College classics: The Truman Show

The Truman Show was a fairly popular film when it came out, but few seem to remember it 10 years later. This is not like Liar Liar or Ace Ventura; this is Jim Carrey really breaking out as an actor. It also seems relevant in today's world of reality television. Students should know that someone saw this coming.

Jim Carrey pushes himself into an entire new level of films with the unexpectedly fantastic film, The Truman Show. Carrey stars as Truman Burbank, an insurance salesman who lives on an island off the California coast. Truman, however, is unaware of one important fact: everything and everyone he knows is fake.
Truman is actually an unknowing participant in the world’s longest and most extravagant reality television series. Laura Linney plays Meryl, his actress wife, whom he believes to be a simple nurse. The two live on an island that is really just a studio creation. Every person in the town is an actor who tries to convince Truman that his fictional life is real. Truman relies on his best buddy Marlon (Noah Emmerich) for support and sanity. Marlon keeps him in the veiled belief that everything is real.
The trouble starts when Truman notices a few odd things about town. The first disturbance in his everyday life comes when he father (Brian Delate) shows up on the island. Problem is, he supposedly has been dead since Truman was a child. Out of nowhere, several people come to take his father away. The next day, the local newspaper explains their actions as “homeless cleanup.”
Later on, Truman notices that an elevator in another office building has no backing. Before he can get a good look at it, security guards usher him outside. Marlon and Meryl try to ease his suspicions, but he cannot forget what he has seen. His paranoia leads him to question, for the first time, the validity of his life. When he cannot leave the island, he gets even more suspicious.
The film then shifts behind the scenes to show just how this series was created. A mysterious man named Christof (Ed Harris) started the show when orphan Truman was born, and has been following Truman for all of his life. In a rare interview, Christof defends his radical idea to a national audience.
After his initial questioning of reality, Truman seems to settle down, but he remembers one strange incident in his life. The film flashes back to his collegiate days, when his love interest was not his future wife but a mysterious girl he later fantasizes about (Natascha McElhone). After he tries to romanticize her, she tries to tell him the truth about his life, but is hauled away. Even though he married Meryl, he continually obsesses with this fantasy roommate. Her image, and his hope to find her really drive him to question everything.
Peter Weir directs a unique and original film with great care. Even though it is about a reality show, Weir treats the film with a great sense of dramatic seriousness. He does, however, play with the idea. Many of the shots in the film replicate the hidden cameras in Truman’s world. Weir blends the actual dramatic world of the film with the pseudo-real world of Truman.
This film establishes Carrey as more than a wacky comedian. His flashy, false style plays perfectly for his character, who is clueless. Linney and Emmerich have a strange task as actors playing actors playing real people, and they pull it off well. Harris keeps Christof enigmatic.
The real beauty of this film, besides its solid directing and acting, comes in its symbolism. It can be read as a Platonic message about seeing beyond the curtains of the world. Audiences may not get all of the deep social and philosophical subtext, but chances are they will enjoy this tale of a less than real life