5 things to know about the Wachowskis’ cinema
The documentary “From Matrix to Sense8, the Wachowski revolution” is available on the france.tv website until the end of the year.
On the occasion of the twenty-five years of MatrixTHE film that revolutionized science fiction, but also and above all, the way of making films, France 5 recently broadcast a documentary dedicated to the duo of filmmakers, From Matrix to Sense8, the Wachowski revolutionwhich is part of the program “Rebels, the art of hustling”.
The opportunity to delve back into the nooks and crannies of a filmography marked by a genre, science fiction, but also by a desire to represent a queer marginality, including Matrix, if it is the structural work, it is not the outline. Of Bound has Sense8Passing by Speed Racer or Jupiter: the destiny of the universea look back at six production secrets among many others that the documentary reveals to us.
Assassin : translator, traditor
The beginnings of the relationship between the Wachowskis and Hollywood were stormy, perhaps predicting what would come next. Shadow figures, they began their careers in the 1990s by multiplying the submissions of scripts all more or less snubbed by the studios, until that ofAssassincomplex questioning around the concept of morality, is ultimately retained.
Yes but, considered too cerebral, the script is entirely rewritten by Brian Helgelandwho later wrote LA Confidential, The Postman or Mystic River. Directed by Richard Donner (The lethal Weapon, Maverick), with Sly, Antonio Banderas And Julianne Moorethe film no longer pays any attention to the deep introspection that was initially told, and turns into a pure action film.
Judging their script to be distorted, the two sisters pleaded with the studios and the Writers Guild of America, the screenwriters' union, for their names to be removed from the credits, which they were refused.
A blessing in disguise, perhaps, because this injustice will push them to move into directing to have total control over their films.
Corky or not Corky?
Their first time behind the camera was with Bound, a first attempt inherited from film noir and mixing lesbian drama and gangster film. The duo of directors wanted to feature a tandem of strong female characters – a minority in Hollywood – carried by Gina Gershon And Jennifer Tilly.
An emancipatory impulse which was not unanimous among Hollywood pundits. Lilly Wachowski says:
“We submitted the script to several Hollywood studios, who told us that if we changed the character of Corky to a man, they were ready to buy it immediately, with a big budget. But it would no longer be the same story.”
They therefore had to be satisfied with a budget of 6 million dollars, which the film barely reimbursed, but which, having since become cult, remains the film which set the Wachowskis' foot in the stirrup.
Switch: one coin, two sides
If Matrix has often been taken up by conspiracy communities, little has been seen since its release in 1999, the LGBT subtext already deeply inscribed in their thinking, and physically embodied by the character of Switch, beyond the metaphor of the matrix.
“Switch”in English, means “interchange, exchange”. This name is the last vestige of the character that the Wachowskis had written in the first version of the script. Switch, was to be a transgender figure, a female character in the Matrix, and male in the real world. In this sense, they should have been played by two actors, a man and a woman.
An idea that Warner refuses. The directors therefore choose Belinda McClory actress with a very androgynous face, to get around this castrating vet as best as possible.
Chicago ascendant
Chicago is to the Wachowski sisters what New York is to Woody Allen or to Martin Scorsese. The city is a source of inspiration for the directors, who have always been part of an assumed urban planning.
We see the Windy City in Sense8 while the character of Will (Brian J. Smith) goes to Millennium Park.
However, it is especially in Jupiter: Ascending that Chicago was really invested by the Wachowskis, notably in an aerial chase scene, which was shot IRL in the middle of the skyscrapers. The liners of Mila Kunis And Channing Tatumharnessed to helicopters, zigzagged through the streets, thus performing a stunt never seen before, and of which the Wachowskis, always avant-garde, have the secret.
Wacho or Picasso?
We thought they had nothing more to invent, but in 2008, the Wachowski sisters returned with Speed Racerin which Emile Hirsch And Matthew Fox are running wild in a world that frees itself from the limits of possibility, of “already done”.
To invent this new cinematographic grammar, these special effects of a new kind, the directors were inspired by Cubism, a major pictorial movement which allows the decomposition of the objects observed. In the documentary, Lana says:
“We were passionate about this moment when Picasso started to think: 'Why should I only see what I'm looking at, when I could imagine that I'm seeing it from another angle at the same time? Why limit myself to a single point of view, instead of seeing it simultaneously from another?'”
To find out more about the world of the Wachowskis – and in particular the cameos they slipped into Bound And Matrix: Reloaded– don’t miss the documentary From Matrix to Sense8, the Wachowski revolutionavailable hereuntil December 28.
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