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The Truman Show
Review of Peter Weir's film
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Truman is a life insurance sales adviser. He has a successful career, a beautiful wife,
a close friend and a nice house. Nevertheless, he is not satisfied with his life. Since he
has never left his hometown of Seehaven, he begins to feel the need to go and explore the rest of the
world. But as his wife neither understands nor listens to him and everyone discourages him
to go away, Truman begins to feel alienated. To add to his growing dismay, a series of
strange events unravel in his life, which brings him to suspect he is the victim of some
kind of conspiracy. |
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| Simultaneously sad and funny, entertaining and thought-provoking, worrying and silly, this
film effectively satires media exploitation of private life and its extensive morally
questionable use of commercials and voyeurism. As the
writer Jameson explains, in mass culture, there is a compensatory exchange process, where
people are offered a series of gratification in return for their passivity. In the case
of television series, people experience life through their favourite characters. The
director shows an acute awareness of this phenomenon of self-abdication as he shows how
people throughout the world become obsessed with Truman's life. Andrew
Niccol showed great hindsight as the film was released before the creation of the
infamous "Big Brother" which works on the same principle as "The Truman Show". |
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| On the other hand, there
is a reflection on what is reality and whether the "real" world should be different,
which would explain people's fascination for the more satisfying universe of fiction.
This theme is also set in relation to the father-son relationship (Christof-Truman) and
to an extent, questions whether or not it is in the children's best interest to be
sheltered from the world in a world of tales by their parents and how it can affect
them in their adult life. What is more important, of freedom or safety? |
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| The actors are very good, especially Laura Linney in the role of the unbearable Meryl,
Jim Carrey as a confused Truman and Ed Harris as Christof, the megalomaniac creator of
the show. The concept of the film in the film is very often enjoyable and in this case
is a total success. So the (real) actors play the role of (fictitious) actors and are
even interviewed as such in the brilliant opening sequence of the film,
which is the opening sequence of the actual show. Everything is explained in a
convincing way as to how such a show would be possible, so all the objections that arise
in the viewer's mind while watching are addressed in time by a fictitious reporter
talking to Christof. The editing is amazing as the film coherently flows from "reality"
to Seehaven to backstage. |
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