The easy mockery that surrounds Keanu Reeves presents itself essentially as a critique of bad acting. It is a self-assured, nearly definitive stance, sullied only occasionally by reference to positive reviews from his Shakespearean stagework and rumors of his having been trained classically. Both give way easily to the same laughing critique that struts forth in mockery the early 90s Much Ado About Nothing.
Despite tacit, imbedded critique, he continues to be a box office draw, broadly in the realm of the science fiction / action Summer Blockbuster. This genre is particularly appropriate for Keanu—interesting that his moniker tends to utilize his first rather than last name—for reason I will soon discuss. The glib respondent would likely point to the fact that Summer Blockbusters are the type of film that people see simply to be entertained, films for which they can 'shut off their brains' and just passively consume. In fact, I agree. But this is only half of the equation.
After years of searching, Mr. Reeves—for the sake of formality here and as we'll see to mark a distinction that becomes increasingly important and interesting—has finally found his home within the world of acting. And in that world, he has ceased to act. I contend that all along Keanu has, at particular crucial moments, ceased to act, but that only relatively recently has he learned to manifest and capitalize on this skill more completely. Perhaps, tho, capitalize is to brusque a word. I will also contend that this skill reveals a deep inner peace and its appearance within film transmits something of this peace to the audience, accounting for the odd appeal of Keanu. This returns us then to the question: Why Summer Blockbuster sci-fi? These films curiously combine the sparking of intrigue and thoughtfulness with the passivity of modern thoughtless film consumption. Precisely this admixture opens the space for spiritual revelation. But we'll come to that.
Firstly, the appearance of this technique in the early films as a means of grasping the technique itself. Keanu has often—with great success—played dumb. Throughout his career he has been cast as a character in need of being educated, a pupil. (The converse of this can be seen in Much Ado About Nothing and to some extent in the latter half of My Own Private Idaho. Both reveal the difficulty with which people accept him as one that produces his own knowledge or toys with that of others.) In both Bill & Ted films, as well as Point Break and almost most importantly The Matrix—from which the titular "Woah"—Keanu is the star of a new form of bildungsroman. Keanu is the empty vessel into which information is poured. In Bill & Ted, this information is simple and didactic and his ability to remain near totally blank provides the necessary comedy to push the bitter pill of learning. (One shouldn't discount the brilliant performance of Alex Winter either, but for our purposes and clearly for Hollywood's Keanu performance provides us with something more important and enduring.) While The Matrix may be the crucial turning point in Keanu's career—serendipitously as a box office star and within the bound of my own humble thesis—in its presentation of Keanu as pupil, it remains somewhat simple and inelegant. Keanu's learning and his reason for "woah" provide the film with occasion for in-depth explanation of its world and rules—what science fiction authors call "worlding." This is the standard, if rather cheap, way of going about worlding. Invite a new, uninitiated fellow to the party and give him the tour while the audience hovers over his shoulder like a voyeuristic ghost. As cheap as the scene in every teen film that tours the schoolyard hashing out the cool kids from every other variety—and no less fun.
Keanu's role as pupil requires this initial emptiness, but the typical bildungsroman would ask him to end the movie filled with new knowledges and capable of wielding them to his advantage. Keanu's career fulfills this request in one sense, but denies it just as emphatically at the same time—resulting as I claim in a new form of bildungsroman. The twist in Keanu is that emptiness remains essential. Bill & Ted presents this in its simple form. The comedic frame of the movie requires that the two remain ignorant in some very specific ways. They are able to mouth and even embody heroic truths by the end of their quest, but they must not lose their lovable absent mindedness. Of course, even these films aren't so simple. Already, the lovable absent mindedness is paired with access to some essential truth that will one day define the future of that narrative world: "Be excellent to one another." The Christian cum New Age cum radical 80s skater dude manta demonstrates the doubt movement always at work within the film. The essence of my claim is already active in this film, but played for laughs and not embodied as a performance (which is also not a performance under standard definitions) it doesn't have the same impact. That is also to say that in the Bill & Ted movies we only ever see glimpses of the two self-consciously aware of and enacting their mastery of this essential knowledge. They are capable of living within it, but not every quite conscious of it.
The Matrix follows up on the double movement of pure emptiness and pure knowledge, but asks of Keanu the full display of mastery by the film's end. While we sit just behind Keanu's shoulder as the world of the Matrix is explained—and join him in the eponymous 'Woah'—he is promoted as an adept capable of advancing through knowledge well beyond that of any other character. Only after his character's death within the Matrix, however, does his true mastery emerge, visualized as anthropomorphic code. This death and subsequent resurrection are more Buddha than Christ—no 'why hast thou forsaken me' shouts, but a calm confusion at the trifles of the "material" world, bullets no less. The point in all this is that mastery takes the form of emptying out, releasing worldly concerns in leu of higher truths. While at one level the narrative arc is from deception to truth, the more subtle arc made visible by Keanu's acting technique is from wooden blankness to wooden emptiness. This may sound like the same critique of Keanu that has floated limply throughout his career, but it is my point to make a virtue of it.
Their is undeniably a transition that takes place in Keanu's character throughout the course of the Matrix that we see, not by paying attention to the early ham-fisted scenes of his panic, but by attending to the various moments of his pure composure. There is a sort of deadness to his character at our entry into the narrative, a deadness that is intended to correspond to his deception and displacement into an unreal world—kindly displayed by the all too familiar, in the late 90s, Dilbert-esque cubicles. It seems more to the point, however, that this apparent deadness is in fact a deep internal calm, perhaps a foreknowledge of his chosen-ness. Keanu—by the end of the film—is revealed to be at home within the Matrix, not—as the other characters are—deceived or displaced with in it. The narrative arc then turns out to be not a story of unveiling deception, but a much more straight forward account of coming to appropriate consciousness of the home you've always belonged in.
But we've strayed again some what far away from the point, which is that Keanu's portrayal of emptiness is allows for this understanding within the film. If this is not perhaps the most conscious recognition in audiences, it is nonetheless effective and is at the heart of the success of the films, the ease with which audiences can accept Keanu as a messianic figure. It is my contention here that Reeves himself only becomes fully conscious of this effect around the time of The Matrix. One would like to think that the process of filming the movie itself, of taking the character through the arc of development revealed this truth, but perhaps that is too pretty to literally believe. Whatever the case, Reeves choices of roles following The Matrix belie an understanding of his ability to play characters at a Buddhistic remove from the material world to great success.
The most overt rendering of this occurs recently in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Keanu appears as a detached outsider with extensive foreknowledge and control, but emptied into total of any desire in relation to the world. Eventually the detachment is produced as non-total and a limited engagement saves the day, and the narrative. But Keanu's ability to serve as a blank slate is proven. Against this empty backdrop even the faintest glimmer of emotion—here "acting"—appears radically visible, indeed garish. And this in sum is the heart of critique: Keanu is portrayed as automaton whose forays into representing emotion are only mawkish and inarticulate. A more appropriate rendition would claim that Keanu represents the strangeness of all emotion seen through an appropriated detached view of the world. The momentary perturbance of calm by the overwrought strugglings of a world at war within itself invokes a bit awkward if not unreasonable response. Keanu sets things right. And then he returns again to the empty shell of peace. This revelation of absurdity in the "real" world—here primarily Hollywood's sense of basic morals and ethics—enables viewers to step outside of the film itself, step outside of acting and of representation, revealing in turn the emptiness at their core. And emptiness yes, that should be shouted from the roof tops and embraced by the teeming masses if only that wouldn't entangle us again in the distracted and distraught trappings of the everyday world. It is only in representation—staged—that the revelation of its emptiness is even possible. But Keanu's task and ability is to stand as an open and empty space in the midst of these normal chaoses. To hold open within the window of the film the unmarked territory of calm and perhaps, indirectly, to point the way in.