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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