Double Agent_ ), the film's opening, with a long shot of a single tree standing in the middle of a desert while someone's singing lyrically about how we can't live without trees. Then an entire scene is dedicated to a young soldier named Jack who lies in a hospital bed after being wounded during an ambush on patrol; he's been shot in the leg and had his left arm nearly blown off. He feels "out of control" and "foggy-brained." There's an X-ray machine that appears to come to life, and Jack dreams of trees and wind. "A strong wind would be very good," he thinks, and that night he dreams he's walking through a wood where birds are chirping and something green and leafy is being born.
Meanwhile, back in Australia, Dr. Rao (Cate Blanchett) and her sister Dr. Gopal (Rajit Kapur) take turns looking in on a little boy named Shiva (Jarrod Cole) who lives in a military hospital in India. When he's given a new drug to see if it will make him better, they watch as he "threw a tantrum, kicked the incubator, and threw his feed bottle at the nurse," an incident that makes the doctor say to her sister: "The boy just wanted more love." She insists that drugs are dangerous, but her sister wants to give the boy what he needs. Dr. Rao asks for the name of the drug, "but it's only codenamed M23," and her sister tells her it's the only thing that can help him and the other children in his home village. Dr. Gopal tells her about _Cordyceps,_ "an incredible mold that attacks caterpillars and turns them into zombies." It gets into their bodies, taking them over, as Dr. Gopal describes:
**Dr. Gopal:** This microscopic fungus attacks the caterpillar and replaces every tissue with fungal tissue. Everything but its brain. This is your brain.
**Dr. Rao:** It's a perfect copy.
**Dr. Gopal:** It's a living sculpture.
**Dr. Rao:** This fungal tissue grows, reproduces, becomes its own being.
In the film, Dr. Gopal says this to one of the scientists on the research team that is "growing human consciousness in an artificial body."
In the film's last section, which was created in part by scientists at Wake Forest University, we watch as Jack (Cliff Curtis) awakens from the dream of the tree that is connected to a memory of the war he fought in with his comrades. Suddenly he jumps out of the bed, determined to get on his feet. Back in his original location, he starts to wander through a jungle, when something comes out of a thick tree near him: a giant fungus.
It's growing from a tree, and the "tree" even starts to talk:
_You must eat one of these trees to stay alive. Eat them, plant them, live in them, so that you may breathe their oxygen and survive. You have a whole new world to experience, Captain Jack. I'll never forget this tree..._
Back in the "world" of _The Matrix,_ Morpheus explains that they are the last of their kind—humans—and the machines that controlled the rest of the world were wiped out long ago:
**Morpheus:** We are all that is left. How much time do you think you have, Captain?
**Jack:** I'll be out in a day.
**Morpheus:** A day? Try 300 years.
**Jack:** I could live a long time if I don't get any food.
**Morpheus:** We must keep moving if we are to stay alive.
**Jack:** You look dazed.
**Morpheus:** Believe me, I've been there.
**Jack:** We all know what's out there, Captain Jack. The war is over.
In reality, while some members of this group have had a memory lapse and others refuse to believe what's happening, they are actually the last remnants of a dying race, and they have been trying to awaken the "super humans" who have grown to be much stronger than themselves. There is a battle for the minds of this race—those who don't believe in what's going on to survive and those who have already been transformed. "Are you sure the boy is in that hole?" "Yes, sir." "I saw that hole the whole time." "Yes, sir. I understand." The Captain is killed by one of the "new race" soldiers, and when he wakes up he's in the body of a child. Meanwhile, in _The Matrix,_ it is the last remnant of the human race that is trying to awaken Neo (Keanu Reeves) after he's been captured and strapped to a table.
Like _The Matrix_ film, _The Double Agent_ explores a concept of "twoness," the idea that there is more than one version of truth—there is reality and there is simulation. Is reality real? Is everything the same on the outside as what's on the inside? If you ask an android like Coretta (Pitt) in _The Matrix,_ he or she might wonder, "Are you doubting your own doubts?"
_THE TRIP_
As it turns out, it is not a coincidence that the fictional universe of _The Matrix_ is mirrored by the real-life world of _The Trip,_ the movie _The Matrix_ made in 1998. The director is Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, who was directed by the film's producer Brian W. Kaufman, and they collaborated with the writers from _Monty Python_ , who were also the producers.
When they first meet W., Coretta (Jennifer Tilly) is having a conversation with C.T. (Bill Bailey) about whether she should take the hallucinogenic drug LSA that her boyfriend has given her as a "gift."
**Coretta:** I don't know.
**C.T.** : Oh, come on! When you consider the history of the relationship between the artist and his muse, it has to be said that it is rather daring of him to offer you this. He has never taken it himself. He is testing the water for you. He thinks you are quite capable of taking it.
It turns out that the story was inspired by a trip W. took to China, where he met a Buddhist monk, where he asked him, "What is truth?"
**Monk:** Truth is to know one thing. True.
**W:** In the story you have just written, what is the one thing?
**Monk:** Truth is the one thing.
**W:** You write fiction for a living. How do you know this to be true?
**Monk:** That is not true. Fiction for a living is what I tell people. That is not true.
**W:** What I want to know is—is the fiction true or is it not true?
**Monk:** The fiction has been true once but is not true anymore. So, it is not true now.
This moment is mirrored by the scene in _The Trip_ where "Monk" (played by Steve Coogan) confronts W., who says:
**W:** I have a problem with this one thing.
**Monk:** I am trying to tell you the truth. The truth is fiction, I am only trying to tell you the truth.
**W:** I believe in truth. That is how I distinguish fantasy from reality, and you confuse me, because the reality I know of is fiction, so you are not only confusing me but you are confusing yourself. You are confusing the truth.
When she later meets Dr. Gopal, she is in a "world" where the "Truth is out of alignment with the way things are." She thinks this is "one of my visions" and that she is still experiencing one of her "many delusions."
The doctor who takes her through this "world" is played by Cate Blanchett, who does an excellent job playing both the doctor and the psychiatrist; she is someone who is "not afraid to see what's on the other side." There is also a scientist named Mr. Skrzypczyk (Robert Carlyle), who is a member of the team that develops _Cordyceps_ and later becomes a consultant on the human enhancement project.
We watch as she comes to realize that what she's experiencing isn't really her experience; it's a "parallel reality." She even tries to kill herself by jumping from a building, the same way the "real Coretta" did. Her experience is mirrored in _The Trip_ by the fact that W. is so depressed and disappointed with himself after his adventure in India that he decides to jump off a bridge. At one point, he tells the doctor, "This is my truth; this is what I've been telling my truth to myself for the last two years," but when he tries to die by jumping off the bridge, he can't: "I can't die. I am a fake."
W. returns to his apartment, opens a box of what he
