Which Reality?

Rating: 9/10 (22 May 2000)

A really good movie can be just as interesting for what it does not say. "The Truman Show" seems to be in the not-too-distant future. Nothing is said about the way people live, but we get the impression it's not pretty. Maybe there is a restrictive government, or total corporate control. In any case, people's lives are pointless and Truman's life becomes an idealized substitute for their own.
Unfairly trashed by the Academy, "The Truman Show" is both a well-acted and compelling story, and a brilliant satire with something to say. Jim Carrey plays a man whose entire life is defined by outside forces--but is it so different for any of us? We all tend to become those labels that society has given us. Furthermore, it is a very straightforward jab at our current tendency toward voyeurism. When celebrity gossip passes for "news," when we live vicariously through the wanna-be exhibitionists on "Real World," when viewers treat a televised police chase as if it were a thermonuclear war, "The Truman Show" can't be far away.