Review #1519: The Truman Show.
Cast:
Jim Carrey (Truman Burbank), Laura Linney (Hannah Gill / Meryl Burbank), Ed Harris (Christof), Noah Emmerich (Louis Coltrane / Marlon), Natascha McElhone (Sylvia), Holland Taylor (Alanis Montclair / Angela Burbank), Brian Delate (Walter Moore / Kirk Burbank), Paul Giamatti (Simeon), Jen Taylor (Contralto Singer), Peter Krause (Laurence), and Harry Shearer (Mike Michaelson) Directed by Peter Weir (#960 - The Year of Living Dangerously and #1185 - Witness)
Review:
"I'm still amazed how you can put your pen down and think not a line can be changed... You've finally got it right. You pick it up ten days later, and it's all so bad."
Intuition matters in a director, and Peter Weir has made an accomplished career built on that in his native Australia and beyond. He was inspired by people he met while studying law at the University of Sydney to take up film, and he soon became part of Ubu Films, a short-lived filmmaking collective in the region, with it being morphed into the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op that favored independent filmmakers both in the region and abroad with a focus on experimental work. When he was 24, he started in film by making his first shorts with The Life and Times of the Reverend Buckshotte (1968). Weir added television to his foray with Man on a Green Bike (1969), and his next contribution was the segment "Michael" in the TV/film anthology 3 to Go (1971). He then made his first true film with the 50-minute black comedy Homesdale later in that year. The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) later found a cult following, but it was Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) that proved his first triumph in Australia and abroad. The script had been done by Andrew Niccol (known for writing/directing Gattaca in 1997) over the course of several years (with the first treatment being done in 1991) and numerous re-writes, which originally featured prominent elements of science fiction in a New York City setting, which Weir (recommended by Niccol after failed considerations of directors like Brian De Palma) felt should be lighter. Also contributing to a wait in filming was Carrey's busy schedule, but it ultimately proved worth it as a comedy-drama triumph for Carrey that differed from his usual comedic work.
We gravitate to comfort because sometimes we are afraid of the truth that stares us in the face. People can get absorbed into the lives of others because it gives us something that we can gravitate to as a community - imagine watching someone's life at a bar. Creepily enough, the film depicts an aftershow to the main subject - I mean, how many after-shows are there about discussing the show that you literally just watched on television (or streaming, if one is into that)? In that sense, this is a very prescient winner, one that fascinates itself in tender enjoyment held in place through a dynamic Carrey and a good sense of timing in terms of harrowing reality satire. Carrey is enjoyable and convincing for our curiosity to focus on because of the fact that he draws us in through simplicity of the heart: we warm to him with no hesitation or desiring some sort of cheap gag or rubbery movement - in other words, an average Joe that draws humor from what we the audience know at first. Linney does pretty well in generating humor through a retro-inspired act of dubious normalcy that generates an amusing one-two punch with Carrey when there. Harris (hired after Weir let Dennis Hopper go a few days into production) comes along for the second half with an aura of visionary exploitation that pulls in a craven nature of wanting to show entertainment with complicity and conviction without even needing to go past the viewing room like a scientist looking upon his specimen with fascination. Emmerich makes for an adequate assuming pal, while McElhone does okay in small parts involving being the one sane person in this land of television.
The look of the film is certainly very interesting. It was filmed primarily in the master-planned community of Seaside, Florida, which Weir found about due to his wife telling him about Seaside, which falls in line with the inspiration of old-style postcards and paintings and a surveillance-like touch to certain shots. Perhaps it is no surprise that there is actually a delusion suffered by people that relates to the film, one in which people that believe their lives were reality TV shows (such as climbing the Statue of Liberty in the belief that it would release him from the show). If you believed that people all over the world were watching you, would that be a comforting feeling or outright horrifying? Imagine the people you loved or were friends were actually liar-I mean actors. I bet there's probably at least one person who really would like to be on television for the masses to see, or if that fails, stream it to the Internet for unchecked audiences. Perhaps people might really just might watch anything if you give them something to look at, whether that involves surviving on an island, or living on the shores of Jersey, or other representations of supposed "reality television." It lingers for 103 minutes with a fair hand on the wheel in prescience of human satire without becoming consumed in just showing off its premise to pull cheap tricks or diverge itself from keeping its adventure on point right to the very last moment of choice. In the end, we see a lot with our eyes, but it is our choices with what we see and hear that means the most to being free.
Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.
