WARNING!!!
These previews contain vital
plot information and other potentially movie-spoiling stuff!
If you don't want to know, read no further!
THE TRUMAN SHOW
Written by Andrew M. Niccol. Directed by Peter Weir. Starring Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Ed Harris.
I'd heard a lot about this script - just as you probably have. I'd heard it had a bizarre premise. I'd heard it was going to be Jim Carrey's first foray into a film without laughs (ONCE BITTEN not included). I'd heard there were reasons to be concerned that Carrey could pull it off. Well, for once all the things I heard were pretty much correct.
THE TRUMAN SHOW is the story of Truman Burbank, the subject of a 24 hour-a-day documentary on his own channel chronicling his life from birth to death. The catch is... Truman is the only one who doesn't know about it. And we're not aware of it either, at least not at the beginning. The script begins with a series of odd events in Truman's life: While driving down the street one night a large lighting mechanism falls from the sky in front of his car... People around him seem to be in on some conspiratorial act involving him, but we're not sure what... and we see flashbacks of his life presented as though we were watching them on television monitors. We also learn that Truman has lived a stifling, frustrated life, symbolized by his oft-ridiculed dreams to travel and be 'an explorer, like Magellan'. We follow Truman as he begins to have paranoid suspicions that his life is not what it seems. They begin when he sees an old man on the street who he believes to be his father - the problem being that his father died in a boating accident when Truman was a child. His obsessive insistence that the old man was indeed his father - a belief furthered by the odd behavior of the people on the street with him, who immediately hustle the old man onto a bus - fuels his paranoia.
It's a paranoia we soon learn is well-founded. We see that Truman's life is the most popular, addictive television show in the world, with his environment completely controlled by hundreds of actors and technicians who work feverishly to keep the illusion alive. They are led by Christof, the creator of the show. As Truman's paranoia grows, and his acts of rebelliousness threaten to destroy the cocoon in which he lives, Christof struggles to maintain control of Truman's life. But once Truman's curiosity has been piqued there is no stopping him. Beaten down by Christof's repeated attempts to explain away all his 'delusions', it seems that Truman will sink back into his old life, as frustrated and stifled - and lucrative for Christof and his network - as before. But Truman has one last trick up his sleeve, managing a spectacular escape from his staged life into the real world, where he is able to confront his 'God', the man who has been controlling his every move for the past 34 years - Christof.
Jim Carrey in what
appears to be 60's sit-com clothing.
Let's hope they haven't gone overboard with the 'Ozzie and Harriet' look.
I've gotta tell ya, that synopsis doesn't even come close to doing this script justice. This is one of the most original, entertaining, skillfully written scripts I've ever read. Andrew Niccol takes a premise which, at best, sounds like a half-hour short, and manages to sustain it for 128 pages. As I read I'd get to various points in the script and think, "He can't sustain it any longer". And each time I'd be wrong. But it isn't the cleverness of the plot that makes this script so wonderful - it's the humanism at the core of its story. Niccol uses his wild premise as a framework to explore the nature of humanity, what it means to have free will, to be your own person, to be able to test the boundaries of your life. It's the scripts ability to exploit these emotions that makes Truman, despite his rather depressive demeanor and confusing environment, very identifiable and sympathetic. We've all felt trapped at some point or another, maybe even entertained momentary paranoid thoughts that everyone around us knows something that we don't (Not me, of course - I'm no lunatic. Why'd you look at me like that? STOP STEALING MY THOUGHTS!!!). Truman's life is our worst nightmare, and the desire to see him escape becomes extremely powerful as the script progresses.
I have a couple of concerns, however. The first is the oft-spoken question of whether Jim Carrey is up for the part of Truman Burbank. My feelings are... I don't know. While reading the script - even knowing it was Carrey playing the role - I just didn't picture him as Truman. Now, this is hardly a guarantee that Carrey isn't right for the role. More likely it's a guarantee that I read a draft of the script that hadn't been tailored to the star yet. Which is my second concern: How much did they tailor this script to fit their expensive star? With Peter Weir at the helm I'd like to think that any rewrites were done more with an eye toward making Carrey fit into this movie, rather than making the movie fit Jim Carrey's persona. But some of the stills I've seen from the film give me pause. Some of them make Carrey and Laura Linney look like June and Ward Cleaver in some 50's era sit-com. Now if that's true, then I have very real fears about the quality of the script I read surviving to the screen. You see, what made Truman's situation so identifiable was that his world was identifiable - to us as well as him. Just because his environment is artificial and on TV doesn't mean it should look like he lives on Nick At Nite. Any 'clever' heightening of his reality to more closely resemble a 'TV world' would make the whole thing too campy. Even though it's the only world he knows, some part of us would think Truman an idiot for buying into such an obviously artificial world.
But I'm hopeful. Hopeful because I don't believe Peter Weir would let a mistake so basic ruin this wonderful, original, brilliant screenplay. This script is so original that my first response after reading it was, "How the hell did that sell?"
MY PROGNOSIS? At the very least this becomes a cult film with an extremely loyal following. At most it makes $100 million because Jim Carrey's fans are ready for something more challenging (yeah right - see THE CABLE GUY). More likely it falls somewhere in the middle - a solid hit for Paramount at the end of the year, and a prestigious one at that. I'll say it again - I thought this was a great script. Hopefully in the very capable hands of Peter Weir it'll be a great movie, as well.
AND THE CRITICS SAY...
ROGER EBERT: "Audience members will be able to appreciate the meticulous way director Peter Weir and writer Andrew Niccol have constructed a jigsaw plot around their central character, who doesn't suspect that he's living his entire life on live television. Yes, he lives in an improbably ideal world, but I fell for that: I assumed the movie was taking a sitcom view of life, in which neighbors greet each other over white picket fences, and Ozzie and Harriet are real people... The trajectory of the screenplay is more or less inevitable: Truman must gradually realize the truth of his environment, and try to escape from it. It's clever the way he's kept on his island by implanted traumas about travel and water. As the story unfolds, however, we're not simply expected to follow it: We're invited to think about the implications. About a world in which modern communications make celebrity possible, and inhuman... Carrey is a surprisingly good choice to play Truman. We catch glimpses of his manic comic persona, just to make us comfortable with his presence in the character, but this is a well-planned performance; Carrey is on the right note as a guy raised to be liked and likable, who decides his life requires more risk and hardship... I enjoyed THE TRUMAN SHOW on its levels of comedy and drama; I liked Truman in the same way I liked Forrest Gump - because he was a good man, honest, and easy to sympathize with. But the underlying ideas made the movie more than just entertainment. Like GATTACA, the previous film written by Niccol, it brings into focus the new values that technology is forcing on humanity. Because we can engineer genetics, because we can telecast real lives - of course we must, right? But are these good things to do? The irony is, the people who will finally answer that question will be the very ones produced by the process."
LA TIMES: "His gifts as a comic actor are well-known, but who would have thought that Jim Carrey might simultaneously break your heart as easily as he makes you laugh? It is only one of the accomplishments of THE TRUMAN SHOW, the nerviest feature to come out of Hollywood in recent memory, that it gives Carrey the role of his career, the opportunity to make exceptional use of his capacities in a film that is as serious as it is funny. Adventurous, provocative, even daring, THE TRUMAN SHOW has been directed with enviable grace and restraint by Peter Weir, whose deliberate tone is essential to the film's multiple and almost contradictory successes. THE TRUMAN SHOW is emotionally involving without losing the ability to raise sharp satiric questions as well as get numerous laughs, the rare film that is disturbing despite working beautifully within standard industry norms. If there is a key to this picture's accomplishment it is the irresistible nature of its carefully worked-out premise, shrewdly conceived by writer Andrew Niccol... In addition to being consistently moving and funny, THE TRUMAN SHOW, almost as an aside, makes accurate satiric points about conformity, commercialism, the desire to play god, and what can happen when television, or any other medium, permanently blurs the lines between what's real and what's on screen... THE TRUMAN SHOW has been so carefully and thoughtfully worked out, it's so much its own film, that viewers will be justified in feeling that they've never seen anything quite like it. And how often can you say that in this derivative age?"
WHILE THE PUBLIC SAYS...
THE TRUMAN SHOW finished in first place in its initial weekend of release, bringing in $31.6 million dollars. I take back everything bad I've ever said about the tastes of the American public. For this week, anyway.
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