“We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.”
Jim Carrey has been an outspoken spiritualist in the more recent years, stepping away from his immense fame that he had amassed during the nineties. His discomfort with the Hollywood system may have seeped it’s way into his career, however. The Truman Show, while not being specifically based on Carrey’s disdain with his life, has many parallels to his later views. This is a movie that delves into the bizarre of having your every moment in life documented for the world to see. It’s stark message about consumerism and the uncomfortable fascination people have for reality television, or just television in general, is one that rings louder than most topical stories on the subject matter. Carrey’s disliking of being forced into the limelight, mixed with the portrayal of TV addicts is a surprisingly fitting pair. This is Peter Weir’s The Truman Show.
The story focuses on the titular character, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), a man who seems to living an ideal life in the suburbs with his wife, Meryl (Laura Linney) and his best friend, Marlon (Noah Emmerich). He has a well paying job and everyone in the neighborhood seems to be his friend. But, there is more to this than meets the eye, as it turns out, Truman is simply part of a giant globally-cast TV show, where all of Truman’s friends and loved ones are simply paid actors. The show is run by a man named Christof (Ed Harris) who picked out Truman to be the star of his show ever since he was a fetus. Truman has been blissfully unaware of his controlled life, viewing the apparent death of his father as truth and the one girl he actually wanted to marry being taken away from him. The reality being that his “father” was axed from the show, and the girl who got away was never intended to be his love interest, and was kicked from the show for trying to tell him the truth. The truth does manage to find it’s way into the show however as Truman begins to notice the cracks. Truman, progressively, starts to question the fabricated world he lives in as the viewers around the world are left with the moral dilemma of seeing him escape this reality, or wanting to keep that entertainment.
It should go without saying that Jim Carrey is one of the greatest strengths of this movie. Unlike his previous roles of the nineties, Carrey’s performance is much more subdued this time around. Truman is a bright and happy young man, but he doesn’t have the overly energetic personality that Carrey was akin to. It is only as Truman begins to see the cracks, does he start to become more skittish. Carrey doesn’t feel out of his comfort zone, however, and his performance is more of a compliment to the plastic look of the world. With every character being a ‘picture-perfect’ representation of an ideal life, the paranoia of Truman rivals that perception. Truman’s life is so fully orchestrated that even when Truman tries to pursue interests outside of how Christof has designed the world, there is always some orchestrated roadblock to stop him. The biggest point of interest is his obsession with Lauren, the girl who he wanted to be with instead of his wife. The actress playing Lauren tries her best to avoid Truman’s interests but he eventually wins her over, she almost tells Truman the truth before she’s taken away. Truman still obsesses over her, even after all those years and, unbeknownst to him, she is still watching from her TV screen at home.
The movie’s biggest strength, in my personal opinion, comes from it’s message towards consumerism and the overall celebrity worship that comes from obsessing over actors, not being able to separate fact from fiction. As much as Truman is unaware that his life is all just a big fiction, the audience often treats his life a reality, they are aware it’s simply a show, but they dedicate themselves to watching it daily. The show is a 24 hour a day show, so it’s always being watched by someone. This constant monitoring is a much darker element that one could ignore at first, but it has harrowing connotations behind how much of Truman’s life people have seen. The show is also riddled with product placements all throughout, as this how the show keeps going, just as much as any other show. Often characters will present Truman with a product in a ham-fisted delivery towards the camera, Truman doesn’t question this at first, but begins to notice it once he realizes his life is just a show. This simply adds to the anti-consumerism message that is spread all throughout, the lack of authentication and this orchestrated dollhouse that Truman is stuck in presents a dark reality. The showrunners are often presented with the moral questioning, but Christof feels that by giving Truman a squeaky-clean world, he is saving him from the horrors of the real world. This is clearly a morally wrong thing to do, as everyone in Truman’s life are just figments of one man’s dreams.
The Truman Show is bit of an odd one to recommend to a casual viewer, it isn’t a hilarious romp that one might expect from Carrey, though there are sprinkles of his trademark humor all throughout. The film’s appeal comes from what we know, and how you want Truman to see the fallacies of this world. It’s a movie that came out during Carrey’s more experimental period, where he tried to do more serious work next to his usual shtick. Many of his other more serious ventures weren’t always the most well received, but this one certainly stands above them. The movie is very clear with it’s message, sometimes it can feel like it’s beating you over the head with it, but it’s a message that still remains relevant today, what with the obsessive culture around streaming networks. It’s both entertaining and surprisingly dark at times, which is why I can recommend it to even the more cautious viewer. Check it out.
Side note: This could easily work as a psychological horror movie, I would like to see that version.
Written review by C. Johnson.