Post by ronnierocketago on Jan 17, 2006 23:15:42 GMT
The Truman Show
Peter Weir
1998 USA
Man, what a completely different universe we lived in SEVEN years ago in the year 1998. FRIENDS and the retiring-SEINFELD were popular, the pissy Party not in the White House tried everything to dethrone a President of a different party(wait, different? ), two American Embassies were bombed in Africa by a terrorist group called Al Qaeda that few Americans cared to remember, American space hero John Glenn returned to space, and John Elway win his last Super Bowl game.
What do all of the above have in common? The American public watched all this on the society-alterating invention of The Television, which has caused for many speculative works of fiction on the possible drama involved in this field of entertainment. The year of 1998 and 1999 were no different, for two takes on the premise of a 24-hour TV show around the exploits of a real human being. After the subject of our review, Ron Howard had his box-office bomb Rom/Com film ED TV which acted like that jerk you know that "acts" like their smart, when really is nothing more than a loud jackass, so no more talk of that lame film.
However, THE TRUMAN SHOW...I went to see it back in the summer of 1998 because, I'll admit it, at the tender age of 13, I was a notable Jim Carrey fan. The TV ads presented the picture of a smart-slapstick comedy, so I went off with my friends to it. While my friends hated it because it wasn't "funny" and it was "confusing"(honest to God!), I quite liked the movie. If anything, it was my unintentional pledge-intuition into the work of Australian film directing master Peter Weir(MASTER & COMMANDER) and satire-commentating script writer Andrew Niccol(GATTACA).
What my friends and many popcorn-stuffed audience folks didn't notice is that they went to see a highly-made cerebral arthouse film that is disguised as a summer blockbuster comedy picture, In a way of sorts that we were treated to earlier this year with Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS.
Of course THE TRUMAN SHOW was released when the concept of a man who's entire universe is literally contructed as a long-running popular 24/7 Television Network, the idea is fascinating yet was a stretch at the time. Remember that Reality TV in America in 1998 was limited to COPS, AMERICA'S MOST WANTED, MTV's THE REAL WORLD, and thats about it.
Seven Years Later...ya, after the stunning success of SURVIVOR years back, Reality TV the terrible sub-genre has so-far stayed healthy with many TV viewers and even apparently has its own channel on satellite TV. Thank god we somehow survived the hightide of Reality TV when it seems like 80% of the Basic Network's programming was based in some "Real"-based gimmick.
Anyway, I actually never was able to rewatch THE TRUMAN SHOW until my college campus had a festival of TV/Mass Media-based motion pictures, and Peter Weir's film was on the schedule. With that, I went with my more knowledgable film-fan pals last week...
You ever have that feeling when you discover a great movie that hasn't been praised to the ceiling of the heavens? It truely makes you fresh in the soul in terms of love for cinema that there are great gems of films out there for many folks to discover...and not just the movies that have been called "The Great Pictures" for the last few decades. With the Reality TV genre gaining a foothold in the trenches of America, many critics have revisited THE TRUMAN SHOW and share my highly-rated opinion...and not to mention that Paramount did recently release a brand-new Anamorphic/re-mastered special features-stacked DVD that is worth the money folks. Hell, the movie even got a good laugh in an episode of FAMILY GUY that assumingly Don Vercetti has seen at least 5 times.
Truman Burbank(Jim Carrey) is a normal man, living in a normal town. He grew up to be a desk clerk for a insurance company, living an ordinary life, having an ordinary wife, an ordinary neighbour and an ordinary bud, who pops in from time to time with a sixpack. But Truman is not happy with his life. He wants to see the world. He wants to get away from his happy-happy, ever tidy, nice'n'shiny little island town at the seaside. In reality, Truman was an unwanted pregnancy. His "father", Christof(Ed Harris), a reckless TV-Producer whom he never met, made up the Truman Show - the greatest show on earth - a show in which life is live. So, everyone around poor Truman is an actor with a little headphone in the ear. One day, Truman accidentally bumps into a catering area backstage and gets pretty suspicious. His plan now is: Pretend to be sleeping and steal away...
You know, amazing how much more you pick up when you're 20 years old that I couldn't decipher seven years earlier. I was shocked to find quite a movie that is absolutely intelligent in its bitch-smacking satire of not just Soap Opera and "Family Value" Television Series, but in general the writing of Television itself.
Consider the protagonist's name. I mean its not exactly an open secret how its a joke in Hollywood about the starking unoriginality of many sitcom writers for NBC,ABC, CBS, FOX, etc...and it shows just beyond the obvious surface-value spoofs. I mean you have a guy who's last name just conveniently shares the same name of a Southern California city near Hollywood(where the fictional TV Network "The Truman Show" is produced) where Jay Leno's THE TONIGHT SHOW is taped. Not to mention that the hero's first name of "Truman" could be broken down to "True Man", which apparently is the crazy controlled-fantasy that Ed Harris the "God" of Truman's false reality, wants to convey to the multi-generational fanbase.
Then there is the sly jokes at the culture itself of a fictional TV show's fanbase. I mean there are old people who make a secondary living that revolves around long-running daytime Soap Operas(I actually have an aunt that is a GENERAL HOSPITAL junkie) as displayed with some of "The Truman Show"'s fans. Not to mention entire bars that are shaped with mercendise and regular sitting-arrangements for the loyal fanbase to surround their geist of their obsession...and my fellow sports-fan pals here at BB.Net probably know a few sports bars that center upon some ballclub of many sports.
Of course, I could also dive into Weir and Niccol's aburd-yet-humorous jokes at produce placement, which are so awkward and creepy that Jim Carrey's character doesn't notice to be out of place simply because hes been living with it for all of his life. What is scary is how right now, we see Commercials everywhere in our "true" reality now...
What draws me as a film fan in general to easily one of the best movies of the 1990s is how the sad story itself is of a human soul who's entire existence is curbed by his "God" just so he would conform to the golden American Boy that apparently people want to watch, even if they know the "truth" is falsely constructed. He simply wants to explore the universe outside his city, but of which his urges for such things are strictly controlled. For hell sake, he loses a parent, which probably permanently-injured him in the mental realm for years afterwards, simply as a cheap "TV drama". By the time that the beginning of his suspicion that his "universe" isn't what it seems to be when a studio light crashes near his house, it begins a self-realizing journey that his Creator is willing to stop, even at all costs.
[*SPOILER WARNING* - SKIP IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM!]
What I dig is how Weir and Niccol begin the film with a simple pre-credit "Behind the Scenes" interviews with some cast members, which thankfully defuses a simple impulse that many hacks would have gone for, which is to build up with Jim Carrey until we are "revealed" to this grand secret...which is stupid since mass media advertizement these days reveal spoiler-"twists". Michael Bay's THE ISLAND anyone?
Then we have Truman Burbank recognize a homeless guy on the street of his native-Seahaven who looks like his drowned-father, which then Truman starts piecing some suspicious activity together that his Creator and the cast of characters that are supposedly Truman's "friends and family" create half-baked answers to...which of course Truman doesn't believe.
After his itching to escape his town to visit Fiji(where the true love of his life in Natascha McElhone supposedly moved), a true cheesy melodramatic "surprise" ending occurs halfway through the picture, with Truman's supposedly-dead Father revealing to be alive. Then we cut to from this tale of self-discovery for Truman to the Real world outside the dome-studio, with the "God" Christof being interviewed about the phenomenon...and arguably breaking the pace of narrative the film was working towards.
Really, any other filmmakers would put this "interview" segment with Ed Harris in the beginning of the picture...but Weir and Niccol are ballsy enough to do this, which in the continuous-"live" feed, it seems Truman has gone back to his normal activity of his reality.
I really love of how the interviewer in Harry Shearer asks Ed Harris about the "stunning" ending of how Truman's father is really alive, and Harris giving some mumble-jumbo garbage which only reveal that despite his God-like ego and self-identity, Ed Harris is only your typical film/TV writer. When asked what excuse and reasoning for the father's "return", Harris quickly answers "Amnesia" without a pause. Of course, such easy-explaining answers we've dealt with for decades on Television, right?
Thing is, the God actually begins the unraveling of his creation with this cop-out writing-solution. Truman's father was killed off by being drowned inorder to make Truman have a deep mental phobia of water and thus keep him on the "island" small town universe. Thing is, with his father now "alive", this totally dis-engaged the prisoner's "cage" of the mind, and for which he exploits once freed...
The ending with Truman reacing the edge of the Dome on his famiy's sailboat called the Santa Maria, after nearly being killed by his "Creator" who was pissed that his creation refused to return to his cave. In a clever subtle spot of religious undertones(which I won't comment), Jim Carrey walks on surface-edge of the dome, for which for a shot he looks like he is indeed walking on water. He finds the stairs that leads to a door, but to what? The answers to all his questions?
Christof, in his booming God form, tries to reason with Truman to stay, for the world outside Truman's reality is a horrible nasty place while his contructed-universe is peaceful and truely safe. After remarking that he knows more about him then Truman does himself, Truman emotionally yells:
"You Never had a Camera in my Head!"
With Christof making his final plea with Truman staring down possibly at his door out of his false existence.....Truman spins around in a defiant gesture and utters his corny catchpraise at his creator and his gripping and cheering audience, who cry in joy as Truman goes through the door. The real world may be terrible compared to Seahaven, but its real.
[*SPOILER WARNING* - READ THE REST OF MY NON-SPOILED REVIEW]
Finally, lets notice the great acting from the cast that make Weir and Niccol's vision come true. Jim Carrey should have at least garnered a Best Actor Oscar nomination, for truely he plays the charming hero of our story that soon desires to know more outside what his society will accept. Not to mention that I wonder if Ed Harris, nominated for Best Supporting Actor, was screwed out of a win. Really, the actor that is cool in every film, lost as he has before and after this film at the Academy.
Okay, what keeps me from giving this really great film from scoring the Masterpiece rating of 5 Stars? Arguably the out-of-place, if essential, "flashback" does feel like a thumb to the eye, and not to mention the "break" in the natural flow of the film's story does block up the river, even if it makes for a refreshing change of course to your usual Hollywood movie.
Is THE TRUMAN SHOW the descendent of Sidney Lumet's ever-more relevant masterpiece NETWORK? "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!"
Final Film Rating - ****1/2 out of 5.
(NOTE: This film could eventually get the "Masterpiece" 5-star rating someday, but I hate giviing them out like candy like Roger Ebert does. No, 5-stars means a rare movie that is as best made as possible, and flawless, or quite nearly.)
CREDITS
Director
Peter Weir
Producers
Edward S. Feldman
Andrew Niccol
Lynn Pleshette
Richard Luke Rothschild
Scott Rudin
Adam Schroeder
Writer
Andrew Niccol
Cinematographer
Peter Biziou
Composers
Philip Glass
David Hirschfelder
Wojciech Kilar
Burkhard von Dallwitz
Production Designer
Dennis Gassner
Editors
William M. Anderson
Lee Smith
CAST
Jim Carrey - Truman Burbank
Laura Linney - Meryl Burbank/Hannah Gill
Noah Emmerich - Marlon
Natasha McElhone - Lauren/Sylvia
Ed Harris - Christof
Holland Taylor - Truman's Mother
Brian Delate - Truman's Father
Blair Skater - Young Truman
Peter Weir
1998 USA
Man, what a completely different universe we lived in SEVEN years ago in the year 1998. FRIENDS and the retiring-SEINFELD were popular, the pissy Party not in the White House tried everything to dethrone a President of a different party(wait, different? ), two American Embassies were bombed in Africa by a terrorist group called Al Qaeda that few Americans cared to remember, American space hero John Glenn returned to space, and John Elway win his last Super Bowl game.
What do all of the above have in common? The American public watched all this on the society-alterating invention of The Television, which has caused for many speculative works of fiction on the possible drama involved in this field of entertainment. The year of 1998 and 1999 were no different, for two takes on the premise of a 24-hour TV show around the exploits of a real human being. After the subject of our review, Ron Howard had his box-office bomb Rom/Com film ED TV which acted like that jerk you know that "acts" like their smart, when really is nothing more than a loud jackass, so no more talk of that lame film.
However, THE TRUMAN SHOW...I went to see it back in the summer of 1998 because, I'll admit it, at the tender age of 13, I was a notable Jim Carrey fan. The TV ads presented the picture of a smart-slapstick comedy, so I went off with my friends to it. While my friends hated it because it wasn't "funny" and it was "confusing"(honest to God!), I quite liked the movie. If anything, it was my unintentional pledge-intuition into the work of Australian film directing master Peter Weir(MASTER & COMMANDER) and satire-commentating script writer Andrew Niccol(GATTACA).
What my friends and many popcorn-stuffed audience folks didn't notice is that they went to see a highly-made cerebral arthouse film that is disguised as a summer blockbuster comedy picture, In a way of sorts that we were treated to earlier this year with Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS.
Of course THE TRUMAN SHOW was released when the concept of a man who's entire universe is literally contructed as a long-running popular 24/7 Television Network, the idea is fascinating yet was a stretch at the time. Remember that Reality TV in America in 1998 was limited to COPS, AMERICA'S MOST WANTED, MTV's THE REAL WORLD, and thats about it.
Seven Years Later...ya, after the stunning success of SURVIVOR years back, Reality TV the terrible sub-genre has so-far stayed healthy with many TV viewers and even apparently has its own channel on satellite TV. Thank god we somehow survived the hightide of Reality TV when it seems like 80% of the Basic Network's programming was based in some "Real"-based gimmick.
Anyway, I actually never was able to rewatch THE TRUMAN SHOW until my college campus had a festival of TV/Mass Media-based motion pictures, and Peter Weir's film was on the schedule. With that, I went with my more knowledgable film-fan pals last week...
You ever have that feeling when you discover a great movie that hasn't been praised to the ceiling of the heavens? It truely makes you fresh in the soul in terms of love for cinema that there are great gems of films out there for many folks to discover...and not just the movies that have been called "The Great Pictures" for the last few decades. With the Reality TV genre gaining a foothold in the trenches of America, many critics have revisited THE TRUMAN SHOW and share my highly-rated opinion...and not to mention that Paramount did recently release a brand-new Anamorphic/re-mastered special features-stacked DVD that is worth the money folks. Hell, the movie even got a good laugh in an episode of FAMILY GUY that assumingly Don Vercetti has seen at least 5 times.
Truman Burbank(Jim Carrey) is a normal man, living in a normal town. He grew up to be a desk clerk for a insurance company, living an ordinary life, having an ordinary wife, an ordinary neighbour and an ordinary bud, who pops in from time to time with a sixpack. But Truman is not happy with his life. He wants to see the world. He wants to get away from his happy-happy, ever tidy, nice'n'shiny little island town at the seaside. In reality, Truman was an unwanted pregnancy. His "father", Christof(Ed Harris), a reckless TV-Producer whom he never met, made up the Truman Show - the greatest show on earth - a show in which life is live. So, everyone around poor Truman is an actor with a little headphone in the ear. One day, Truman accidentally bumps into a catering area backstage and gets pretty suspicious. His plan now is: Pretend to be sleeping and steal away...
You know, amazing how much more you pick up when you're 20 years old that I couldn't decipher seven years earlier. I was shocked to find quite a movie that is absolutely intelligent in its bitch-smacking satire of not just Soap Opera and "Family Value" Television Series, but in general the writing of Television itself.
Consider the protagonist's name. I mean its not exactly an open secret how its a joke in Hollywood about the starking unoriginality of many sitcom writers for NBC,ABC, CBS, FOX, etc...and it shows just beyond the obvious surface-value spoofs. I mean you have a guy who's last name just conveniently shares the same name of a Southern California city near Hollywood(where the fictional TV Network "The Truman Show" is produced) where Jay Leno's THE TONIGHT SHOW is taped. Not to mention that the hero's first name of "Truman" could be broken down to "True Man", which apparently is the crazy controlled-fantasy that Ed Harris the "God" of Truman's false reality, wants to convey to the multi-generational fanbase.
Then there is the sly jokes at the culture itself of a fictional TV show's fanbase. I mean there are old people who make a secondary living that revolves around long-running daytime Soap Operas(I actually have an aunt that is a GENERAL HOSPITAL junkie) as displayed with some of "The Truman Show"'s fans. Not to mention entire bars that are shaped with mercendise and regular sitting-arrangements for the loyal fanbase to surround their geist of their obsession...and my fellow sports-fan pals here at BB.Net probably know a few sports bars that center upon some ballclub of many sports.
Of course, I could also dive into Weir and Niccol's aburd-yet-humorous jokes at produce placement, which are so awkward and creepy that Jim Carrey's character doesn't notice to be out of place simply because hes been living with it for all of his life. What is scary is how right now, we see Commercials everywhere in our "true" reality now...
What draws me as a film fan in general to easily one of the best movies of the 1990s is how the sad story itself is of a human soul who's entire existence is curbed by his "God" just so he would conform to the golden American Boy that apparently people want to watch, even if they know the "truth" is falsely constructed. He simply wants to explore the universe outside his city, but of which his urges for such things are strictly controlled. For hell sake, he loses a parent, which probably permanently-injured him in the mental realm for years afterwards, simply as a cheap "TV drama". By the time that the beginning of his suspicion that his "universe" isn't what it seems to be when a studio light crashes near his house, it begins a self-realizing journey that his Creator is willing to stop, even at all costs.
[*SPOILER WARNING* - SKIP IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM!]
What I dig is how Weir and Niccol begin the film with a simple pre-credit "Behind the Scenes" interviews with some cast members, which thankfully defuses a simple impulse that many hacks would have gone for, which is to build up with Jim Carrey until we are "revealed" to this grand secret...which is stupid since mass media advertizement these days reveal spoiler-"twists". Michael Bay's THE ISLAND anyone?
Then we have Truman Burbank recognize a homeless guy on the street of his native-Seahaven who looks like his drowned-father, which then Truman starts piecing some suspicious activity together that his Creator and the cast of characters that are supposedly Truman's "friends and family" create half-baked answers to...which of course Truman doesn't believe.
After his itching to escape his town to visit Fiji(where the true love of his life in Natascha McElhone supposedly moved), a true cheesy melodramatic "surprise" ending occurs halfway through the picture, with Truman's supposedly-dead Father revealing to be alive. Then we cut to from this tale of self-discovery for Truman to the Real world outside the dome-studio, with the "God" Christof being interviewed about the phenomenon...and arguably breaking the pace of narrative the film was working towards.
Really, any other filmmakers would put this "interview" segment with Ed Harris in the beginning of the picture...but Weir and Niccol are ballsy enough to do this, which in the continuous-"live" feed, it seems Truman has gone back to his normal activity of his reality.
I really love of how the interviewer in Harry Shearer asks Ed Harris about the "stunning" ending of how Truman's father is really alive, and Harris giving some mumble-jumbo garbage which only reveal that despite his God-like ego and self-identity, Ed Harris is only your typical film/TV writer. When asked what excuse and reasoning for the father's "return", Harris quickly answers "Amnesia" without a pause. Of course, such easy-explaining answers we've dealt with for decades on Television, right?
Thing is, the God actually begins the unraveling of his creation with this cop-out writing-solution. Truman's father was killed off by being drowned inorder to make Truman have a deep mental phobia of water and thus keep him on the "island" small town universe. Thing is, with his father now "alive", this totally dis-engaged the prisoner's "cage" of the mind, and for which he exploits once freed...
The ending with Truman reacing the edge of the Dome on his famiy's sailboat called the Santa Maria, after nearly being killed by his "Creator" who was pissed that his creation refused to return to his cave. In a clever subtle spot of religious undertones(which I won't comment), Jim Carrey walks on surface-edge of the dome, for which for a shot he looks like he is indeed walking on water. He finds the stairs that leads to a door, but to what? The answers to all his questions?
Christof, in his booming God form, tries to reason with Truman to stay, for the world outside Truman's reality is a horrible nasty place while his contructed-universe is peaceful and truely safe. After remarking that he knows more about him then Truman does himself, Truman emotionally yells:
"You Never had a Camera in my Head!"
With Christof making his final plea with Truman staring down possibly at his door out of his false existence.....Truman spins around in a defiant gesture and utters his corny catchpraise at his creator and his gripping and cheering audience, who cry in joy as Truman goes through the door. The real world may be terrible compared to Seahaven, but its real.
[*SPOILER WARNING* - READ THE REST OF MY NON-SPOILED REVIEW]
Finally, lets notice the great acting from the cast that make Weir and Niccol's vision come true. Jim Carrey should have at least garnered a Best Actor Oscar nomination, for truely he plays the charming hero of our story that soon desires to know more outside what his society will accept. Not to mention that I wonder if Ed Harris, nominated for Best Supporting Actor, was screwed out of a win. Really, the actor that is cool in every film, lost as he has before and after this film at the Academy.
Okay, what keeps me from giving this really great film from scoring the Masterpiece rating of 5 Stars? Arguably the out-of-place, if essential, "flashback" does feel like a thumb to the eye, and not to mention the "break" in the natural flow of the film's story does block up the river, even if it makes for a refreshing change of course to your usual Hollywood movie.
Is THE TRUMAN SHOW the descendent of Sidney Lumet's ever-more relevant masterpiece NETWORK? "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!"
Final Film Rating - ****1/2 out of 5.
(NOTE: This film could eventually get the "Masterpiece" 5-star rating someday, but I hate giviing them out like candy like Roger Ebert does. No, 5-stars means a rare movie that is as best made as possible, and flawless, or quite nearly.)
CREDITS
Director
Peter Weir
Producers
Edward S. Feldman
Andrew Niccol
Lynn Pleshette
Richard Luke Rothschild
Scott Rudin
Adam Schroeder
Writer
Andrew Niccol
Cinematographer
Peter Biziou
Composers
Philip Glass
David Hirschfelder
Wojciech Kilar
Burkhard von Dallwitz
Production Designer
Dennis Gassner
Editors
William M. Anderson
Lee Smith
CAST
Jim Carrey - Truman Burbank
Laura Linney - Meryl Burbank/Hannah Gill
Noah Emmerich - Marlon
Natasha McElhone - Lauren/Sylvia
Ed Harris - Christof
Holland Taylor - Truman's Mother
Brian Delate - Truman's Father
Blair Skater - Young Truman