Right off the bat, let’s just call bullshit on this whole “nobody can be told” business. Of course they can be told. I can do it in two sentences: “Everything you think you experience, this entire world, is actually a computer program. In real life, it’s around 2199, and you’re lying in a vat with a dozen tubes sticking out of you, being used as a living battery by sentient computers, as you have been since the day you were born.” What Morpheus means is that nobody would believe it without being shown the evidence. More to the point, the Wachowskis know perfectly well that it’s much more exciting for the audience to share Neo’s intense bewilderment when he suddenly awakens inside his vat, bald and naked and with plugs sticking out of him. At the same time, though, Morpheus can’t just say, “Hey, wanna know what the Matrix is? Take this pill.” Neo might actually go for it—he seems beyond the point of no return before he even enters the room—but it’d be a damp squib from a dramatic standpoint. Hence the circuitous rigmarole, as Morpheus proceeds to describe the Matrix in detail (“when you pay your taxes”?!) without really saying anything at all.

There’s another element as well, though—one that has a significant bearing on the plot: At its heart, The Matrix is a movie about free will, which is to say, about choice. That’s best symbolized when Morpheus offers Neo a choice between the red pill and the blue pill, with red representing truth and freedom, and blue signifying illusion and denial. However, as the traitorous Cypher will later point out, this isn’t really an informed choice, because Morpheus doesn’t provide sufficient information. Odds are, Neo would still opt for the harsh conditions of the real world rather than knowingly remain within an imaginary construct, but some people, like Cypher, surely would prefer fake comparative luxury to a machine-ruled dystopia. So while it’s distressing when Cypher starts selling out and murdering his friends, it’s also comprehensible. In essence, he was deliberately misled, even though Morpheus told him nothing that wasn’t true (assuming this scene depicts his standard conversion spiel). Power always entails a certain amount of manipulation.

To his credit, Laurence Fishburne registers that sense of power throughout the scene, even as he ostensibly humbles himself before The One. Physically, he dominates, standing ramrod straight at the outset and then relaxing comfortably in his chair while Keanu Reeves leans anxiously forward on the edge of his. Fishburne overenunciates, which mirrors to some degree the bizarre speech pattern of Agent Smith, albeit smooth instead of jagged. (I waffled for a while about whether to write about this scene or the interrogation scene, in part because I really wanted to marvel at the way Hugo Weaving smacks the terminal “t” when he says “irrelevant.”) And somehow I’d never paid close attention to Morpheus’ smile after Neo gulps down the red pill. It’s not the warm, pleasant smile of someone made happy, but the satisfied grin of someone who’s successfully bent another to his will. Juxtaposed against Reeves’ passivity here (this is one of his best performances in large part because he doesn’t try too hard, kung fu stances excepted), it keeps us wondering for a while longer whether Morpheus will turn out to be the story’s guru or its villain.

And then there’s the way the Wachowskis shoot this brief but pivotal conversation. Visually, it’s perhaps the simplest scene in an extremely busy and complex picture—basically a standard series of alternating dirty singles (focus on one actor with a small portion of another actor visible) and medium close-ups. At the beginning, however, after Neo sits down but Morpheus remains standing, the actors are blocked in a way that bisects the screen: Shots of Neo at frame right see Morpheus’ black-clad body swallowing up the left side (you can deduce spatially that it’s him, but it might as well be a wall), while the reverse shots of Morpheus at frame left have the large chair that Neo’s sitting in dwarfing the right side. This configuration subtly suggests a degree of distrust, which is lifted as Morpheus sits down and begins to pretend to explain the Matrix, at which point the Wachowskis switch to conventional close-ups. But then Morpheus offers the two pills (reflected in his mirrored shades—a touch that’s perhaps a bit too self-consciously cool, at least for my taste). As Neo considers his decision, the Wachowskis suddenly switch back to the bisected setups for a moment, as if the movie itself is urging Neo to think carefully about what he’s doing.

“Remember, all I’m offering is the truth,” Morpheus himself says, just as Neo reaches for the red pill. “Nothing more.” And that’s literally true. He didn’t say much of anything. (Anyone who’s seen The Vanishing—the original version, not the dire American remake—should consider that theoretically The Matrix could have had the same kind of ending, if not for the fact that 30 minutes is much too short for a feature. Neo wakes up, sees the terrible truth, gets robo-flushed, the end.) Call it pseudo-exposition. It’s arguably the very best kind.