more emotional of the two, because we find ourselves asking: What would I do in that situation?

In the first two installments of The Matrix, the character Neo is a Luke Skywalker kind of hero. In the first film this mild-mannered hacker is called upon to escape out a high-rise office window, and we're right there with him in his incredulity. Later, when he's told that he's a prophesied savior of the world, we feel the uncomfortable weight on his shoulders. In the second film Neo is less ordinary and more superhuman, yet we can still identify with his very human conflict over whether to fulfill the destiny others have imposed on him or to give up his destiny for love.

In The Matrix Revolutions, Neo slips into the Indiana Jones mold, a hero we never have to worry about, a hero who no longer invites us to walk in his shoes. Neo makes his biggest decision of the film while sitting in silence, with the audience unaware of what options he's even weighing. When he does make a decision, it's to fly into the heart of enemy territory without even a hint of a plan -- trusting only in the screenwriters' sense of story arc to ensure he makes it there alive. When he faces his nemesis, Mr. Smith, in an earth-shattering battle, Neo seems to have no clue how to win the fight, but as the audience we know that somehow he'll win. In other words, we're left simply to watch agog as Neo does his stuff.

But the failure of The Matrix Revolutions isn't simply an awkward character shift; it fundamentally betrays the Messianic metaphor from the first two installments. Although the series is an amalgam of religious symbols that defies clear parallels, the character of Neo seems to be linked with Jesus Christ -- living under the prophecy that he will save the world. In The Matrix, Neo allows us to examine in a fictional context what it must be like to live under that prophecy. He allows us to understand the emotions and struggles that a Messiah must go through in coming to terms with his destiny, and lets us glimpse what it might have been like to walk in Jesus' shoes.

By the time we get to Revolutions, however, the directors have sapped Neo of his humanity and made him walk stoically along his preordained path. We no longer get to glimpse into Neo's head, or feel what Neo feels. He becomes a different kind of hero, and therefore becomes a different kind of Christ figure. The Neo of Revolutions is more like the stodgy Jesus from the movies of my youth -- what author Philip Yancey calls the "Vulcan Jesus." In those films, Jesus stands very rigidly and recites Bible verses at people; he always knows where to walk and what to say because he already knows the whole story and is just acting out his part as written. He's not emotionally involved or invested; he is just doing his duty.

I feel uncomfortable with those old films the same way I am uncomfortable with Revolutions. I do not experience my life as a script; I do not feel detached from my everyday struggles. If Jesus was as fully human as he was fully God, then he must have truly wept at Lazarus's passing, been truly honored as his feet were anointed, been truly tempted in the wilderness. If I am to see any love in the fact that Jesus suffered just as I do, then that suffering had to be real. If God truly made himself into a human being, then God must be the kind of hero who wants me to engage with him, rather than simply sit back and boggle at his greatness.

So I found it particularly disappointing that, paired with Neo's increasing remoteness, The Matrix Revolutions makes Neo a more blatant Christ figure than ever before: it goes so far as to show a cross of light burst from Neo's chest during a scene where he's stretched in a crucifix position. He has become more an icon than a person, a theme that reverberates throughout the film. People, events, and locations are reduced to only symbolic purposes: Capt. Mifune is simply an icon of courage; Sati is an icon of beauty; The Kid is an icon of youth; Zee is an icon of constant hope. The characters we cared about in the first movie all but disappear -- Morpheus literally takes a back seat in the film, and Trinity has little to do but stand by her man. They are shackled, so as not to contribute anything unexpected.

An icon can be counted on to act according to its nature. An icon can be counted on to follow the dictates of the script. That is why it is so important to understand God as more than an icon of love, truth, justice and beauty, more than just a measuring stick for all that is good and perfect. God is not reasonable, stable, easy to understand. God is a living being, capable of surprise, capable of performing the irrational act of incarnating himself as a human. It was not a just act; it was not dictated by his standards; it was not inevitable. The crux of the Gospel message is this: God loves human beings more than his own standards, and he put himself through death in order to break the hold those standards had on him.

Against all that is right and fair, God humbled himself and unguarded his heart before us in the person of Jesus. God invites us into his presence, and asks us to take part in this irrational love for people. He is a Luke Skywalker kind of God, who entices us to come along on his journey.

"Stevie" and the helplessness of helping

DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER STEVE James ("Hoop Dreams") returns to the southern Illinois town where he once volunteered as a Big Brother a troubled youth, Stevie. But Stevie has not found his way in life. He has a failed marriage, a string of arrests, and stands accused of child molestation.

"Stevie" is about the frustrations of being unable to help someone. We meet Stevie's mother, grandmother, girlfriend, sister, friends, neighbors, and former mentors, all of whom have tried in some way to shape him. Steve James, who becomes a character in his own film, carries a lot of this kind of weight: What if he had done more? As one of the interviewees says, "What do you do when the village fails" at raising its children?

At the same time, as we get to know Stevie, he becomes more fully known to us than as a mere charity case or a statistic. And we begin to sense the effect of living every day with a cadre of people trying to change him: He seems more and more alone, less willing to trust an extended hand. "I ain't going to no shrink," he says, even if it means more jail time. It's clear that isolation and punishment is, for Stevie, preferrable to letting a stranger get close to him.

In my own life, I've lived on both sides of this tension: wanting help other people and yet resenting help myself. I am sure that most of us have a better idea of how our parents or siblings or friends or enemies might live their lives, and yet of course we resist their own interference in our own lives. I can feel myself in the shoes of both Steves: "Why won't you accept my help?" and "Why are there strings attached to your affection?" These conflicting sentiments stand as a roadblock in relationships.

Not too long ago I was sharing with my boss and mentor my frustrations at not being able to convince someone of a certain point I felt was important. And he told me that I had handed him a complete answer to the problem, to be swallowed whole or to be rejected. People, he said, all want to discover an answer for ourselves.

As I think back over the great friendships in my life, I realized he was correct. They walked beside me, challenged me, loved me, sought with me, but never dictated to me. The books and movies that are important to me have spurred me on to discover things about the human condition, but rarely handed me a conclusion. Maybe what we need most is just some gas in our tanks, some push to keep going, rather than someone taking over the steering wheel. Maybe helping someone isn't telling them what they need or even giving them what they need, but allowing them to discover what they need -- which might not be what we suggest anyway.

I do not want to give the impression that I know what Steve James should have done, nor dismiss Stevie's culpability. There are no easy answers to the movie's open-ended questions about what can be done about crime and abuse in our world. But I think the director makes a good observation when, at one point, he says Stevie has become more of a subject matter than a person. Taking to wearing sunglasses indoors, Stevie seems to sense this. Not many of us bring a film crew to our friendships, but the same kind of psychological distance is present when we constantly evaluate the other person. We can sense when our friend is truly listening to us ... and when there are strings attached.