A timely film with many legal truths inserted

Rating: 9/10 (27 May 2006)

The Truman Show has come at a time when cloning and identity theft are subjects which are so often raised. It is now that these subjects penetrate our every day lives involving us,not just fictional characters in movies. There have been many attempts by multinational corporations to 'register' a life form as intellectual property so they can do what they please with what is their 'property' and so the cloning world has begun. This would allow a child to be genetically altered for medical reasons (to avoid spina-bifida or another ailment) and in the process be registered as the corporations intellectual property. They can then 'use' that child throughout its life to harvest blood or tissue without any legal limitations. All pie-in-the-sky stuff but this has been an issue discussed by governments and pharmaceutical corporations all around the world for over a decade. I loved The Truman Show for its humour and skillful use of present-day technology. It was a late night viewing choice of this movie on TV or our latest version of Big Brother on another channel here in Britain, which made me realise how prescient this movie had been in 1998. The other coincidence is that of a book written years ago about a woman who was diagnosed as schizophrenic and had delusions that her whole life had been run by people called "Operators" and she was just their"Thing" to be tested and manipulated for their amusement and curiosity. They revealed to her that Operators had been around since the dawn of Man and had constantly set tasks for their Things, which inadvertently caused Man to evolve. They said, "If it hadn't been for us, you humans would still be bumping into each other in caves." Her life was a series of struggles to break free from this observing and testing by the Operators. Christof could slip straight into the guise of Operator in The Truman Show for it was his setting of tasks and emotional tests that caused Truman to grow and mature in the way he did. A great movie on many levels but a good piece of entertainment too. Hollywood doing it the way it should.