The Truman Show is a movie about a reality show.
Jim Carrey is Truman who has spent his whole life within the confines of the small seaside town of Seahaven Island where nothing really happens. Unknown to Truman, the town is a huge movie set. Hidden cameras and microphones are everywhere, and everybody in his life is an actor taking cues from miniature headphones. The Truman Show is the brainchild of Christoff (Ed Harris) and it has become the number one rated show in the world.
Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life. He has a desk job at an insurance company. He has an always-cheerful wife Meryl (Laura Linney) and a best friend who pops in from time to time with a six-pack. Truman is acquainted with all the townfolk but never really gets close to anyone. The one woman he ever really loved is not his wife and has long since left the island. Truman feels he can never leave. He’s paralysed by his fear of water since seeing his father die in a boating accident.
But Truman is not happy with his life. He longs to experience different things. He really wants to get away. He starts to pick up on clues that all is not quite right somehow, and the more he probes, the more he comes to realize that his “reality” is fabricated. Finally he plans to get away. He overcomes his fear of water and sails off the island. Christoff breaks cover and tries to pursuade him to return, but before his whole viewing audience, Truman makes it out of the studio and into a new life.
The Truman Show is is a well made movie, and however you come across it, it draws you in. I’m not a real fan of Jim Carrie’s usual brand of humor, but in this role both Jim Carrie and Laura Linney give great performances.
“We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented”
Christoff (Ed Harris)
When I saw The Truman Show, I was struck by how much Truman mirrors us all. As we grow up, we all come to understand that “reality” is what we can see and touch. We get seduced by the certainty of our surroundings. Sure, we get occasional glimpses, as Truman did, that maybe things are not as certain as they sometimes appear. But by and large we are trained to ignore those.
I have come to understand that reality is something much bigger than the world and our day to day surroundings. I find it fascinating that as science progresses, even what used to be regarded as solid now becomes vibration. Atoms were once regarded as the smallest indivisble particles. Now we know that atoms are composed of subatomic particles and that these particles pop into and out of existence even as we try to observe them.
So what is reality?
Are our dreams reality?
Are our thoughts (day-dreams) reality?
It seems that the answer to these questions is YES. Furthermore, it is by what we think that we create the world we experience.
(See the Law Of Attraction ).
So go rent a DVD and see Jim Carrie and Laura Linney in The Truman Show. And while you’re watching, ask what reality is for you.
Jim Carrie & Laura Linney in the Truman Show
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