Movie Mondays: The Truman Show

If you grew up in the 90’s and early 2000’s like I did, chances are you were a big fan of Jim Carrey. Or you hated him and thought he was really annoying. Jim Carrey is one of those comedians who you either love or hate. Personally, I loved him. I loved the energy he brought to his roles, and he starred in some of my favourite comedies. Thing is, while he’s known as a funny man, he’s also a damn good actor.

Sure he’s mostly known for his own unique brand of zany, but he has shown he can handle intense, emotional or even scary moments just as well. Like a lot of comedians, Jim did have trouble proving to people that he was a legit actor. So sometime in the late nineties he started to appear in more serious films to show that he was more than a funny man. And one of the first films he did to show this was also, in my opinion, the best film he ever did, The Truman Show.

Released in 1998, The Truman Show was originally a spec script inspired by an episode of the 1985 Twilight Zone television series. No really, I’m not making this up, it’s called “Special Service” if you want to Google it and see for yourself. Though unlike the episode, which was more comedic, the script for the film was more of a science fiction thriller, at least at first.

Writer Andrew Niccol originally wrote the film to be a lot darker, but when Peter Weir was set to direct the project, he wanted to add a bit more comedy to give it a lighter tone. This was one of the reasons Jim Carrey was cast in the first place. Jim initially couldn’t make the shoot dates for the film as he was busy with other projects at the time, but Weir thought he was perfect for the role. So they delayed shooting for a year just to get him.

I remember the first time I saw this movie. I was on vacation in America at the time and the movie was on TV. I had always heard of the movie but hadn’t seen it until then. Despite not watching it under ideal circumstances, I really hate watching films on TV because of all the damned advertisements, I still loved the film. I thought the premise was interesting, I loved how it was directed and I of course loved Jim Carrey’s performance. It's one of my all-time favourite movies and today I hope to show you why. This is, The Truman Show.

Truman Burbank is a typical average man living a typical average life. He has a decent paying job, he lives in a nice house, he’s happily married, nothing too out of the ordinary. Except for one tiny detail, everything about his life is 100% fake. The town he lives in is one massive set and every person in his life are actors. See, Truman’s life is nothing more than a television show, the biggest television show on the planet, The Truman Show. Personally I would have gone with Truman’s World but what do I know.

The thing is, Truman doesn’t know he’s in a television show. To him it’s all real, it’s just his life. So, while the world around him is manufactured, he himself is not. His reactions to everything are genuine. This is the entire idea of the show. The show's creator, Cristof, wanted to create a show with an actual everyman character people could relate to and capture genuine emotions that weren’t just acted.

And it works as The Truman Show is one of the biggest shows in television history, watched by millions of people all over the world. The audience itself is integrated into the film with small cutaway scenes showing them reacting to what happens in the show. These are some of the funniest parts of the movie, there’s one guy watching the show in his bathtub that just cracks me up.

So the showrunners succeeded in turning Truman into a likable everyman. There's just one problem, Truman doesn’t want to be a normal everyman. He wants to be an explorer, to see the world and have adventures. Meaning they have to keep finding ways to keep him in his small town, conditioning him to want to stay.

There are constant messages of how good small-town living is strewn throughout Truman’s life, from newspaper articles talking about how great his town is to television programs about the joy of a quiet simple life. To discourage him from being an explorer they tell him that everything has already been found. To stop from traveling they talk about how dangerous travelling is, even the town travel agency has posters up talking about how dangerous it can be, which is just hilarious with how ridiculous that is.

But probably the most insidious thing the show does to Truman to prevent him from leaving, is manufacturing his fear of the water. When Truman was younger, they killed his dad off in a boating accident to give Truman aquaphobia. His dad is still alive, or rather the actor playing his dad is alive, but Truman doesn’t know that. He's scarred for life because he thinks his dad is dead.

That’s the thing with The Truman Show, yes Truman’s reactions are genuine, but everything about his life is so carefully controlled that you wonder how genuine they are. Everything about his life is manipulated by the show runner. Who his friends are, his job, his house, even his wife were all chosen for him. Truman himself has no real agency in his own life, every time he makes a choice that goes against the creators wishes they’re immediately shot down.

This is evidenced by Truman’s love life. Truman is married to a woman named Meryl who he met in college, which was the idea for the show, the two meet in college and fall in love, a typical idealized romance. But Meryl isn’t the woman Truman fell for. The woman he wound up falling in love with was an extra named Lauren, real name Sylvia. But because she wasn’t the one the directors wanted, she’s booted from the show with the story being that she’s being sent to Fiji.

Truman never forgot about her though. He even wants to go to Fiji just so he can find her. The show runners may have some control over Truman's life, but they can’t control how he feels. This is the tragedy of the film. Truman is a man trapped in a gilded cage. His entire life perfectly catered for by outside forces yet having no real power within it.

There's some religious subtext you can read into that, especially given that Cristof is portrayed as a literal man in the moon who controls the world Truman lives in. Truman's desire to escape his small town is just him wanting to get out there and see the world, but it has a double meaning he isn’t even fully aware of.

There’s nothing genuine or real about Truman’s life, except for Truman himself. And the tragedy of it is that he’s completely unaware of it, at first. Truman finds a homeless man who looks like his dad, because it is his dad, the actor who played him snuck on to the set. While the crew hastily gets rid of him, the encounter causes Truman to becomes suspicious of the world around him.

He notices patterns of the people around him and bizarre, borderline impossible, coincidences. He uncovers a break room hidden in an elevator, notices that every time he attempts to leave something goes wrong, ranging from the believable to the downright absurd. Truman’s goal to escape his town then becomes a quest to find out the truth.

Truman starts to have a mental breakdown and is only brought down to earth by his best friend. This scene is heart-breaking to watch because it’s revealed that the words said by Truman’s friend are canned lines fed to him by the show's creator. His friend tells him that he would never lie to him, and it's all scripted.

This is one of the themes the movie tackles. Imagine if you were in Truman’s position, your entire world is fake and the people around merely actors pretending to care about you. Can you imagine what a revelation like that would do to a person, how it would destroy them if they found out. The Truman Show is a dark movie when you think about it. It doesn’t fully deal with this idea. It dabbles in it, but it doesn’t focus on the psychological aspects of its premise. It's a facet of it, but not the main focus.

Its main focus is on Truman gaining control of his own life. In the climax of the movie, Truman sneaks out and sails out to sea on a boat, conquering his aquaphobia in the process, to uncover the truth once and for all. The show runners try to stop him by creating a storm to try to get him to turn back and he still keeps going, screaming at them that they’ll have to kill him to stop him from finding out.

At this point Truman would rather die than continue living a lie. Cristof even contemplates killing him off since it would be a great finale for the show. Cristof acts like what he’s doing is for Truman’s best interest, saying that he’s given Truman the chance to live a normal life, but he doesn’t really care about him. All he cares about is his show. He even treats big moments of Truman's life as just episodes.

However, there is some truth in what he says, in a twisted sort of way. He has provided Truman a normal life. Truman doesn’t want for anything, and all his needs are met. He may be a prisoner but it’s not like he’s treat badly. His life won’t be easier if he escapes, if anything it’ll be harder. But at least it will be his life to live. He'll be able to make his own decisions, do what he feels is best for him, and not what other people feel is best for him.

The final scene where Cristof tries to convince Truman to stay, but he leaves by saying his catchphrase and taking a bow is masterful. It's him putting an end to his staged reality and finally choosing to live his life on his terms. It's one of my favourite finales in all of cinema.

I cannot praise the story in this film enough. I have seen this idea done elsewhere, but none of them have tackled it quite as well as The Truman Show. It tackles so many different themes from celebrity culture, the invasion of privacy, existentialism, it even sort of predicted the rise of reality television that would plague the early 2000’s.

The script is so tightly written and well crafted. Every line has purpose and meaning behind it, and they take great efforts to explain how everything works. It's clear a lot of love and care went into the writing of the movie. On an objective level it’s extremely well done.

What I personally like about the writing is how stilted the dialogue between Truman and the people around him is. You might think that’s an odd thing to praise, but I think the stilted way it sounds was intentional. It all sounds unnatural, scripted if you will, and that’s because most of it is. In universe I mean, obviously it’s scripted because it’s a movie but, oh you know what I mean. There are even small bits of dialogue that are clearly meant to be advertisements that stick out like a sore thumb. Truman's wife even talks like one when she shows Truman a new thing she bought.

The movie does show that the show gets its money from product placement. This is hinted at very early on when Truman interacts with twin characters who push him against the wall so they can zoom in on the poster behind him. Little details like that are littered throughout the film. I love subtle bits of storytelling like this.

That extends to how the movie is filmed as well. The film is shot like it is using hidden cameras. The movie is trying to simulate what The Truman Show would actually look like. So you get a lot of weird angles, changes in camera lenses, zoom ins at critical moments and the like. It really does feel like you’re watching The Truman Show. The film even opens with what is essentially the intro to the show, which is not only a creative way to begin the movie but also a good way to deliver the core premise to the audience right away.

The way the film is shot not only works as great way of showing how The Truman Show works, but it also gives the film a unique look. Visually speaking the film is bland when it comes to the setting, which is intentional given the goals of the show. But the weird angles and unique shots the film uses help keep things visually interesting.

The music isn’t anything to write home about though. I do like how the music sounds like music they would use on the show. There's some classical music here because it’s public domain so they would be able to use it without paying licensing fees. And the original music they use sounds very corny, like something out of a sitcom.

The acting, on the other hand, is something to write home about. Now the whole cast does a great job, I especially like Ed Harris as Cristof as he plays the part with an emotionless that fits the character. But the big standout performance is, you guessed it, Jim Carrey.

Carrey is perfectly cast in this movie. He isn’t as eccentric as he is in a lot of his other movies, which works in his favour. Truman is supposed to be an explorer trapped as an everyman, so Jim Carrey not being as Jim Carrey as usual helps show how trapped Truman truly is. You get the feeling that he’s always holding something back. This wouldn’t have worked nearly as well with any other actor; I can see why they delayed the movie to get him.

This is one of the best performances of Jim Carrey’s career. It shows how much range he has as an actor, he can pivot from cheerful, to manic, to depressed on a dime. He still brings his usual likeability to the role which helps make Truman an easy character to root for. Truman himself is already characterized very well to begin with so there was a lot to work with, but Carrey still manages to make it his own.

The Truman Show is a phenomenal film. Normally this is where I would tell you that the film isn’t perfect and go over its flaws, except I can’t think of any. It does have slight issues but those are just minor nitpicks. The movie does everything it needs to do so well that I would argue that it’s close to being perfect.

I suppose you could argue that some elements are a little dated. I mean it deals with network television which is slowly becoming irrelevant and the whole reality television craze the movie predicted has long since died off, but the writing is so good that it off sets some of the more dated elements.

The Truman Show is a masterpiece. I don’t like using that term, but I can’t think of a better word for it. It's just so well made in every aspect it’s hard to call it anything but. Do I recommend it? Of course I do. It's one of my favourite movies of all time, one of the best films of the 1990’s and the best film of Jim Carrey’s career.

And that’s saying something because Jim Carrey’s appeared in some great movies. In more recent years his career has been a little more mixed than the highs he reached in the 90’s. Thankfully he’s made a bit of a resurgence thanks to the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, of all things. It is great to see Jim back in the swing of things, and from I can gather he’s also in a much better place mentally as well after going through a rough patch in his life.

Jim Carrey is certainly a divisive individual. Especially nowadays with him being way more political. Still he is a very entertaining personality and I’m looking forward to seeing him in Sonic 2. Especially since he’s going full Eggman in it, it’s going to be glorious.