KMC Forums - Literature that influenced matrix making

Interview by Don Davis to IGN
Interview by Don Davis to IGN

Yeah. And, you know, when we first looked at Revolutions , Larry and Andy told me they wanted the super burly brawl, which is the cataclysmic fight mano-et-mano between Neo and Agent Smith, they wanted the choir to have a significant voice in that scene. And I told them that I thought that was a really good idea but if the choir just sang "ooooohs" and "aaaaaaaahs" it would be significantly not very good. So I asked them if they would look for something in literature that represented some of the ideological themes that had influenced them when they were writing The Matrix that we could give to the choir and have them sing. And I told them that I actually preferred a language that wasn't English and if possible a "dead" language like Latin, so that even around the world there's nobody who is actively speaking the language that the choir is singing. They eventually came up with about six passages from the Vedic scriptures called the Upanishads. And we had them sing it in the original Sanskrit. And these texts are amazingly apropos to the whole ontological concept of The Matrix. It refers to "the one." Let me read one of them: "In him are woven the sky and the earth and all the regions of the air. And in him rests the mind and all the powers of life. Know him as "The One" and leave aside all other words. He is the bridge of immortality." I mean [laughs] that's amazing. And the first text you hear sung in the burly brawl sequence is a prayer which goes "From delusion lead me to truth, from darkness lead me to light, from death lead me to immortality." I think that adds a whole layer of meaning to the entire trilogy.

source see below

music.ign.com/articles/458/458007p1.html

go to

matrixjourney.com

for more details