The Truman show - 1998

It starts introducing us to this new world, this new reality, where everyone watches this show, the Truman show, where everyone is an actor but Truman himself, he isn’t an actor. Instead of “phony emotions” and “special effects”, they have ‘genuine life’, because ‘nothing is fake about Truman himself’.

In the opening credits of their show he is listed as Truman Burbank playing himself.

He’s been living that life for 10909 days. 

Then something fall out of the sky, and he only has to start driving his car that already the radio is making up an excuse for it. 

He dreams of leaving that place, of going to Fiji, have an adventure, but They of course don’t want him to. Also, he’s terribly afraid of the sea since the day when he went sailing with his father and the man drowned during a storm.

He is married to Meryl, but he was once in love with another girl, Lauren, but the producer took her out of the show because they wanted him to marry Meryl so they shoved her on him - that actress was more important to them, clearly. 

When he asked her out, she told him she couldn’t talk with him, then went out with him right away because any delay and she wouldn’t be allowed, she knew that, and when a man comes to take her away saying he’s her father, she yells she’s actually Sylvia and they’re all lying to him, they’re all pretending, but the man says they’ll go away to Fiji…

Then his mother ‘got sick’ so he had to stay and couldn’t try to leave and find her…

Then one night he finds that it rains only on him and nowhere else, but after a few moments someone up there puts it right and rain pours down.

Then he sees a man on the street, and they stop to look at each other and it is his dad (that actor) and immediately people came to carry him away while others stopped Truman from following him.

Then the radio starts malfunctioning and he hears the production talking about him, where he is driving, and about extras…

He runs into a building and inside the elevator he sees some people that shouldn’t be there, in what was definitely not an elevator.

Buses and cars stop for him before they hit him.

He talks to his best friend Marlon about it, and about wanting to go away, and immediately the tv talks of the joy of staying home, and his mom shows him family pictures…

People talk like in a commercial (because they’re actually doing commercials for the show). 

To cover up the elevator incident, Meryl tells him there was a terrible accident there, so he runs to the hospital where she works as a nurse, and they almost cut off an actor’s leg before someone takes Truman away.

When he wants to suddenly buy a plane ticket to Fiji, they tell him there’s nothing available. He takes a bus to Chicago then, and it’s full of extras and an actor playing the driver who burns the engine and everyone gets off. 

He stops to look at the road and sees that people go round in a loop. So he decides to drive away right away with Meryl, and he finds the road blocked by cars, but less than a minute later it is free, he has her take the wheel to go over the bridge despite his fear, then a sign says there’s the forest on fire and then they say there’s a leak at the nuclear plant, and this one he almost believes , but then the man replies calling him by his first name, so he suspects something again and runs, but there’s too many and they catch him and bring him back home. Meryl keeps acting weird (making commercials in the middle of their conversation), and when he wonders what’s going on, she screams that he’s crazy and ‘they’ must do something… so they send his best friend to have a good talk with him, that we can hear word for word comes from the producer himself.

To give him something hoping it’d be enough, they give him back his father while up there they film it all and add the music, all live of course.

Even his birth was filmed, his whole life was filmed. And everybody knew it, because he was “the first child to have been legally adopted by a corporation”, and everything that appears on the show is on sale, from the products to the clothes, even the houses.

Sylvia makes a phone call while the producer Christof is being interviewed and she talks to them having no right to make his life a mockery and to keep him prisoner, but he says that he gave him a normal life in a world as it should be, and that “if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there’s no way we could prevent him”. He sees nothing wrong in this, and announces that there will be changes, because Meryl will leave Truman and there will be a new romantic interest for him…

People even watch him sleep…

Truman seems back to normal, doing the same things he always did, and they introduce Vivian who will work with him.

This, however, is all a plan to make them think that everything’s ok, so at night he puts something to make them think he’s sleeping and then he sneaks out. The whole island starts looking for him, and Kristof is forced to make the ‘sun’ appear to better search for him, even if it should be the middle of the night still.

Then Christof thinks of looking at sea, and they finally find him, sailing. They go back online, and Christof orders to create a storm around his boat to scare him and make him turn around, complete with loud thunders, but he doesn’t give up. He falls in the water then gets back up in the water, and Truman yells at them that they’ll have to kill him… Christof adds more wind, big waves, and everybody watches while he almost drowns, and finally Christof orders to stop it.

Truman keeps sailing, and eventually the boat eats a wall that represented the sky and the clouds, and Truman hits it and cries, and then he starts walking until he finds some stairs.

Christof speaks to him, telling him the truth, and trying to convince him to stay because the world he created is better than the real one.

But Truman has had enough and he goes out. Sylvia is watching along with lots of people worldwide. They all cheer for him, and we see Sylvia running out of the house.

Truman Burbank - Jim Carrey

Meryl - Laura Linney

Lauren/Sylvia - Natascha McElhone

Truman’s mother - Holland Taylor

Lawrence - Peter Krause

Christof - Ed Harris

Control room director - Paul Giamatti

Man in bathtub - Terry Camilleri

This is one of the best films ever, it’s funny, it’s touching, it’s disturbing, it’s socially relevant, and the newness of it is just as important now as it was in 1998, even more I’d say, much more now, given the world we live in. The acting was great, both Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank and Ed Harris as Christof were perfect, both great.

Truman’s life has been broadcasted all over the world without him knowing it; from the moment he was born his life has been a tv show. He has been legally adopted by the broadcasting channel, and put in a fake world where everything is fake, and all the people around him are actors. His parents, his friends, they were all playing a part. When he fell in love with ‘Lauren’, real name Sylvia, they took her away because they wanted to pair him with the leading actress, known to him as Meryl. 

Around the world lots and lots of people kept watching the show, never once wondering if that was a right thing to do to a person, and even at the end, when you see them all cheering for him that he conquered his fears and freed himself from that fake world, you’re left with a bitter taste in your mouth, because they act and speak and look like they love him and care for him, and yet they never said anything, never did anything to help him, they just kept watching, and buying Truman-show merchandise. They didn’t ‘really’ care about him.