"We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented"
I recently read Ed Sikov’s Film Studies: An Introduction, and a point he makes early in the book feels obvious once you think about it: nothing in a movie is truly “just happening.” Even the most naturalistic, fly-on-the-wall scene is built. Someone chose where the camera goes, what it looks at, what it hides, what we hear, and when we see it. Film might be a medium that can capture anything, but what ends up on screen is always the result of selection.
The Truman Show takes that basic truth about cinema and turns it into the backbone of a fictional story. Truman’s life looks generous and effortless, like reality unfolding in real time. But it’s actually being staged, framed, and edited for an audience. The movie’s central question is brutal in its simplicity: if your whole life is being directed, how would you even know? And what does “free will” mean when the world around you is a set?
This film is a layered story: speculative, satirical, and satisfying. One layer is a media satire that predicted the reality TV boom that was just on the horizon in 1998. It has “real life as entertainment” as a hook just like Big Brother and Jersey Shore. But The Truman Show is more insightful than just predicting the trend; it preemptively reveals why reality TV was so insidious and addictive. This is a movie about the commoditization of the human experience, about the absurdities of turning every basic life event into a broader social transaction. And on that note, I think The Truman Show has even more to say about a different cultural phenomenon: in 2022, it’s as much a sharp critique of social media as it is anything else.
Another key layer of the film’s success is the film’s abundant biblical imagery. Truman (the true man) lives on a Garden of Eden-esque island, where a booming voice from above determines his fate. He faces an apocalyptic storm on an ark. He chooses knowledge above innocence and, when his time comes, ascends to the clouds.
And then, at the very core, there’s the most important layer of all, which is that this is a corker of a good story, well-acted and -told. It’s full of human drama, composed of fun cinematic stuff like forbidden romance and secret escapes and a hero’s struggle for self-actualization. Jim Carrey plays a man right on the verge of losing his mind perfectly (in part because we know he has that insanity in his bones from other characters he’s played). Laura Linney and Noah Emmerich shine as his fake on-screen companions, both artificial and exhausted by the eternal facade they’ve helped build.
Maybe I’m just a sucker for high-concept movies that cast a comic actor in a dramatic role for a supernatural or speculative scenario (see: Groundhog Day and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), but I think The Truman Show is a masterpiece.
- Review Series: Top 100 (2009 List)
Is It Good?
Masterpiece: Tour De Good (8/8)
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