Deceptive

Rating: 8/10 (13 July 2008)

Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is the star of "The Truman Show" in this 1998 film directed by Peter Weir. Truman's life is a fake reality show, watched by millions of viewers, though he doesn't know that. He lives in the small seaside town of Seahaven, a peaceful place. Truman is married, has a best friend and works as an insurance agent. He has an unnatural fear of water after being in a boating accident in which his father died.
One day he boards an elevator and it isn't an elevator; he sees his dead father in town; and a woman has a strange message for him that he doesn't understand. He tries to leave town with his wife, and it simply doesn't happen. The "reality," if there is one, is that Truman doesn't really exist; the town is fake, filled with actors (one of whom, the man who played his father, comes back to make trouble). That person on the bicycle, the passing car, etc., that's on a repeating loop. He has a public he has never met who follow each phase of life with interest. His producer, the man who created Truman, is a man named Christof, who took an illegitimate child and turned him into a media star. When Truman tries to get out, he realizes just how trapped he is.
With today's reality shows abounding, "The Truman Show" today is even more fascinating than it was in 1998. Here's a reality show that's not a reality - and it makes you wonder about what we're watching on reality shows today. It brings up all the metaphysical questions of who am I and who made me. The film also asks us to take a look at our attraction to the lives of celebrities, where people are merely an image, and where we separate the events of their lives from the actual human being for some good gossip; after all, we only know the persona, not the real person, and we only know what the media reports, not the whole story. In the end we have no idea of what Britney Spears or Madonna or Brangelina are like as people, what they think, what their day to day life is like. In the movie, we know Truman's - and his whole story is false.
It's said that a great comedian can do drama, and Jim Carrey is proof of this, giving a brilliant, heartfelt performance as Truman. Ed Harris is fabulous as Christoff, the puppeteer who created Truman and needs him. Such a wonderful film, it demands a second viewing.