THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Peter Weir
Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Ed Harris,
Natascha McElhone, Paul Giamatti
Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, a 30-year-old man-child living in a pristine island community, an idealized, well-ordered vision of the American dream. He has a nice house, a beautiful wife, friendly neighbors and a job selling insurance at an office in town. What Truman doesn't know is that he's lived his entire life on camera, starting in infancy, as the star of a reality television show that runs 24/7. The streets, houses, water and sky are all part of a vast, enclosed set on which Truman's manufactured life plays out, while the people he comes in contact with, all of them, are actors improvising their performances around carefully allocated product placements and Truman. The movie spends some time wrestling with the moral implications of keeping an innocent like Truman in the dark about what's going on, especially as he begins to realize something's not right. But where it really hits home is in its depiction of the audience, who can't get enough of Truman's televised life story, till the moment it's over, and it's time to change the channel. There's an interesting side issue involving Laura Linney as the actress who plays Truman's wife. Presumably she and Truman have a sexual relationship - she keeps talking about wanting to have kids - but if she's really just an actress playing a part, how far is she expected to go in a case like this? You could argue that what she's doing amounts to prostitution, but that's an area the movie never approaches, and the question goes unresolved.
