Unreal or Too Real?

There are times where a film comes out and it feels too fanciful, too strange, to be taken totally seriously. The Truman Show came out in 1998 and its premise – that a man was adopted as a baby by a corporation so they could film an entire TV series about his very normal, controlled life where he didn’t know he was even in a TV show – felt strange and unusual. It was just close enough to the then still burgeoning reality format (as started by The Real World in 1992) to feel plausible, but so over-the-top on its construction that you don’t see how something like this could actually exist.

Of course, then we moved on by 25 years and whole ecosystems of Hollywood productions rolled around to create fake houses within fake worlds where casts of unwitting subjects were essentially experimented on cia psychological torture, all for our viewing enjoyment. Seriously, you should see how some of the houses the casts live in are constructed specifically to create feelings of conflict and isolation across their various rooms. If emotions on these sets seem heighted, some of that is because the producers wanted to fill powder kegs exploding and did everything they could to make it happen.

Which leads us back to The Truman Show. Was the show really prescient? At the time the premise was played as fiction. It’s a fictional story about someone that didn’t really exist, in a world that would be too elaborate and expensive to make for real. Plus, a show lasting 35 years without getting canceled? There’s almost no way any show could last that long. Hell, The Real World was canceled after 33 seasons (although spin-off, The Challenge, is still going strong with season number 40). But, tapping into the idea that audiences would be willing to sit around and watch someone going about their normal life while dramatic moments clearly engineered by a producer happen around them, yeah… the film nailed that pretty well.

So many shows now are based on the idea that audiences want to hang around with this or that family (because they’re weird, or they’re rich, or they’re weird and rich). They like getting invested in the lives of families they see on TV, to feel like they’re in on the events. Seeing a show about someone from the day they’re born through their whole adult life would likely seem interesting. You get to grow with them, change with them, make them a part of your daily lives. We see this with shows now, as teenagers can bond with the teens they watch on TV and make them fixtures of their existence. It’s not that big a stretch to think that people could become invested in The Truman Show and make him part of their daily lives.

I think what’s most far fetched is simply expecting that the show could have lasted past its first couple of years. I love babies and I think they’re great, but mostly what they do is sleep and eat, sleep and poop, sleep and cry. Babies are adorable but I doubt anyone would want to watch a full year of that on their TV before the baby even starts walking around or talking. Even with people hired to play Truman’s parents, to care for him while acting around him and having stories, that feels boring. The focus would have to be on the parents, and not the baby, and it would take a long time before Truman became a real character in his whole story. I think that’s where the show would get canceled, long before the events of the film.

Of course, the film itself is deeply engaging. Truman (Jim Carrey) is a man who has lived his whole life on Seahaven Island, a quaint, 1950s style town that is also, in actuality, a full television production set. Everything in Seahaven is engineered to to set up, record, and document on TV Truman’s entire life. There are cameras everywhere, secreted on everything, recording everything he does. There’s advertisements for products, pitches for people to buy things, all of it elaborately hidden within the structure of the set and the show, all to keep the production going. And Truman doesn’t notice any of it, of course, because he’s lived here his whole life and wouldn’t even think to look for it.

But slowly he starts to realize that there’s a level of artifice to his whole existence. The inciting incident is a production light that falls from the great dome of the sky, crashing down right near Truman while he’s on his way to work. This starts him thinking, starting to question his existence. Does he want to be here? Does “here” even exist? Some clues from earlier in his life, like a girl that tried to tell him the truth before she was silenced and removed from set, stick with him, and lead him to really begin to wonder just what’s going on. Will he figure out the true meaning of his own existence, or will he be stuck in his show forever?

The strength of The Truman Show is in the reality of its setting. A lot of thought was put into how to make the setting work in the context of the film, with director Peter Weir and writer Andrew Niccol really giving Truman’s world a sense of truth. The way the film thinks about everything, how scenes are shot and how product placement would work, how the actors on the show work to keep Truman grounded in his world and not trying to escape, it all shows the subtle way this show has had to work for years. It’s crafty and well crafted, feeling more real than most reality TV shows do now.

At the same time, the film’s biggest get was Jim Carrey. Up to this point Carrey had made a string of farcical comedies, from two Ace Ventura movies to The Mask and Batman Forever. This was Carrey’s first major dramatic work (and only dramatic film up to that point, outside one made-for-TV film, Doing Time on Maple Drive) and he’s perfectly suited for the role. He handles the quieter material, giving a straight face to all the weird stuff going on around him. But then when he has to let loose and go crazy because the world around him becomes too much, Carrey taps into his natural comedic persona and goes to town. It works so well, on all sides, and it’s hard to think of anyone that could have been a better fit for the role of Truman.

But this film’s truly enduring legacy is in the way it crafts its world and gets you invested. You have to want to spend time with Truman, to view him as a good person worthy not only of your attention but of your hope that he, one day, escapes his luxurious prison. The film ends right as that question is answered, but you feel a sense of dread leading up to it, knowing that if he stays he has to buy into the artifice of his world and it’ll never be the same again after, but that if he goes he’s ill-equipped to handle the real world. It feels like a lose-lose for the character, but you want him to be able to make that choice all the same. You’re as deeply invested in the character, in his show, as all the people watching it within the movie.

In a way, the movie shines its light back on you, saying, “are you really any better than all the people watching and not working to help him escape?” Sure, Truman is fictional, but all the reality stars out in the real world subject themselves to this kind of material all the time and we just watch. We sit on our couches and watch the horror and the drama and the antics, and we think it’s all just good fun. They dance for our amusement, and because they need the money, the fame, and the lifestyle to continue lest they go back to a lesser existence, they’re stuck on show with us watching.

Truman gets to make his choice because it’s a movie and we need a conclusion. Modern television isn’t so kind to just let the credits roll once someone’s played their part in real life. I love The Truman Show but, in a way, it feels like a horrifying harbinger of what was to come…