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The Matrix – Mr. Smith

Mr. Smith, the agent for the Machine, software that can enter and leave any other software in the Matrix. He is one of three agents we see, and they are all something other than human in their actions and speech. Particularly revealing is Neo’s experience in the interrogation room, before he knows what is going on. Mr. Smith comes across as a professional, unemotional law enforcement officer, but he also comes across as something else. The 3 agents are a demonic trinity, and Mr. Smith is in charge.

We learn the most about Smith when he has Morpheus in custody, and he speaks to him “honestly.” He’s impressed with the brilliance and beauty of the Matrix, like it’s the living world of God’s creation, but it’s something that he and the rest of the Machine built for “billions of people living out their lives, oblivious.” You wonder if there’s some hint at the real world, where billions of people live out their lives, oblivious of whom the true Creator is.

Smith talks about “the first matrix” where everyone is happy. But it failed. He believed that human beings defined their reality through suffering. The second matrix is all about evolution. Like the dinosaur, humans no longer rule, and the computers took over and made it their time.

Smith shares his “revelation” with Morpheus. Does Smith reveal that he believes in “another, truer reality,” like the Gnostics? Smith tells Morpheus that he tried to classify the human species. They’re not mammals, which create a natural equilibrium with the environment. He’s correct that humans are not mammals, for they are created in God’s image & have only biological properties akin to those of mammals. According to Smith, the only way humans survive is by monopolizing an area, then spreading to another area. Another organism that does that is a virus. “Human beings are a disease, . . . and we are the cure.” Hmm.  Sounds like humans take dominion over the earth and that the matrix doesn’t like that fact.

Then Smith tells Morpheus his personal angst. He can’t stand his job of living in the matrix with people, their smell. He hates reality. He’s afraid he’s been infected by the stench of humanity. He himself wants liberty from “reality.” He wants slavery in the computer above all. Humanity can be exterminated as far as he cares. He’s the perfect Gnostic, one who claims to know “true reality” and wants freedom from being human, from living in the flesh. The flesh for him is evil, or at least, irrelevant & to be shed one day, as Gnosticism teaches.  The doctrine of Christ, resurrected in an eternal, magnificent human body, would have to be an abomination to the Gnostics, who sought liberty from the body in order to live “in the spirit” & away from the physical world.

The movie doesn’t portray the world in its Gnostic version; it portrays the invented world, the matrix, that way. And it portrays the Gnostic character as the epitome of evil. Smith is really a computer, and being, or pretending to be, human is just too much for him. Humanity and “reality” are just illusions to him. He wants escape. In his mind, he’s superior to all humans.