The Task of Storytelling

Movies are not all about story; they're not merely narrative-delivery devices. (That's television.) Movies lacking in the story department can succeed because it's a visual art form with a host of other, equally important virtues. Nevertheless, the task at hand in The Matrix Revolutions is storytelling because Larry and Andy Wachowski have decided that it should be so: They have created a huge narrative snowball — a mystery — and sent it rolling down the mountain. Now, Mulholland Drive has the same demand on it — to resolve a mystery — and as maddening as that movie can be, David Lynch does right by the audience by telling a story and supplying an answer, even if it isn't conventionally spelled out. What's more, the Wachowskis, despite working on a megabudget blockbuster movie, deserve the same latitude in their story choices as someone like Lynch. But you can't argue that they don't have a responsibility to tell a story.

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