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

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.