Truman (Carrey) is more or less your average guy, or so he thinks. He lives in a small seaside town with his wife Hannah (Laura Linney), next to some friendly neighbors. Every day he goes to work at the epitome of stereotypical average professions - selling insurance. Whenever he's having a tough day his best friend Louis (Noah Emmerich) shows up on cue with a couple brewskies. What he doesn't know is that his entire life is the masterpiece of director Christof (Ed Harris), broadcast live, 24 hours a day, since the moment he was born. Everyone around him is either an actor or works on the massive set that is his life - The Truman show, perhaps the most watched television show in history. Paul Giammati also appears as a control room director and Harry Shearer cameos as a news anchor. With a conspiracy of this magnitude, it is only a matter of time before Truman realizes that something is not quite Kosher.
When this movie was released, it was surely taken as extremely speculative fiction. A voyeuristic television show into the privacy of one man's deceptive reality, financed by hilariously blatant product placements doesn't really sound that far fetched today. While we have never had something quite so over the top and that crossed so many moral and ethical boundaries, I dare say that there have been some that have come pretty darn close. Big Brother and Denpa Shonen come to mind. There is certainly a bit of irony in the fact that we are watching, entertained, by this movie about exploiting a man, while rooting for him to "win" against those who are exploiting him. The movie itself is genius on many levels and can be viewed as commentary on society, entertainment, and religion. Christof has been paralleled with both God and Satan, and the ethical questions this movie raises are impossible to miss.
Despite the strangeness of it all, this is a movie I feel I can recommend to just about anyone. If you have not seen it yet, you probably should.
***** (5/5 stars)
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