The Truman Show is a wonderful movie. Before I delve into it, I’ll warn you that I’m going to spoil most of it down below, so I recommend skipping this post and watching it for yourself first if you’ve never seen it. With that said, on with the review.
The movie centers on a man named Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey) who is living in an artificial world. For his entire life, Truman has lived inside a massive Hollywood television studio made up to look like a small seaside town called Seahaven. Everyone in the town, from his neighbors to his coworkers to random passersby and even his wife and best friend, is an actor. They, along with everyone behind the scenes, work nonstop to make Truman think that he is living a normal life. The truth is that Truman’s whole life has been broadcast on television 24/7 for nearly 30 years. In a rare interview, Christof, the show’s creator, talks about how the viewers enjoy watching Truman’s genuine actions and reactions as he goes about his life, unaware that he is the star of an international reality TV show. Christof also says that Truman could discover the truth and leave if he really wanted to, and that there’d be nothing they could do to stop him.
Gradually, Truman begins to suspect that something is up. His first clue comes in the form of a studio light that falls out of the sky early one morning. However, he only truly begins opening his eyes once he sees his father, who was “written out” of the show in a fake death when Truman was a little kid in order to extinguish Truman’s desire to explore and see the world. From there, he notices one mistake or oddity after another until he knows that there’s more to Seahaven than meets the eye. Once he catches onto the scheme, he abandons his normal routines in favor of finding more “glitches” and seeing how far he can push the limits.
Eventually, once his “wife” leaves him after being scared senseless by his increasingly erratic behavior, Truman seems to return to normal, resuming his regular routines and mostly acting as if he had never noticed anything unusual. One night, though, the crew are surprised to discover that Truman has escaped. This leads to a massive manhunt all across Seahaven and, for the first time in the show’s history, cutting the broadcast. After searching the land proves fruitless, Christof orders the crew to bring up the “sun” and check the water. To everyone’s surprise, Truman is on a boat, sailing away from everything and everyone he’s ever known. Desperate to keep the show going, Christof resumes broadcasting and orders the crew to assault Truman with foul weather, wind, and waves; despite their initial reluctance, they oblige. This fails to stop or even slow Truman, however, so Christof increases the intensity until Truman nearly drowns. Truman recovers once the weather calms back down and continues sailing until he crashes into a wall on another side of the studio. He gets out of the boat and finds a door marked “exit” at the top of a small staircase. Right after Truman opens the door, Christof starts speaking to him through a microphone, finally revealing the truth and trying to get him to stay by promising him safety and security in Seahaven. Ultimately, Truman chooses to walk through the door and into a life of his own choosing instead of settling for Christof’s imaginary world.
The central message of The Truman Show is that some people will lie to you and manipulate you (sometimes going to incredible lengths in the process) to maintain the status quo and preserve the world as they want it to be, even if doing so requires keeping you trapped in an illusion. This could explain all the forced pleasantries and mundane activities of modern life that nobody really wants but everybody thinks are necessary or inevitable. These help to create and maintain a relatively “safe” existence for most people, but that quickly becomes repetitive and boring. Many people dream of abandoning that secure, predictable system in favor of forging their own path through unknown territory and rejecting the “normal” route, and a few brave souls actually do it. Fortunately, there are always a number of disruptions that slowly unveil the illusion to those who are listening and putting the pieces together.
Finding freedom from illusions isn’t always easy, though. In addition to the difficulty in noticing a illusion and figuring out how it works, there is often a great deal of pain involved once you begin separating yourself from it. For some, the pain, which can include severing ties with the people and institutions that kept them in the dark and drastically changing their life, can be so great as to keep them where they are. Others, however, choose to embrace the truth instead of remaining stuck in someone else’s imaginary world. These people are willing to pay whatever price is necessary to wake up and be free.
As you might have guessed by now, The Truman Show is one of my favorite movies. I’ve seen it three times now and I always find something new each time I see it. If you’d like to see more analyses of the movie, I highly recommend checking out these three videos. Each one does an excellent job exploring several awesome things about the movie and discussing them in plain English. I hope this review has been able to enhance your enjoyment of the movie and maybe point out some things that you hadn’t considered before. And I look forward to watching and enjoying the movie many more times.