I'm back at work today, after a 24-hr (and still dwelling) stomach flu bug or something. I slept alot yesterday, and finally watched IDENTITY so I could send it back to Netflix. Wow - what a concept. Reality in a madman's mind. Kinda like the MATRIX, huh?

I want to comment without giving anything away about either movie. But if you think you'll see them and anything here might spoil it, stop reading - like you normally do when you come across my drivel :).

Multiple personality disorder figures prominently in the plotline of IDENTITY. At the same time, I felt like MATRIX suffered from wanting to be many things. Or rather, we as religious thinkers wanted it to live up to many different levels of spirituality. We wanted it to be a christian-ized movie, and the things that don't fit gospel definitions are written off as pluralistic. But the more I think about it, MATRIX is a joke - an inside joke, and the church is the punchline. It's nowhere to be found inside the Matrix - I might be wrong, but I don't remember one church, one cathedral, one fish on a car bumper. Nothing. There were allusions to christian things, but their counterfiets, aren't they? Zion was a doomed city, not the ultimate new city of God - destroyed in a peace the the "evil" allows, not in the majesty and glory. Ultimate good beats ultimate evil, but only within the confines of the Matrix - outside the computers, the machines are now stronger and "in charge". The real "god" and "heaven" here are ultimately human constructs gone horribly wrong............. that's not very christian.

In IDENTITY, an insane convict is heading to a late-night hearing in an attempt to stay his execution. Meanwhile, a horrible storm forces different people to be stranded at a motel in the desert. Someone's killing them one by one, as they discover each has the same birthday and other things in common. Does the killer die at the motel, or is he still on trial at the hearing. At least at the end of this, "reality" is defined, even if the doctors and justince can't figure out what it is.

These two flicks aren't even romotely similar - except that major pieces of each happen inside the mind and not in "reality". The problem is that in MATRIX, we're left thinking we've won something when there's no victory available. At the end of IDENTITY, we find that no one has really won. In both movies, if there is a victory, it's on the wrong side.
- posted by Rick @ 15:06