"TRUMAN SHOW", the latest in an intriguing
series of films by director Peter Weir, is
a thought-provoking fantasy about a fictional television
program.
In it, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey)'s life has been
broadcast since birth on a hermetically sealed island town called
Sea Haven. Truman goes through his daily routine, completely
unaware that everyone around him are paid performers who mold his
fate.
It's a great concept, one that can be interpreted
differently by viewers of different ages. Children (albeit old-
er or sharp ones) could find a compelling conceit in the idea
that everything in existence revolves around you, and if you're
alert enough, you'll be able to spot the seams in the deception.
Teenagers could see it as an escape picture, rebellion from the
opressive misconceptions of the previous generation. Older
viewers may see it as a call to re-examine their lives, to
challenge the comfortable patterns that may be smothering
crucial needs still unfufilled. Even if you remain on the surface
level, it's still a pretty clever escape picture.
Weir does a terrific job setting up the concept visually, letting the
audience get a significant distance into its running time before
throwing back the sheet on Truman's make-believe world. Almost
every shot is staged to feel clandestine, the camera placed again
and again in convincing locations to put the viewer in between
the television audience and the show's creators. We see how
someone can be filmed all day long without the shot angles
feeling gimmicky or forced. The film opens as Truman's world
begins to unravel -- as thoroughly as Sea Haven's island
community seems to be orchestrated, events continue to build to
his ultimate discovery of his lifelong deception by the show's
crea- tor, Christof (subtly played by Ed Harris). It's really
entertaining to see the lengths that the production team will go
to in order to preserve the illusion -- young Truman shows an
early interest in exploration, only to have it immedately
squashed by his teacher.
We also gain sympathy for Truman as the
methods for maintaining his limited life become crueler and more
stringent -- he is molded into a frightened, unambitious man in
order to prevent him from desiring life beyond what has been
created for him in the huge dome that sur- rounds his world. When
Truman falls in love with a woman other than the act- ress slated
to be his wife, she is summarily removed from the show. Many of
the mistakes and accidents that do occur are explained away by
cast members or radio broadcasts or other factors, but
eventually, as Truman becomes more suspicious and acts less and
less predictably, making him harder and harder to control, he
discovers the ghosts in the machine -- or at least sees enough to
provoke further testing of the show's defense mechanisms, which
in turn provoke a stronger desire for escape, to explore the
world that has al- ways fascinated him.
The struggle is great
drama, and the ratings are terrific -- audiences all over the
world, initially attracted to watching a 'real' life progressing
in time yet permanently static, become tranfixed with Truman's
efforts to discover what lies beyond the life he's always known.
Some in the audience feel that Truman's life is cruel and unusual
punishment, and protest for his release.
The film's story is
essentially simple -- Truman discovers the maze and struggles to
solve it and take his place in the real world. Will he ulti-
mately find freedom, or be crushed in an enviroment where every
element -- even the weather -- conspires to contain him? Weir
uses many striking visuals to dramatize the concept. The
population of Sea Haven wait motionless early in the morning,
awaiting Truman's entry like the robots from
"Westworld". The towns- people, discovering that Truman
is missing, link arms and sweep the entire town to flush him out
and continue the show (a truly creepy and terrific sequence).
The figurehead of Truman's stolen boat, a golden eagle, thrusts out
above the water as he pilots it out into the unknown. Christof
tenderly stroking a huge video image of Truman as he lies asleep.
The latter image brings another dimension to the creator/creation
con- flict. We are clearly encourged to think of humanity and God
in conflict (as a last resort, "Christ"-of broadcasts
to Truman directly, his voice booming down from a dawn-lit sky),
yet on another level, we can see creator/creation in less
philosophical terms as a parent-child conflict, with the central
theme as maturity, forming one's own perspective through a
partial rejection of the imparted parental world. Christof can be
seen as the ultimate overprotective parent, literally creating
for his surrogate son an entire world safe from the (ironically)
lies and pain of the real world.
As in some of Weir's other
films, the protagonist is privy to an experience that isolates
him from others (as in "The Mosquito Coast" or
"Fearless") and forces him to put himself at risk.
Andrew ("Gattaca") Niccol wrote the script for
"The Truman Show", and like that film, its merits are
primarily conceptual -- its emotional themes are to a degree in
shorthand, but still effective: Truman creates a composite por-
trait of his first love with pictures torn from fashion
magazines, Truman re- unites with his dead father when
(dissatisfied with how he was dispatched from the plot) the
performer unexpectedly returns on the set. If we had seen and
felt a stronger bond between them, this reunion could have been
extremely powerful in highlighting the emotional cruelty that
lies beneath the placid surface of Truman's life.
Similarly,
more could have been made of the performers who support Truman,
but feel powerless to help him. The technical efforts here are
fine -- Dennis Gassner's production de- sign clearly defines the
real world versus the television show; Peter Biziou's
cinematography also attractively supports the concept. The score
sports a var- iety of styles -- Philip Glass and Chopin among
them -- yet it coheres and more than embellishes the film's
emotional impact.
The editors might have used this concept as an
excuse for showy effects, but William M. Anderson and Lee Smith
keep things clear and on an even keel when appropriate.
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