Great Movie that's Deeper than Expected..

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2018)

This was the second time I watched this movie, and I like it. Directed by Peter Weir and with Jim Carrey cast as Truman, this is a surprisingly deep and thought-provoking film for having the leading role be a comedian. The concept is that this man, Truman, who is a hardworking family man, is, completely unbeknownst to him, the star of a widely televised, live series all about his life. He slowly learns throughout the movie that his entire life, quite literally from birth, has been a setup, and that the creators of the tv show were always watching him with cameras everywhere, controlling and influencing his every move. Even his wife and best friend play along with the script of the show... what horrible loyalty! By the end, though, Truman realizes his entrapment and ends the show by leaving the bubble/set made for him as his world by the television directors, and it ends up being the grand finale to the show, as well as his personal escape.
This film could be paralleled to some of the "conspiracy theories" of today. Many people think that the government is constantly surveying its citizens, and this idea was made famous by the term, "Big Brother". Many people, including scientists, agree that what we know may not be all there truly is to Reality, as there is still so much left to discover in the vastness of the Universe. Like Truman, we may be only seeing the tip of the iceberg, only seeing what those with more control and power want us to see at this point and time. Maybe, like Truman, our true reality will be discovered by us eventually, before our "creators", essentially being the government, realize that we are aware of the set/ matrix and how to break free from it. In the movie, the television show film crew and directors utilized citizens in all areas of employment to attempt to stay one step ahead of Truman finding out the true nature of his reality. His entire life was orchestrated from birth, his parents essentially allowing him to be this project of sorts, for all the world to watch, until he figured out that he was the rat in the experiment, and put an end to the show. There are moral concepts that come into play, both with this film and how we can parallel it to our own possible reality. For one, the idea of using someone as a guinea pig, basically, and manipulating their whole existence and everyday happenings so that events unfold as the director of the show wishes, is crossing the moral boundaries of that person's very right to privacy...The Truman Show aired twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The second major moral dilemma, in my opinion, that ties in with this is that the directors are using this man to earn their own incomes with this television show, so of course they want the show to be "successful"... so to achieve their means, and to have the script play out how they need it to for the best viewer response, in their view, they went as far as to "kill off" Truman's father with an artificially-generated storm, forcing the boy to grow up thinking that he had lost his father, when in fact, the directors had faked the entire thing... to the entertainment and profit of the viewers and tv directors, but to the detriment of this human being, this boy who experienced this real human loss. They are essentially manipulating his entire world, until he becomes aware of this, and chooses to leave the set, ending the show, and freeing himself.
How interesting it is to think, what if, this kind of thing could really happen to citizens by the government? What if the parallel to this movie could be a reality? It's a scary thought, but Truman also broke free, once he took the time to become aware and notice that he was in this set, and to step outside of it into a reality created by only himself.