The Truman Show (1998) Review

Posted on the 12 June 2020 by Caz @LetsGoToTheMov7

Truman Burbank believes he has a perfectly normal life working as an insurance salesman but everything has been a whole lie from the moment he was born. Everything within his entire life has been live on a 24/7 TV show with actors!

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The Truman Show has in someway predicted our future that we would all crave attention by others to view and look at our mundane lives. That being more on social media, with live videos and constant posts, creating our own tv show style world. The thing is though we are fully aware of people watching and looking at the things we put out there.

Christof is the man in charge of the show and we find out that Truman was one of three possible unwanted pregnancies. Everything within his life is a lie and that is something that you cannot help but feel is frightening. The people he believes to be his family and friends are just actors being paid to be part of the world. Everything that looks rather perfect in his world is an elaborate set and he eventually begins to notice things that just don't seem right at all.

The moral issues this raises is quite frankly terrifying, imagine finding out everything you thought was true was a lie? I mean yes we deal with small lies from the people we love at times, but that everything you believe is not true. Having a corporation own you and the whole world knowing everything about you. Watching you born and witnessing everything you have done for the first time. As I mentioned earlier we share a lot of our lives and people with children document everything in a rather social manner now, maybe we should all take a step back and think about the perceived image we put online.

Meryl his wife is not actually Meryl at all and we do see quite early on that Lauren or Sylvia does try to tell Truman but she is suddenly removed each time. It feels like a live action version of The Sims and we all know how popular that game was back in the late 90s/ early 00s and that was something that I loved playing as well. We all cannot help but enjoy the power of controlling "people" that is what Christof does in what feels like a sadistic manner at times.

As Truman begins to notice the odd little things he does not believe everything is real, but I guess he could never really guess to what extend of course. It gets very rewarding seeing him trying to leave this small town and come up against his fears.

The performance from Jim Carrey is a joy to behold in all honesty you cannot help but just adore the innocence of Truman. Ed Harris was rightly nominated for an Oscar in a supporting role. He is very impressive with the obsessive and crazy nature of his character. An amazing fact about the film is that Carrey and Harris never met while filming, something that I feel makes the plot even better. Laura Linney is given quite a difficult role really as it makes the viewer not like her for lying so badly, like imagine someone thinking they are really married to you and you are just doing one big act. Madness!

It certainly is a film that is just as good, if not even better now than it was on release back in 1998, only one thing left to say . . .