6/13/98
"You never had a camera inside my head!"
This is Peter Weir's brilliant parable about freedom and the search for truth. By now you know the story. It's easily one of the two best movies released so far this year, along with Bulworth.
Truman's been on the air for 30 years without knowing it. In the beginning, the outside world watched as voyeurs, but by the end you realize that people are watching primarily to see if Truman can escape Seahaven, his hermetically sealed artificial universe. The comic moments where Truman pushes the envelope, breaking out of his routine to see how the co-conspirators react, resolve themselves into a heartbreaking finale. Truman realizes his whole life has been a lie told by others, and as played by Jim Carrey it's a truly touching scene. Carrey shows a range here that may be unexpected to those who've been fans of his slapstick pictures.
Seahaven in many ways resembles The Village in the old Prisoner television show: it's a pleasant seaside community on the surface, but underneath it's an enormous mechanism for manipulation and control. The movie plays, and succeeds, on many levels. There are several hilarious scenes, but to call this a comedy (or a drama) would be a gross oversimplification. The critics who are carping about the details are missing the point. It's not a movie about the technological and logistical feat of creating a believable world within a world. This picture's way bigger than that.