Wednesday, May 22, 2013

The Truman Show (Movie Review by Bob Racine)



                             1 hr and 43 min, color, 1998

Those of you who have recently joined the mailing list for my blog entries might want to check into the website – enspiritus.blogspot.com – and read my first posting in March of 2012, wherein I explained what my blogging content would pertain to.  In that introduction I expressed the wish from time to time to take fresh looks at old movies, even those in black and white, that have retained their resonance and viewing value.  “The Truman Show” is in color, but it surely has established itself as a lasting and ever contemporary treasure which fifteen years has not tarnished.  A very special treat!  I recommend it highly for all teens and adults.

Did any of you as a child ever imagine that maybe all of life is rigged, that you are in the center of a big hoax staged at your personal expense?  Did you ever imagine that maybe your alleged family, your playmates, your teachers, the hordes along the street, humanity everywhere as you observe them, are complicit in that hoax, that you are either the object in an experiment or the specimen displayed for everyone else’s sickly amusement?  Could it be that the whole universe was once waiting for you to be born so that you could serve some predetermined agenda, and once out of the womb you were placed immediately under the supervision of powerful people who have always been watching every move you make in connection with that agenda?  Please, somebody tell me that I am not the only one who has ever had that flight of imagination.  Please reassure me that I was not the supreme paranoid fantasist during those scattered moments in my early youth. 

Thank you!     

Now meet Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), a thirty-year-old man, who has spent the entire three decades of his life on an idyllic island called Sea Haven, a life without noticeable wrinkles.  Everything seems to him to be wonderfully real – his wife (Laura Linney), his desk job as an insurance salesman, the affluent house that he calls home, his smiley and ingratiating friends and neighbors.  But unbeknownst to him his entire existence from birth has been seen by a world-wide public in a 24-hour-a-day telecast, finessed by a genius TV producer named Cristof (Ed Harris).  Privacy for him has been nonexistent.  Also unbeknownst to him is the fact that the sea and shore and sky that surround his apparent haven are the creation of human hands.  The sand and the sea water are not natural phenomena; even the supposed daylight is artificial.  Everything surrounding him is counterfeit.  Cristof, its inventor, calls it an omni-cam ecosphere.    The people who Truman knows as parents and neighbors and associates at work are actors in the continuing TV drama, as is the wife.  All seems to be placid and perfect, until he begins to feel the stirrings of wanderlust and his attempted travels to places on the globe he has been told about are thwarted by curious complications.  He starts to sense that somehow life in Sea Haven revolves around him.  By degrees he comes to see that he is in fact a prisoner on his “island” and has to try to fight his way out. 

Carrey gives a wonderful, well-modulated performance that balances humor and pathos almost to perfection.  And the film is as well crafted as Truman’s world.  What could very easily have been an over-the-top, heavy-handed, campy gimmick becomes a quality work of absurdist art in the hands of Director Peter Weir.  (In some future entry I might discuss the amazing sum total of this man’s work, going back to the 1970s.) 

Almost as fascinating to me as Truman himself is the character of Cristof.  He is a reclusive billionaire who has constructed this seemingly airtight ecosphere, and the sole reason for his existence is to keep Truman’s contrived life ongoing inside it.  He is a workaholic forever on the job, monitoring the screens that trace the movements of Truman’s life and even varying the narrative from moment to moment by his own wireless verbal transmissions to performers in the sphere, transmissions of which Truman is completely unaware.  It reminds me of the ancient picture of God, as one who puts his words into the mouth of his servants as they speak. 

Ed Harris gives one of his very best portrayals in this role.  He plays it rather tight to the vest.  He does not make Cristof the demonic scientist frothing at the mouth, but he lets us see and hear the obsessive fanaticism that lurks below the surface of his composure.  And most fascinating of all is his rationalization for what he is doing with Truman.  Having adopted him as an orphan before he was born, he sees himself as the young man’s protector from the sick world outside the ecosphere.  Ironically, however, Truman has never seen or communicated with his adoptive parent, not until the movie’s fabulous climax.                  

Truman  has been protected from anything ugly or life threatening.  His world is rot free, crime free, and disaster free.  It is the sleek, micromanaged, contrived world of interminable soap opera.  The millions around the world who watch are captivated by his life.  That life follows no script, but it is controlled; parameters for it have been set in place.  For him, unlike the viewing public, the soap opera is not an escape from world weariness; he inhabits it.  Reality for him is our unreality – until his great awakening.  Andrew Nicol’s original screenplay then takes us for a most exciting ride, with a strong payoff and a brilliant case in point for originality.  The camera, sequence by sequence, has never been used with more skill or imagination, and the production designs are incredibly shrewd. 

As I see it, “The Truman Show” speaks metaphorically to the struggle many of us undertake – to learn to think and act outside the box.  There are risks involved in doing so, and perhaps greater risks in not doing so.  God give us grace to help in that struggle.  


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

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