Based Keanu

 

The actor Keanu Reeves has just turned sixty years old. It seems hard to believe and is perhaps another sign that the predicted "reverse quickening" has not yet appeared, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2014/02/programme-78-podcast-2012-redux.html. I remember him well as a young actor in teen flicks like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Parenthood. He did graduate to more mature cinema as he aged and eventually starred in his definitive adult role, Neo in the Matrix series. Now officially elderly, the actor has featured in a short documentary that has astounded me. It reveals a lot of details about his personal life and the history of the Matrix movies that is almost as dramatic as the films themselves. He was born in the Middle East to Canadian parents and when he was three years old they divorced; his father left his life and made no effort to contact him. Keanu only met him again at the age of thirteen. After that, the two hardly ever saw each other again. Sadly the tragedies of his life did not end there. His only child was stillborn at eight months and shortly afterwards his wife was killed in a car crash. Emotional pain on that scale might be why he became a very shy eccentric person. Unlike many Hollywood stars he does not live the playboy lifestyle and instead spends most of his time working for charities and collecting motorcycles. However, he has done a few interviews where he talks candidly about his observations on life, and this includes the profound mystical ideas at the heart of the Wachowskis' famous franchise. The documentary explains, partly through Keanu's testimony that the films were a labour of love for both the creators and himself, but they were also a monumental struggle; and this reveals a lot to me. I always sensed there was something missing from them; not so much in the original, but definitely with the first two sequels. (I have not seen Resurrections, the most recent.) It turns out that the project was almost cancelled. Keanu and the rest of the cast and crew donated funds to keep it going and they were locked in a constant battle with the studio over content. The cast and Wachowskis wanted to centre the story on its renowned spiritual themes, but the studio wanted an action movie. This would explain why the first two sequels feel so watered down. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJbjkw-jwgA.

There is no doubt that Keanu Reeves is what is commonly known as based. This is probably both a cause and effect of his Neo role. Even before The Matrix, however, he showed symptoms of outside-the-box thinking. As long ago as 1993 he took on the eponymous role in Bernado Bertolucci's fabulous Little Buddha. This was criticized as bad casting, but I think Reeves plays the part with extraordinary gusto and charisma. You can see he is genuinely interested in the life and ideas of Prince Siddhartha. (The director's cut is currently on YouTube; the age of this upload suggests it is authorized, hence I don't mind sharing it, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UR1C_Z8swU.) As for the Wachowskis, their subsequent film Cloud Atlas, which I also adore, allowed them to express many of the ideas that they wanted to put into The Matrix, but were forbidden from doing so, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2013/07/cloud-atlas.html. Keanu has also appeared in one scene on Ancient Apocalypse, Graham Hancock's latest series, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzh7r9MKTew. He has futhermore written a book, co-authored by a writer I'm very familiar with, China Miéville, see: https://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2023/12/piw-in-fiction.html and: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-city-and-city-by-china-mieville.html. This is another sign that he is both intelligent and radical in his mentality. Keanu Reeves sits forever in my childhood memory as this scruffy haired teenager breathlessly delivering lines in Californian surfer slang, but this just goes to show you should never underestimate anybody. The most conformist and mundane exterior can sometimes conceal the beating heart of a true maverick and prophet.