Peter Weir's 'The Truman Show': How is it going to end?

By Rayya Makarim

JAKARTA (JP): After a five-year hiatus, Peter Weir (The Year of Living Dangerously, Dead Poet's Society, Witness, Green Card) is back with his latest masterpiece. The concept of The Truman Show is built around a fundamental secret -- a conspiracy, if you will.

So, if by some good chance you don't know about it, stop reading now, and start queuing for the next available screening at your local theater.

Every second of every day, from the moment he was born, for the last 30 years, Truman Burbank has been the unwitting star of his own 24-hour TV show. When he speaks to the camera, he thinks he's having a completely private moment in front of his bathroom mirror. Little does he know that millions are sharing that moment with him.

Truman lives in the ever-cheery community of Seahaven, works at an insurance company and is happily married to Meryl (Laura Linney). His best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich) always appears with a six-pack of beer (one of the endless product placements that pay the show's bills).

Truman suspects nothing. It turns out that Seahaven, with its motto "It's a Nice Place to Live" is a set belonging to the world's largest television soundstage, and all its inhabitants members of a large cast of actors and extras who work together to keep Truman in line.

Directing the action from above is the God-like Christof (Ed Harris), the creator of "The Truman Show". "We've become bored with watching actors giving us phony emotions. We're tired of pyrotechnics and special effects. While the world he inhabits is to some respects counterfeit, there is nothing faked about Truman. No script, no cue cards."

So far, Weir has introduced the audience to two different realities. One is the actual film The Truman Show directed by Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. And second, the television "The Truman Show" directed by Christof.

When Weir lets us join his film on day 10,909 of the television show, another reality is introduced. Technical glitches, like a lighting kit dropping from the sky, rain falling only above Truman's head and the car radio that announcing every turn Truman's car makes, lead us to a third reality -- fowl ups that reveal that Truman's world is fake. This reality is probably nothing new for us but fundamental to Truman himself.

Once all the realities emerge, only one of them remains constant, and that is Weir's film as a whole. The other two realities clash with each other and bring Truman to believe that he's in a major conspiracy. It is at this point that Truman's world starts to come apart.

The most fascinating thing about this movie is how Weir distinguishes between the film The Truman Show and the television show "The Truman Show" (Christof's creation).

All movies are shot with concealed cameras but this one had to convey the idea that the subject was being filmed under surveillance. This explains the wide range of shots and angles used.

Oval and circular surfaces are also used to give the impression that Christof's 5,000 hidden cameras were built into the props: a camera in Truman's ring, in Meryl's pendant, in Truman's car radio, etc.

For Christof's show, Weir hired Rick Whitfield to direct a second shooting unit. This unit was specifically used for extensive video coverage of Truman's life. The results are the sequences we see on the various TV screens displayed throughout the film.

With the different levels of realities presented by Weir, the challenge for Noah Emmerich and Laura Linney was how to portray actors playing Marlon and Meryl.

At one point, Truman has had enough and starts harassing his wife for the truth. The actress in the role of Meryl breaks under pressure, complaining that she cannot survive under the circumstances: "It's unprofessional," she sobs.

Nevertheless, the best performance is by Carrey, who triumphantly portrays a man in doubt. Just when Truman thinks he's figured it out, Christof interferes and shifts the plot. We catch glimpses of Carrey's manic comic persona, especially in those scenes where Truman realizes that everything revolves around him.

"Somebody help me, I'm being spontaneous!" Surprisingly, Carrey succeeds in fixing a tight grip on his famous rubber-face routine. Instead, he quickly returns to the tragic Truman, who expresses pain and fear, and a longing for something that he, himself, isn't quite sure of.

On a philosophical level, we have met with the issues offered in The Truman Show before. It is part of an endless dialog on determinism and the question of free will.

Watching a sunset, Marlon says to Truman: "That's the big guy. Quite a paintbrush he's got." Here, Marlon is actually referring to Christof's control room, a man with so much power that he can cue the sun.

Christof has only so much control. Truman would rather die than live in captivity, so he escapes by sailboat only to bump into the horizon (the end of the set). Threatened by the television show's doom, Christof convinces Truman that he belongs in the safe artificial world that he created. According to Christof, there is no evil in that world. There is also no truth.