By: Kathryn Solomon
This year, The Truman Show will be celebrating its 20th anniversary, starring film sensation Jim Carrey.
If you’re a basic high school teenager, there’s times when you just want to curl up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and watch a movie featuring Carrey just to have a good laugh, right? In this case, The Truman Show is more centered around the feels of a hearty drama than a comedy.
On the weekend of June 5, 1998, The Truman Show racked in $31 million for opening weekend- breaking about halfway even to the $60 million production budget.
It seems quite ironic to say that this movie is practically a show within a show within a show, but it is actually a fitting description. Carrey plays the leading role of Truman Burbank, who is the star of the 24 hour-a-day show, in which he has no knowledge at all that microscopic cameras are following his every move.
Instantly the thought of “Big Brother” from the novel 1984 or the recent may come to mind. Or even the recent “there’s an FBI agent watching me through my phone” twitter meme is relevant to compare to the situation of Truman Burbank. We now live in a world so technologically advanced, that The Truman Show is able to foreshadow the conditions that we now have to deal with on a daily basis.
Since the day Truman was born, he’s had a live audience constantly watching him. Each day he goes about the same routine- saying his good mornings to the neighbors, picking up the paper, and making his way to his oh-so exciting job as an insurance agent.
Soon enough, Truman begins to catch on when the looks of a light from the set of a movie falls right out of the sky and onto the road in front of him. He also notices the excessive need many of his friends and family to “advertise” certain products to him.
Frantically packing up a single suitcase and accessorising himself with a tweed flat cap, Truman makes it his top priority to make his way to Fiji in search of his long lost love interest. The travel agency denies him a plane ticket and he takes matters into his own hands. Driving like a maniac around little picturesque Seahaven he attempts to find a way out of this bubble built around him. Once again, he is stopped by occurrences which seem to just be too coincidental.
“We accept the reality of the world for which we’re presented,” noted the character Christof, the director of the reality TV show in the movie.
All in all, Truman thoroughly shows that we can not become too comfortable in our surroundings. The supporting cast did a good job portraying the awkwardness that these roles entailed. As a result, the movie viewer wants Truman to discover the truth more quickly and find his way out.
Carrey is definitely able to carry along the movie along, even if it seems like the storyline is dragging at times. He is able to display enough emotion when finding his way out of this life that he has been living for the past 29 years.
We could all be like Truman and make sure to tape a tiny piece of paper on your laptop camera, just to be sure that your personal FBI agent isn’t scheming!
I give The Truman Show a 7/10. Carrey should stick to comedy although he does well presenting the emotions necessary for a drama. To find out how Truman tries to convince himself that he’s not going crazy, watch and see, it’s available on Netflix.
