Kafka-esque tale of the sham of contrived 'reality TV'

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2004)

How much of an illusion of reality can one create, even with the unlimited resources of a profitable TV enterprise? A TV producer, one "Christof", devises the most artificial environment possible must seem real -- indeed the only possible reality -- for Truman Burbank, whose life is a TV show, and every scene is a stage, and every person is an actor except him, the ultimate fool, from his birth nearly thirty years earlier. Truman Burbank must have the illusion of complete freedom, but he can't have it. He must also have the delusions of privacy and the genuineness of all of those in on the 24-7-365 scam. If he ever figured it all out, he'd go insane from the absurdity of the situation.
All is beautiful, and everything is a set-up... even his 'love interests' who must be in on the plot to delude him into thinking that there is but one accessible reality -- a world in which everything is a sham, if a pleasant one. Truman has been part of a 24-hour TV show, the ultimate reality program, now in its 10,909th straight day... and knows nothing else. He's beginning to chafe in a world in which he has been "legally adopted at birth by a corporation", an enterprise created by one "Christof", a TV producer. Everything depends upon Truman Burbank staying right where he is, in an unreal set-up.
If you enjoyed the old British TV series "The Prisoner", then you will enjoy this too as an intensification. This is a brainy movie, not so much a blockbuster as a Kafka-esque or at least Serling-esque tale.