The Truman Show

Peter Weir, USA, 1997, 103 mins

Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) seems to have the perfect life — a beautiful wife (Laura Linney), best friend (Noah Emmerich), idyllic house in beautiful seaside resort Seahaven, a good job, even perfect neighbours. Sounds great until you realise Truman's whole life is a fraud on an enormous scale and is in fact a gigantic film set. This is designed to gauge Truman's reactions to events to the extent that Truman's wife, parents and friends are all actors - with the former getting paid a bonus for every time they have sex!

Truman has been filmed in a giant candid camera of secret cameras since birth, and he is completely unaware of his surveillance until a few accidents occur on the set that give him the feeling something is going on behind his back - as events seem to verge on the surreal with on screen placement of new sponsor products and huge staged security operations to prevent Truman from realising the truth.

The Truman Show and the film itself are shot on an epic scale and pose equally large questions such as individual's rights to their own privacy in the legacy of the Diana paparazzi nonsense, and can corporations own people (in much the same way as they can patent plants which have been growing naturally for thousands of years) with or without their consent.

Weir is an offbeat but reliable (Australian) Hollywood director, with a treasure trove of previous work dating back to The Cars that Ate Paris, to works such as Mosquito Coast, Witness, Fearless and Dead Poet's Society (though the jury may still be out on the latter).

This wealth of experience gives Weir the skills to make such an ambitious project. Carrey is outstanding playing the straight man for once, though the film is filled with comedy and suspense - will Truman realise, and what can he do?

Review by Stephen Brennan
Taken from EUFS Programe Autumn 1999