The "Now What?" feeling

Rating: Null/10 (11 March 2002)

This movie is wonderfully orchestrated - the artificial world of Truman, the people, the places...almost everything. Even the acting is superb. I think Ed Harris has done an outstanding job! As someone mentioned, his character could have risked looking ridiculous in the hands of some other actor. However obnoxious it may have been built to be, Harris actually humanizes it to such an extent that in the end his relationship to Truman is almost paternal and we feel sorry that he's losing him! Jim Carey, I felt, over did his part in some scenes. But he's superb in the scene were he reaches the horizon of his artificial world and touches the blue 'wall' that's there instead of the open air. His horror of encountering a dead end, of being trapped, of not being in the real world of nature comes across brilliantly in this scene. This movie brings together two of the most beautiful actresses. Both Laura Linney(excellent in 'Blindspot' among other movies) and Natasha McElhone('Surviving Picasso') do their parts really well!
What I was left with after watching this movie is a sense of "Now what will happen to Truman?" O.K. he's escaped from his artificial world and he's going to be with the woman he loves. But really, it cannot be that hunky dory. The movie almost ends with an unsaid, unwritten "And they lived happily ever after" note. Even if Truman has escaped the controlled world, can he really lead a normal existence in the real world in which he's such a huge celebrity? Being a celebrity, constantly under the public glare and media-hounding, is almost as bad as being 24/7 TV feature. The only consolation to this is the thought that probably he doesn't really enter the real world at all. May be he escapes to some parallel universe called Fiji?!