It�s perhaps inevitable that the role of Morpheus was given to a black actor; this is a Hollywood action movie, after all, and a Native American in the role would be just too pat, too Oliver-Stoney. A black man was the obvious next choice. A Mayan would have been nice, I suppose, but since there are no Mayan actors in Hollywood, we can be grateful at least to have gotten Laurence Fishburne (it might have been Will Smith). Fishburne makes Morpheus a hypnotic presence form the start. Since he is living beyond the apocalypse, Morpheus is beyond cool, also. He is so sedate he is like stone, like a Pyramid, emanating power, exactly as the shaman should. He sways Thomas by the sheer force of his personality and presence. He doesn�t mince about with his potential apprentice, but gives it to him straight. He lets him feel that he is choosing, but he makes sure there is only one choice that he can make. Since he knows that Thomas is the One, he knows that his spirit is the strongest thing about him. Hence he only has to arouse it, and the rest will follow. And he forces Thomas to confront his fear from the very first moment, when he leads him to the precipice in the office building. Morpheus doubtless knows that he will not be able to make the jump, so he is apparently simply presenting it to him as the task that awaits him. The first enemy of the man of knowledge, according to Don Juan, is fear. But Morpheus (like Don Juan) ensures that his apprentice not be overwhelmed by this fear, but actually uses it to spur him on. Since Thomas�s curiosity is so formidable, he is compelled to confront his fear, in order to find its source; and this he does, directly. Since Thomas has already seen too much strangeness to ever take anything for granted again, he simply has to find out what is going on. And so he takes the red pill, and is hurled without ado into the Zone, the astral dimension, the netherworld, the unconscious, call it what you will. He comes to bodily consciousness after a lifetime of stupor, and finds himself in Hell. He is quickly rescued by his shaman-guide, however (the inorganics taking him for dead), and there, in his newly heightened state of awareness, he is told the score.

His life is a dream. He has been enslaved by an alien intelligence that has abducted his body and sapped his will and drained his life force and turned him into a food source, a living battery cell. He has been fed, in turn, with nothing but lies for his whole life, to the point where the truth no longer exists for him. This is not academic, much less metaphorical. It is the literal, hideous truth, and Morpheus can prove it to him. He shows him another reality still, one that is wholly under Morpheus�s conscious control, his very own dream world, in which he is God. Hence Thomas�now Neo, at least in spirit�despite the almost intolerable strain upon his reason and his courage, is forced to accept the truth and, by doing so, to confront and to change it. He is shown the unfathomable unknown�of his own Id�and he is told that only by going there, and doing battle with the monsters therein, can he ever hope to survive it. There is no longer anywhere for him to back off to: he has already swallowed the pill; he has chosen life. (Another character in the film�a poorly drawn but key player, Cypher�actually does attempt such an escape, to return to his death-slumber and forget he ever left it; he is the movie�s Judas, and he very nearly destroys the whole Neo-movement in the process.) Once he commits to his shaman-guide, the initiate is hurled into the kind of existence that only a warrior can survive, hence he is trained in martial arts, learning by osmosis, as it were, the shaman passing his knowledge directly and bodily on to the apprentice, and only then showing him how to claim his knowledge as power. Neo is of course a prize student�he is after all �the One��and pretty soon he is giving Morpheus a run for his money.

At which point, he is sent back into action, for real-life training, sent into the world (the Matrix) to find his power. The shaman�s teachings have ensured however that the apprentice return to the world with something new: the awareness that the world is only a simulation, a point of view, and that, what�s more and to a large extent, it is not even his own. His task is to change this, but he can only begin to do so by first being perfectly detached from it�by learning how to �unbelieve,� to realize that the world is a dream, subject to his own conscious will. It is at this point that the second enemy of the man of knowledge�clarity� arises. Neo is so convinced of his point of view, his interpretation of reality, that it enslaves him (which is exactly what the Matrix is designed for, obviously). To overcome this he must free his mind, defeat his reason, or clarity, and simultaneously free his �body� as well, by realizing that he is simply a mode of perception, a feeling. Hence he is liberated to become pure power: a shaman, �or skywalker.�(6)

Neo�s task is to realize that he is in the world, but not of it. This realization cannot come about without first confronting his doubts however, and this is where the Oracle comes in. Before meeting her, Neo pauses in the waiting room for a brief magical lesson from the Yoda-like child and her spoon. This spoon-bending incident aptly prepares him for the mind-bending which the Oracle will do for him, momentarily. She confounds his expectations and lets him off the hook before the big whammy comes. She gets him in the appropriate mood for his full initiation as warrior-shaman: he is abandoned (he is not the One, so it doesn�t matter what he does anymore), but controlled (he can�t stand by and see Mopheus die); and by saving Morpheus (and Trinity into the bargain), Neo claims his power, and the apprentice becomes the master. Neo is now ready for the real thing.

The beauty of The Matrix is that it is the story of a spiritual journey, and yet it makes the melodrama an integral part this journey. The horror, adventure, and even the violence of the movie are so effective because they work at both their own level�as the necessary, sensational ingredients of sci-fi�and at a more mythical level, as part of Neo�s personal rite of passage. Everything that happens to him is part of his initiation, the means for him to �free his mind.� Hence, for the first time ever, all the chaos has a meaning: it is literally apocalyptic. And that�s the beauty of The Matrix, because it really does practice what it preaches. It is not only about a shamanic journey, veiled in dramatic form and done up in best Hollywood fashion, but, at the same time, it is this journey itself, in miniature. It�s like a plastic maze, into which the viewer�s perception may wander and lurk and crawl and soar, at will, to its own despair or delight, as it may. It is a means to confront the unconscious, in fun; and if taken (or done, for The Matrix is the first true work of participitative cinema, of �virtual reality�) in the right spirit, it is a potential balm for the weary and sickening soul of the cinemagoer. Maybe even it is a blessing. It brings the sort of exhilaration, anticipation, and joy (to this viewer at least) that may be more associated with childhood than anything. Or dreams. To see The Matrix and believe can make you feel like every day is Christmas. Watching it frees the mind.