Masterpiece in a Microcosm

Rating: 9/10 (26 April 2008)

Jim Carrey is overdue being lauded as one of the Great American Actors, especially after his performance in The Truman Show.
Written by Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, 1997) in an audacious fit of prescience, Truman Burbank (Carrey) is an unsuspecting pawn in the most ambitious reality show ever conceived - while the world watches, a complete community of actors creates an Anytown America reality for one unsuspecting protagonist - Truman - raised from birth in a massive thunderdome, encompassing the town of Seahaven where even the weather and the sky, the sun and moon are computer programs.
We pick up the story when Truman is 30, ambivalently married to Meryl (Laura Linney), downing the occasional brewski with best friend, Marlon (Noah Emmerich) and cruising listlessly through his unrewarding insurance job. One million hidden cameras broadcast his every move.
He might have continued the Leave it to Beaver lifestyle till his death were it not for a few unrelated events that created a glitch in his perception of reality, allowing him to discover that his "reality" was someone else's "fiction" - an intricately complex microcosm of the real world.
And therein lies the hook of The Truman Show. Directed by Peter Weir (Gallipoli, 1981, Dead Poet's Society, 1989), this movie poses the ultimate question, "Is Reality what we perceive it to be?" Long have we stood solid on the credos, "Seeing is believing" and "Perception is reality" but this movie proves the fragility of those precepts. We perceive all our "realities" through points of reference - we are told this is the sky, the sun, the city, we are told a day is 24 hours long (from an arbitrary measurement which is not entirely accurate); we have agreed on the nature of things (truth, murder, war, dishonesty) and though we think that all we see is "real," and all we feel is untampered emotions, the media, through unreliable sources (television news reports, tabloids, governments) force our perception through a common strainer, molding reality to their ends.
This movie is also testament that the inquiring mind cannot be contained no matter the inculcation. Truman WANTS to discover new horizons; to think outside his box. When computer glitches alert him to his being watched, it inspires him to get to the bottom of the mystery.
The movie takes us outside the prison, beyond the dome, with creator of "The Truman Show," Christof (Ed Harris in a chilling rendition of a god complex - the name Christof is no accident), giving us flashbacks of Truman's early years, including a chance meeting with a female extra, Lauren (Natascha McElhone). While the script called for Truman to meet and marry Meryl, he fell for Lauren; while Christof's scripters scrambled to excise Lauren from the storyline of Truman's life, his "true" emotions would lead him to forever pine for Lauren, going so far as to clandestinely construct a composite picture of her face from magazine models.
Look for Paul Giamatti, pre-awards, as the sympathetic Control Room Director and Harry Shearer, perfect as Christof's interviewer. Brian Delate, who must be sick to death of people asking him, "Are you Charles Grodin?" plays Truman's father.
Back in 1998, it may have been considered unlikely that the major players in Truman's fantasy - his wife and best friend - would give up their own lives and aspirations to be a part of Truman's fiction, but after the advent of execrable stupidities like Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? (2000) or The Bachelor (2002), it has become somewhat acceptable for monetary gain, infamy and exposure as an ignorant git to replace brains, aspirations and even what people consider their very souls. Hollywood synergy (read as tacit plagiarism) also saw the release of a similar-themed, inferior "reality" movie, EDtv in 1999; whereas Truman exposed numerous layers of hypocrisy in our society, EDtv was as thematically deep as a Slip-n-Slide.
Eventually, Truman undergoes a reverse Copernican Revolution, where he discovers that the sun, moon and society itself really DID revolve around him - and instead of finding fulfillment, discovers emptiness in being the center of the universe.
In the greatest irony of all, Truman tries to escape his Seahaven prison, knowing that after escaping into the REAL world, he would become an unknown; unlike all the drogues in the "reality" shows that would come on the heels of this movie, Truman WANTS to be just another face in the crowd, not singled out or made a fuss over - yet it was his drive and uniqueness that enabled him to see beyond his imprisonment and yearn for fulfillment in the first place.
At times poignant, at times funny, always an undertone of darkness, The Truman Show is a metaphor for the pioneering spirit which cannot be contained; never more apparent than the final scenes where Truman pounds on the blue-sky wall as Burkhard von Dallwitz's soundtrack swells to tear-welling proportions.
The paradoxical and disturbing messages in this movie should be examined for decades to come. Instead, the voyeuristic aspect of The Truman Show has been catapulted to brain-leaching proportions by a society that would more readily watch "reality" than live it.