This movie is good entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's about as intelligent as Hollywood gets, but remains worlds away from vibrant personal films like Hana Bi and Gadjo Dilo, which bring the cinema that much closer to being a great Artform. The Truman Show is made for videostores and television. By now most know the plot of this movie - a successful career revival for both its director, Peter Weir, and actor, Jim Carrey. 
It has been touted as daring and clever for its casting and ideas, in light of Hollywood's fear of cynicism, especially cynicism aimed at the entertainment industry. But it also shows the scars of compromise, in its solid but stodgy narrative structure, its choice of star (and associated baggage), and the little things such as the over-valourised love interest, Sylvia (right) - an infatuated smile, a red cardigan, a kiss on the beach. Expelled for trying to tell Truman the truth, Sylvia represents the 'Free Truman' movement and dutifully watches the show, lovingly talking to and touching the TV screen whenever Truman is in close-up. Who the hell ever touches the TV screen?! Its the stuff of Kylie Minogue videoclips.
Weir could have done so much more with his budget and concept. Most of it seems to have been invested in form rather than content. The film lacks emotional engagement, as empathy is replaced more with speculation and a rather tenuous suspension of disbelief. Carrey is someone we know too well, and the artifice of entertainment something we've been clued into for too long to find particularly clever. The turning points in Truman's life - the clues of an outside reality - are mostly cute jokes and convenient plot-movers. For example, a colleague at the insurance agency gives him a prospect across the bay just so we can find out he is scared of water, then we get the flashback of his father drowning to explain his water-phobia. Forced coincidence weakens the intentions and integrity of the picture. The story is driven by situational comedy and not character development - Truman not so much changed as displaced by the film's end. Carrey's manic bouts over-emphasise his presence as actor and disrupt identification with Truman as character. The film's self-consciousness regarding actor-character-spectator relationships also destabilises emotional involvement by the audience.
Christof (left), the creator and producer of Truman's life, is a study in God-complexes and media power. With beret, shaved head, wire frame specs and intense glare he bears more than a passing resemblance to the intellectual hangers-on of the film world - the critics, festival directors and arthouse darlings. He also recalls the famous installation artist Christo, whose artworks dazzle and capture media attention with their grand concept and scale. Similarly it is the concept and scale of The Truman Show that impresses, not the subtlety of detail. Whilst Weir does some interesting things with scenery and classic studio backlot design, the star of this movie is the concept, not the characterisation nor gestural nuances. As such, screenwriter and producer Andrew Niccol deserves praise for his part in the project. Niccol, the New Zealander who brought us the superbly realised Gattaca and who would have directed this movie but for lack of reputation in Hollywood, is a name to follow. Weir is more like Laurie Daley, looking for that one last triumph to balance the books, but perhaps lacking the youth or creativity left to surprise his fans. The Truman Show demonstrates how imagination and not wisdom drives the engine of pop-culture.
The critique of televisual culture privides plenty of trivia and visual aids to thrill the public, as well as more than enough theory to find a place in university courses such as Power and the Image, Post-modernity and Media Artifice, Reality and Subjectivity. But in the end, the film is over-hyped. Weir and Carrey (right) are not that exceptional or inspiring. Michael Douglas in The Game was a far more interesting experiment, cinema-wise, though perhaps not such a publicly accessible experience. Truman takes the populist path by letting the audience in on the joke from the beginning - and in doing so restricts itself to being lightweight cinema. It could have been more challenging if the boundaries between Truman's, Christof's and Weir's worlds had been more blurred, if less of an overview had been presented, and more of a ground-level perspective investigated. Weir tackles too much in trying to span the entirety of similicrum, spectacle and society, and ends up being simple and single-minded. The cross-cutting between Truman, his audience and creators is predictable and tiresome; the efforts made to keep him from leaving Seahaven excede the narrative as overdone glitches in the similicrum. In the end the film is not so much daring and clever, as it is well-crafted and marketed. Good media coverage and patriotism arising from Weir's Australianess guarantee a hit at the box office. It's family viewing that won't offend anyone. Perhaps that's where Weir went wrong.
eugene chew
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