Lana Wachowski and Ken Wilber — The Many Meanings of the Matrix

Lana and Lilly Wachowski, the writers and directors of The Matrix trilogy, have been reluctant to share their interpretation of the films from day one, fearing that whatever they said would turn into dogma. However, this did present a problem for Warner Brothers when producing The Ultimate Matrix Collection DVD boxed set. How do you have a director’s commentary—a must for any boxed set—when the directors refuse to comment? What the Wachowskis did was to ask Ken Wilber and Cornel West to do the director’s commentary on all 3 films. The following dialogue was recorded right before Ken flew to LA to meet with Lana and Cornel and do the recorded commentary. Ken and Cornel recorded 15 hours of commentary, which has been edited down to 6 hours to fit the 3 films, and the boxed set with all 3 films—and 6 hours of Ken and Cornel’s commentary—will be released in October. In the following dialogue, for the first time ever, we are lucky enough to hear Lana publicly comment on this situation. As she explains, the movies were in many ways designed not to give answers, but to introduce questions. What does it mean to be human? What is reality? Who is in control? Does God exist? and so on. If she was to explain what he thought the movies meant, she would be providing people with another concept of reality to either accept or reject—either way, the open space created by the question would vanish. “The whole key to The Matrix trilogy is given in the last twenty minutes of the third film….”