The Truman Show Review
by Kevin Patterson (kevinp AT Princeton DOT EDU)July 10th, 1998
Film Review by Kevin Patterson
THE TRUMAN SHOW
Rating: **** (out of four)
PG, 1998
Directed by Peter Weir. Written by Andrew Niccol.
Starring Jim Carrey, Ed Harris, Laura Linney.
Those who have grown accustomed to Jim Carrey as a one-note Johnny specializing in funny faces and fart jokes might be surprised to see him in THE TRUMAN SHOW, one of the better films of the past few years, portraying Truman Burbank, a man who has lived his entire life on national television. He lives inside the largest studio ever constructed, set up to resemble a small island town, unaware that everyone around him is an actor and that cameras are hidden everywhere. "The Truman Show," created by an enigmatic producer named Christof (Ed Harris), is on the air twenty-four hours a day and is a worldwide hit. Christof and his actors all seem to hold Truman in high regard, even as they manipulate and deceive him.
Truman's a nice guy and a bit of a goof, partly because he's been raised in an idealized, "Leave It To Beaver"-style community. He lives a pleasant, stable life with his "wife" Meryl (Laura Linney), and has to deal with only the mild conflicts and difficulties designed by the show's producers. He's nearing thirty years old, however, and he's starting to wonder what life is like outside the island, and he still sometimes pines for a strange woman he met in college who started to tell him a bizarre story when she was suddenly whisked away by her "father," who claimed she was schizophrenic. (In fact, she was trying to tell Truman that his life was a television show.)
"The Truman Show" is television, not reality, and as a result the other actors sometimes have to pause awkwardly in the middle of dialogue for product placement, and there is the occasional technical glitch. The show has remarkably efficient damage control: when a stage light falls from the sky and lands outside Truman's house, for example, he hears a radio report shortly afterward that a malfunctioning airplane had just flown overhead and shed a few parts. But now that he's starting to question his place in the world, these things are starting to bother him a little more. He starts taking a few risks, like jumping out in the middle of albeit slow traffic and finds that, lo and behold, all the cars instantly stop to let him through. His attempts to leave the island are continually thwarted through various "coincidences." He's beginning to think that there is some sort of secrecy or conspiracy surrounding him, and, of course, he's right.
Most of Andrew Niccol's screenplay focuses on Truman's gradual realization that things aren't what they seem and Christof's increasingly desperate attempts to keep him convinced of the deception. Carrey turns in an excellent performance, convincingly capturing both Truman's initial golly-gee-whiz naivete and his nervous insistence on knowing the truth, while never losing sight of the character's essential charm and niceness. There is perhaps one instance of a hastily executed plot development, but other than that, the screenplay flows nicely, and director Peter Weir does a particularly good job of finding the right mix of irony and genuine empathy for Truman's scripted emotional moments.
But what really makes THE TRUMAN SHOW work is all the side issues raised by the screenplay. At one level, it's a satire of television, in that the viewers and producers talk about Truman as if he really were nothing more than a character in a TV show, and some of his little daily problems are the artificial, contrived stuff of soap operas. It can also be read as a shot at the current fad of "reality" programming that has brought us the likes of "World's Scariest Police Chases" and "When Animals Attack." Equally interesting, however, is the issue of how we simply accept the reality into which we are born. There are times when I found myself wondering why Truman didn't start getting suspicious earlier, but the small bits of weirdness like the supposed crumbling airplane may well just be part of everyday life as far as he's concerned. Niccol's screenplay also addresses the human rights aspect rather well. He allows Christof to argue that it is the outside world with all its violence and unrest that is sick and twisted rather than his scheme to keep Truman in the studio and on camera, yet still ultimately sides with the small "Free Truman" movement that seems to have sprung up.
Simply put, THE TRUMAN SHOW has everything that makes for an excellent film: an engaging lead performance, a screenplay with solid characterization and plotting and interesting subtexts, and controlled direction that adds to the personality of the film without getting in the way. Some of the buzz surrounding the film has labeled THE TRUMAN SHOW as the Movie of the Decade. I don't know if I'd go that far, but as of mid-June 1998, it's at least the Movie of the Year.
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