|
Peter Weir's newest film, The Truman Show, is not quite the brilliant media satire that many are calling it. (Network and The Cable Guy are better examples.) But it's a remarkable film in a more terrifying way: It is personal. What if one day you realized that your whole life was a TV show and that some other being was controlling your every move? The Truman Show takes this question and stretches it to a simultaneously probable and improbable future in which one unknowing man is the center of an internationally broadcast soap opera. Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, a man who lives an idyllic life in the quaint seaside community of Seahaven. Married to his perfect wife, Meryl (Laura Linney), raised by his perfect mother (Holland Taylor), and best friends with his childhood buddy, Marlon (Noah Emmerich), Truman seems to have it all. But problems plague him, and disturbing questions surface. Why and how did a light fixture fall from the sky? What is the weird radio frequency that seems to be instructing his every move? How could he be caught in a rain shower that drenched only him and nothing else? Why were Meryl's fingers crossed in their wedding photo? And why did his father, whom he saw die in a boating accident when he was very young, resurface as a bum on the street and tell him that his whole life was a lie? Truman's life is a lie, the longest-running lie in the history of television. Though he feels real, his surroundings are not. They are the creation not of God or Christ, but of Christof (Ed Harris), the mastermind behind the docudrama of Truman's life. Christof is also the creator of Seahaven, a domed utopia complete with (usually) picture-perfect weather, a rumbling ocean and a bunch of chirpy extras to whom Truman has said "Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening" for the last 30 years of his life, while the entire world watched. Here is the strange unreality of the film, and where it clearly shows the influence of writer Andrew Niccol, who also wrote (and directed) the more improbable Gattaca. Though it is realistic that the public's lust for "real TV" would help
create this voyeuristic fantasy land of perfection, wouldn't that same lust have created a land of hell? The real TV that we can't get enough of now is composed of cops busting wife beaters, prostitutes confronting their pimps, and an accused murderer fleeing in a white Bronco. Would we really watch a show about a town where everyone strains to smile and places products in the frame? Perhaps Weir is simply making the point that modern TV viewers identify more with the lives they see on the screen than with their own reality. But Weir's film doesn't explain the viewers of The Truman Show. What do they talk about around the water cooler? How Truman said hello to the newspaper guy? The tense subtext to the show could be enough to keep the viewers rapt. It certainly keeps the film interesting. Had this been Niccol's movie, the media satire would fall apart, but the warmer hearts of Weir and Carrey have crafted a personal tale that reflects everyone's role in what they see as a limited world. For some, their lives may as well be the show, as they mentally put a dome and screen around themselves. Many may think they can go beyond their boundaries, but they never do, existing only in one small plot of community, sometimes not even past their front yards. The rub, then, is not the corporate takeover of America, but rather how that takeover has helped feed our existing anxieties. Weir is wise to make his harsher aspect of the film not too cynical or obviously evil. Though the actors and viewers greedily participate, they are not detestable people. Even Christof is not entirely despicable. Well played by the all-American, eternal-astronaut actor Harris, Christof, in many ways, cares for Truman. He believes what he has done for the boy has given him a better life. Carrey is also perfectly cast. The film was originally intended for Tom Hanks, which is no surprise since it could have had overwhelming Gumpness. Hanks can play the strained nice guy, but he lacks Carrey's dark side and his hungry desire for people to like him. Though this film is being viewed as a breakthrough for Carrey, he really broke through in a film that put forth similar notions of a TV- controlled monster: The Cable Guy. Critics and viewers couldn't stand The Cable Guy's Carrey because he was too disturbing. But when was Carrey ever simply a warm fuzzy? Like the viewers' take on Truman, the public's take on Carrey is wishful thinking: The actor is always disturbing. He was so effective that viewers couldn't stomach him. His cable monster was too much a reminder of the part of ourselves that we can't stand. Carrey's warped cable guy serves as an intriguing parallel to The Truman Show: As a kid who was parented, babysat, taught and socialized by the TV set, the cable guy is both Truman viewer and Truman himself; a lost soul whose life is scripted by inane bits of dialogue from either past episodes of TheBrady Bunch or a book of hackneyed phrases. What makes this film so simultaneously interesting and frustrating is that it never really steps outside of TV life. In not leaving that unreality, it avoids the typical trap of major Hollywood films: obviousness. Many will leave the theater feeling unresolved, disturbed or maybe even hopeful, but they will think further about the film. And they certainly won't leave without thoughts of Carrey, the actor who, in his cross between Jimmy Stewart and Jerry Lewis, is our newest American icon. Is that scary? |
