#93: THE TRUMAN SHOW

 

STARRING:  Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone, Holland Taylor and Ed Harris. Written by Andrew Niccol. Directed by Peter Weir. Music by Burkhard Dallwitz, Philip Glass and Wojciech Kilar. Budget $60 million. Box office $264 million. Running time 103 minutes. Originally released in 1998.

Written by Andrew Niccol and directed by Peter Weir this 28 year-old film seems more prescient with each passing year, predicting with apparent witchcraftian ease the prolific growth of reality TV. Jim Carey is Truman Burbank, the unknowing star of a world-famous live TV show called The Truman Show. His whole fabricated life, from birth has been broadcast live to the world to see. He spends his days in a fictitious costal town of Seahaven Island working as an insurance broker, and even his mother (Holland Taylor), his wife, Nurse Meryle Truman (Laura Linney) and child-hood best friend, Louis Coltrane (Noah Emmerich) are just actors playing out lines read to them through their ear-pieces. And from his office in the moon, Christof (Ed Harris) the god-like figure who produces and directs the Truman Show watches over Truman dictating every minute of his life. But Truman has an urge to explore, to travel the world and when, one day, he narrowly avoids death from a falling spotlight Truman begins to see the cracks in his reality and realise his world might be something else, something sinister and he sets out to escape, while the whole world watches with baited breath.

What a profoundly moving film this is, a brilliantly brisk 103 minutes of cinematic gold, funny, tragic and emotionally moving. Nowadays it would be an eight-part Netflix series, with one filler episode and dragged out across eight hours, although it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't one in the works already.

But this glorious little film is a modern marvel, emotionally moving, powerful and superbly acted, Jim Carey is a revelation and showed in this one film that he could act and well, keeping his little comedic gimmicks in check apart from his crazy dance in the car and the rain storm on the beach and playing it straight. He's gone on to prove he was more than a clown in both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Man in the Moon. In this you'll find yourself drawn to his plight and rooting for him, yearning him on and when at last he triumphs you feel as if you've escaped too. Similarly the music is exceptional and the use of the main Truman hero music twice, first as he defies the system, and then when he finally sailing free. There's also a strange feeling of anti-climax at the end when you realise just how different and difficult his life is about to become and it's bittersweet despite the fact he's broken free, you want to know he's going to be safe and you wonder whether he'll be able to find true love with Sylvia, or if she'll turn out to be just an obsessive fan. And what of poor Christof, the other prisoner of the show, what now for him now that Truman has escaped, for him his life is effectively over there'll never be another event like The Truman Show for him while Truman himself is going to become a global megastar forever in the spotlight and glare of publicity. I'm sure there'll come a time for him when he realises he was never freer than when he was a prisoner of Seaheaven. 

If I had one criticism it would be the length (which is what my wife said to me on our wedding night) I wish it was longer (also what she said to me). Normally I winge about films being too long, but every now and then I watch a film and wish it was longer, this, Blade Runner, The Paper, Master and Commander and Spatacus. Actually, I'm lying about that last one, it's perfect just the length it is (which is what I said back to my wife on our wedding night).

One day, I'll find my own way out of the David Leach Show*, but until then I'll have to make do with Truman's adventure. Perfection is rare, so is this. 10/10

*FOOTNOTE:
Actually, if you're interested in reading David's own adventures in the real world then check out his autobiographical graphic novel David Leach Conquers the Universe available direct from the author and Dead Universe Comics in Aylesbury. It's all true!