Essay
The Truman Show (1998)
Today I’ll come home, turn on 18th channel and make a cup of tea, watching life of the thirty years old man. The lousy life of this man, created by a genius who desired to have his kid or pet but in his dreams he outdid even the entire humanity. I’ll be watching the life of a man, whose life never would interest me, because it’s too boring and predictable.
This film won’t leave any person apathetic, because everyone will incessantly think about his reality. What if you’re a superstar of reality-show and your best friend, who visit you to drink a beer plays thoroughly thoughtful role, over and again.
The Truman Show is a theatrical stage made of a perfect vacuum, where Truman Burbank isn’t allowed to do a “wrong” step, talk to the “wrong” people or choose the “wrong” wife. The life of Truman comes on a silver platter, until his mature age he allows to fill himself with foreign ideas and plans, rarely thinking about his life. Truman’s character is a weak, spineless ordinary citizen of a random city, who has a banal and not interesting life. Truman Burbank is also very afraid of water – he saw his father’s drowning. Besides hydrophobia, Truman fears are also supported by special “news”, which are built in the manner to say few words about the danger of leaving home and traveling alone.
Do his phobias and fears prevent him to overstep this line of the scenery? No, it isn’t the reason. The reason is that Truman is satisfied with his grab life. Only the one thing sometimes bedevils him – yearning for his young love, his reminiscences and strange suspicions about this reality. Truman starts to think a lot about his life, remembers many inconsistencies and comes to conclusion that the world is revolves only around him. In addition to his suspicion comes the fallen soffit from the sky. One morning Truman even heard a precise description of his actions from the radio.
The last straw was appearing of his dead father, dressed up as a hobo. When the Truman asked his mother about this event, she said that sometimes she also has a feel of nostalgia to her husband. Flipping through the album Truman understand that there is too many inconsistencies in his life – at his wedding photo he noticed Meryl’s crossed finger, as a sign of the lie.
Unstoppable desire to leave the stage and to reveal the truth forces his to escape this unreal world. Without any warning, he locks himself with Meryl in car and promises to drive to Fiji. His wife’s arguments didn’t stop him, but Truman’s escape was prevented by “suddenly” formed traffic jam. Showing himself upset he said that the idea to visit Fuji wasn’t good, so they’re going to return home. Meryl becomes glad, so she doesn’t understand that she was fooled again – Truman drives out from the city, noticing that the traffic jam disappeared as suddenly as it appeared before.
The next hindrance was a river bridge, which was crossed by giving the right to drive a car to Meryl. However, that was only the beginning – when they crossed the river bridge their car was stopped by liquidators. The reason to stop Truman was quite unusual – nuclear accident and a quarantine zone. Any other attempts to leave this place were unsuccessful – plane tickets to Fuji were sold out, and the bus broke down.
Truman becomes aggressive, he roughly answers to Meryl’s clearly memorized phrases about the super-qualities of the household appliance. Meryl can’t stand it up so she says in front of the camera that she can’t work like that. When Truman tries to get information from her, suddenly appears his best friends with a pack of beer. At night Truman fools video-cameras and escapes his house. Christophe stops show and the world in panic waits for the continuation of their favorite TV-program. Understanding that it will be impossible to find Truman during the “night” Christophe orders to turn on the “day”. It has no result, and the Truman was finally found only by the camera, mounted in one of the yachts. Christophe tries to stop Truman with changing weather conditions, hoping that the hydrophobia will stop Burbank. But it doesn’t work; Truman still wants to find Sylvia. Eventually, Christophe understood that Truman can’t be stop in this way and stopped the storm.
Burbank sailed through the still sea until the boat’s bowsprit pierced the wall of the dome, painted in the sky color. Truman recognized that all his guesses were right, and it led him to hysteria. Nearby he noticed stairs to the real world. When Truman opened the door, Christophe tried to stop him, warned that he will meet hypocrisy, lies, duplicity there. Truman decides to leave this fake world, prefer to live in reality and to find Sylvia.
It was hard and unbelievable for Truman to determine that the reality he lived wasn’t “real”. Surprisingly, that he didn’t feel much stressed when he understood that his entire life was the fake life. He wasn’t too upset when he recognized that his best friend and wife were actors, no one from the actor staff tried to be really interested in him as it was their job only. The only person who tried to reveal the truth was Sylvia, but she was blamed as a crazed person at first. I think that this determination can’t be avoided because it’s usual for people to do mistakes, change their life, make something wrong, or even making some unexpected things. Scenarists can’t predict just everything, and it’s impossible to prepare the staff to every situation. As an example – Truman, who was a spineless person, who didn’t carry a lot about his life. As a result, he revealed the truth of the Seahaven’s world. So as for me, it is impossible to avoid such determination of the “wrong” reality.
