To Truly Understand the Wachowskis, You Have to Start With Bound

Publish date: 2024-06-10

If I ever get truly forlorn, I just remember that I was lucky enough to be born in an age when Lilly and Lana Wachowski are making art. Since 1996, the duo has collaborated on an array of movies that have proven incredibly influential, including The Matrix, Speed Racer, and Cloud Atlas. Even after they went their separate ways in the wake of Sense8, they've each engaged in notable artistic works, with Lilly shrinking her gaze to more intimate works like the TV show Work in Progress and Lana continuing to redefine what's possible in modern blockbusters with The Matrix Resurrections. To watch something made by the Wachowskis is to get your expectations shattered, your mind blown, and your heart touched. They stimulate all the senses at once and, best of all, they do so while crafting features that are gay. Really really gay.

It cannot be stressed enough just how queer the works of the Wachowski Sisters are, even when they don’t involve explicitly trans characters like modern TV shows Work in Progress and Sense8. The ways this duo can tap into queer experiences, both visually and thematically, with exciting genre works is truly astonishing, especially since queer-coded works are often restricted to being smaller indies or solemn in nature. The Wachowskis bucked this trend by making something as expansive and colorful as Speed Racer loaded with queer subtext. How The Wachowskis engage with queer motifs and themes is nothing new for the duo. It dates back to their feature-length directorial debut, 1996's Bound.

'Bound' Is of a Genre That’s Often Been Unkind to Queer People

Part of what makes the Wachowski sisters and their handling of queer material so fascinating is the genres they’ve chosen to explore as filmmakers. Typically, the duo has entered terrain that has often embraced reinforcing cis-het norms and turning the norms on their head. The Matrix, for instance, was the latest in a long line of sci-fi “chosen one” narratives, which have typically been used to subliminally suggest that the “greatest” hero for our society is a cis-het white guy. While the lead of The Matrix isn’t trans, the queer-coded ways in which he reinforces his heroism differ from other narratives of this type. Most notably, Neo’s (Keanu Reeves) most triumphant moment against Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) comes when he reaffirms that his name is Neo, which is couched in the tragically relatable trans experience of relentless dead naming.

The Wachowskis are not the first queer artists to interact with American genre cinema. Even in the days of the Hays Code, queer actors and artists abounded in front of and behind the camera, which resulted in oodles of intriguing queer subtext that slipped by potential censors. However, The Wachowskis were still able to take things even further largely through the power of hindsight. Some of the ways queerness was reinforced in classic films were beautiful, in other cases, it ended up being a bit on the…complicated side. Specifically, the constant coding of antagonists as “queer” in the face of strong-jawed decidedly heterosexual male leads was peculiar.

This trend was especially notable in the world of film noirs, where promiscuous, morally flexible women often met a grisly end and figures like Peter Lorre’s evil henchman in The Maltese Falcon were very queer-coded to reinforce their wickedness. This doesn’t mean these movies are all “evil” or should be locked away in a chest. Given the dearth of any acknowledgment of queerness in American cinema at this time, just seeing Lorre acting a little “ya know” feels exciting and subversive. Meanwhile, femme fatales may have existed to reinforce that women should “stay in their lanes,” but they’re so much fun to watch that they’ve now been embraced by modern audiences as icons. The Wachowskis clearly recognize and love the complexities of noirs with their 1996 film Bound.

'Bound' Let Queer People Be the Heroes Instead of the Villains

This title is rooted in many of the visual and thematic hallmarks of classic noirs but is also conscious of subverting the default approach to gender and sexuality in these vintage titles. Conceptually, these films were supposed to reinforce the idea that subversive women were “wrong” and that all queers were evil. The Wachowskis established their streak of upending genre movie norms with Bound by making this film’s noir protagonist a couple of gay women who aren’t afraid to bend the rules and embrace their queerness. These filmmakers were well aware of how fun noirs and their hallmarks could be…they just wanted to have those hallmarks reinforce the humanity of the marginalized rather than hammer home the status quo.

'Bound' Emphasises the Importance of Community for Queer Peoples

One fun queer element of the Wachowski’s is the emphasis on community. Characters coded as queer have families or chosen families that provide them with love and support. Individuals that can represent queer experiences and people aren’t surviving alone, they’re surrounded by those who embrace their unique attributes rather than erase them. They almost function as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for queer viewers, the kind of social environment one wishes they had to help them face off against everyday injustices or prejudices. These tight-knit heroes are in stark contrast to villains who are defined as being adherent to capitalistic impulses, reveling in “lone wolf” attitudes, and belonging to the most privileged communities in American society. What is subtext in something like Speed Racer or Jupiter Ascending gets to flourish as text in Bound. This is a story all about queer folks needing to support each other so they don’t suffocate under the strains of conventional society.

These concepts play right into which concerns ex-con Corky (Gina Gershon) falling into a romantic relationship with her neighbor, Violet (Jennifer Tilly). The two find solace together and begin to plan out a scheme involving stealing $2 million from Violet's husband Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). Whereas Caesar never trusts any of his associates in the mob, Violet and Corky are bound (no pun intended) to one another. Even when separated by walls, Corky looks longingly towards Violet's apartment, hoping she's okay. I kept dreading an inevitable twist involving Violet “faking” her queerness or betraying Corky, but it never came. In both an establishment of the bonds that define the Wachowski Sisters' protagonists and a subversion of noir norms, Corky and Violet share a sincere and supportive bond.

'Bound's CInemtaography Conforms to Classic Noir Motifs

Though that element bucks the trend of noir standards, the cinematography of Bound is still dripping with shadows, dark lighting, and moody framing, all visual hallmarks of the genre. Here, these details are used to quietly reinforce how the very existence of queerness is often suffocated to the point that it can only exist in the margins of society. Shadows bring Bound closer to its genre forefathers, but they also reflect the places so many queer folks have to survive in thanks to systemically normalized prejudice. Throughout their careers, Lana and Lilly Wachowski have both demonstrated an expansive knowledge of classic films and how to use that knowledge to reaffirm the humanity of queer folks. That talent was already apparent in the visual sensibilities of Bound.

'Bound' Is Full of Queer Metaphors

The film also establishes this directorial duo’s affinity for endearingly on-the-nose visual metaphors for queerness. The most notable example of that here comes from two separate interactions Caesar has with the film’s leading ladies. The first sees Caesar interrupting Violet’s plans to pack her bags and get out of her marriage, with Caesar stuffing the bag and its encased possessions in a nearby closet. Violet’s autonomy has now been stuffed back into the closet, if you will. Later, Caesar drags an unconscious Corky into a closet, with this woman’s eventual breakout from this domestic prison being played as a moment of triumph.

Closets in Bound represent places where the humanity of our two leads gets actively shoved away by Caesar, a physical representation of oppressive societal norms. It’s no secret how this connects to the process of “coming out of the closet” for queer folks of all stripes and that’s downright awesome. The lives of queer people have often been sidelined in cinematic narratives to the point of either functioning as just whispers on the margins or not existing at all. With Bound and subsequent directorial efforts, the Wachowski Sisters would use visual metaphors to speak to queer experiences in masterfully pronounced ways.

Any way you look at it, Bound is the thesis statement for everything that was to come in the works of Lilly and Lana Wachowski. That’s especially true when it comes to the handling of queer material within this film. The works of this directorial duo are as unabashedly queer as they are seeped in the history of movies from all over the world. Their filmography is painted in rainbow colors but firmly rooted in the hues of cinema’s past as well. Poke around through any corner of their filmography and you’ll find examples of this but Bound established their gifts in this department. Whether it’s the emphasis on queer solidarity, the types of villains in their works, or the ways they shift around genre norms to reaffirm queerness, Bound’s got it all.