Thomas Anderson is by day an average computer programmer and by night a hacker known as Neo. He wants to know what "The Matrix" is. Some cryptic messages appear on his computer monitor and three agents lead him to the mysterious hacker Morpheus, a man who offers him the chance to learn the truth about the Matrix: swallow a red pill and learn the truth or swallow a blue pill and return to the world as he knows it. Neo accepts the red pill and immediately finds himself in a liquid-filled pod and his body connected through tubes to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods. He is rescued by Morpheus and taken aboard his hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar. Morpheus informs Neo that the year is not 1999, but it is probably 2199, and that humanity is fighting a war against intelligent machines created in the early 21st century. Morpheus believes that Neo is "the One," a man prophesied to end the war through his limitless control over the Matrix. Morpheus teaches Neo the consequences of acting and living in the Matrix: injuries suffered are reflected in the real world; if he is killed in the Matrix, his physical body will also die. .
Every moment of the film is full of philosophical cues. Plato's revelation is evident when Neo sees for the first time the components of Morpheus' team as human being and not as virtual projections. It is a sort of "fall of the veil" (ndr Schopenhauer) so, like in the myth of the cavern, the prisoner succeeds and sees the reality trough the light of the sun not deceived by the shades and by the echo of the voices. In the scenes of Neo's wakening it is not simple to distinguish reality from the projections of the virtual world. It is a director's attempt to underline the difficulty of the protagonist to understand the new concrete world, like the prisoner that is not used to see the sunlight and so he must open his eyes a little by little.
Some details, like the presence of Neo's hair, the difference between the suits in the real world and in the virtual one, help us to perceive in which world we are.
