True Man, False World

The Truman Show

🚨Warning🚨

🚨Warning🚨

This review contains spoilers for a 26-year-old movie *gasp*.

Yeah, I am a little late to the party.

Honestly, I’m not even sure I can call this a “review.” Like I’ll definitely be telling you if it’s good or not, but I am not qualified to be giving any legitimate reviews. Most of the things I like are because they make me feel a certain way. I like comedy movies if they make me laugh, I like horror movies if they make me scared, I like romantic movies if they make me feel all gooey inside… I hope you see the point I’m making. I don’t always like “objectively” good movies. Take Oppenheimer, for example. Everybody seemed to LOVE that movie. I thought it was a snooze fest. Sure, I enjoyed all the explosions and bomb parts. Who doesn’t love a good bomb scene? But the rest of the movie was just boring. I don’t care about his love life. I didn’t drive an hour and a half to watch a romance movie on IMAX 70MM.

Oh, you say I missed the point of the movie? And the movie is about Oppenheimer’s life, not just about the bomb? And his love life had a big impact on every aspect of his life?

Yup, don’t care. Thanks for telling me something I already know.

Bomb = Dope

Crappy, Sad, Depressing Romance Story = 😴😴

Okay, this isn’t an Oppenheimer review. Let’s get back on track. My point is that I like movies that I enjoy (😲), even ones that aren’t high quality. And I sometimes don’t like movies, even if they are high quality. Our opinions are our own, so back off me, bruv. (BTW, my opinion is objectively better than yours).

Let me summarize the movie for you: Truman Burbank, an insurance salesman, lives a normal (definitely boring) life on Seahaven Island. He goes about his life with practically the same routine every day. 

Wake up, get accosted by the neighbor's dog, drive to work, pick up the newspaper and magazines on his way into work, try to sell some insurance, daydream about his past lover, leave work, drink with his best friend, and spend his night with his loving wife.

At the beginning of the first day, Truman walks out of his house, and a studio camera light falls from seemingly nowhere in the sky. Truman has no clue where it could’ve come from, but he hears on the radio that a part of a plane has fallen off. 

I think this symbolizes how Truman’s whole life was about to fall apart from out of nowhere.

What Truman doesn’t realize is that his entire life is being broadcast on the world’s most popular TV show, The Truman Show. Beginning at his birth, there have been cameras rolling on him. He’s gone through 10,909 days, with every second of his life being watched by millions. 

Everything around him is fake. The town of Seahaven is a set. His dad’s death was fabricated. His job is just a ploy for funny interactions. His coworkers, friends, and family are all actors, even his best friend and his wife.

Ouch

Could you imagine that? You probably could. All of us have a little narcissist in us. We like to think that the world revolves around us. Surely, the thought has crossed your mind that people are watching you. Whether they’re hiding in bushes outside your house or there are secret cameras constantly watching you.

And no, I’m not talking about the government’s pigeon spy network.

I know I’ve had goofy thoughts like that. Nothing wrong with letting your imagination run wild. However, in The Truman Show, we see that the reality of that idea is horrific.

Nothing in your life would be legit. In my opinion, the hardest pill to swallow would be that you have no true relationships.

Luckily for Truman, he is oblivious to all of this. Somehow, he has made it to the age of 30 without realizing he’s on a TV show. That is until one day when his Dad shows up in Seahaven. See, his Dad supposedly died around 20 years ago. Did Truman imagine seeing his father?

This is the part in the story where things start to unravel. Two random people on the street come up to Truman’s dad before he can ask any questions, and they forcefully escort his dad away. Despite his best attempt, Truman couldn’t catch up, and he was left to wonder what the heck just happened.

It’s a pretty freaking good setup. I was super invested at this point. Seeing how awful Truman’s life was really makes you root for a guy. Who doesn’t love rooting for an underdog?

Truman kept noticing weirder and weirder things happening in his life the closer he got to the truth. He accidentally hears on the radio that someone is broadcasting his every move as he drives to work. Then he accidentally finds the back set for the Truman Show, where the actors seem to hang out on their breaks. He is swiftly taken away before he can go any further.

Truman starts to suspect something is going on. He’s a part of something bigger than himself. Who can he trust? Surely his best friend, right?

Truman goes to his best friend Marlon to tell him what’s going on. Marlon just tries to play it off as if nothing is happening. Truman doesn’t know yet that Marlon is an actor.

I’m gonna skip large portions of the show and important plot points because you should just go watch the movie, but throughout the rest of the movie, Truman keeps testing his theory that someone is watching him. At one point, he even kidnaps his wife and tries to leave Seahaven, which, of course, fails. Everything he does points to him being watched.

Truman hatches a plan of escape. He fakes going to sleep in the basement of his house. He has made a mess down there in an attempt to block any cameras. And in the middle of the night, he sneaks out.

We see this whole part of the movie from the POV of the bigwigs who are in charge of the show and the actors in Seahaven trying to look for him. Everyone panics, trying to find where Truman has gone. They cut the show’s transmission for the first time ever.

We, the viewers, don’t know where Truman is at this point, either. He kept his plan a secret from everyone in the movie and outside the movie, including us, the viewers. That’s kinda meta, right?

It turns out that Truman has stolen a boat and is attempting to sail as far as possible to escape Seahaven. Throughout the whole movie, we see that Truman is deathly afraid of water because his father died of drowning while Truman watched helplessly from a boat. 

This is where Truman evolves into something else. He conquers even his worst fear to find the truth.

As Truman gets closer and closer to the edge of the set, the bigwigs try harder and harder to keep him from reaching freedom. They go so far as to try and capsize his ship to kill him. Truman doesn’t give up; he makes it through the worst of the simulated storm and continues on. And then…

BAM

His boat comes to a sudden stop when the front of it goes through a wall. But it doesn’t look like a wall. It’s painted to look like the view of the horizon. Even up close, it’s hard to tell that it’s fake. 

He walks across the edge of this fake wall until he finds a set of stairs. He walks up to them and finds a door. Right before Truman walks through the door to freedom, the creator of the show, Christof, starts talking to him through a PA system.

I bet you’ve probably seen this photo before. It is pretty iconic.

Christof's last attempt to keep Truman in Seahaven is just telling him the truth. This is the first truth Truman has been told his whole life. Christof says that he’s the star of a TV show. He brings comfort to millions. People love him. And, oh, the real world sucks and is full of more lies, so he should just stay in Seahaven.

All we see is Truman’s back during this scene. We don’t know what he’s thinking. We can’t read his face. Is this the first time there haven’t been enough cameras to catch every angle of Truman?

Truman turns around, knowing the entire world is watching him at this moment, and delivers his iconic line, “In case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night."

He walks through the dark threshold to freedom. 

Cue the end credits with us watching, never knowing what will happen to Truman.

Will he find a fulfilling life? Will he find true love? Will he be happy?

Gosh, I hope so. Our boy Truman went through a heck of a lot. He deserves so much better. Too bad we’ll never know.

Let’s get into the actual review part.

What I liked:

I loved the emotional aspects of this movie. Watching Truman find out his whole life was a lie was heartbreaking. Seeing him find out that he can’t trust his wife or best friend was devastating. Nobody likes getting lied to. Nobody loves betrayal. This is a very relatable moment for everyone watching. Everyone has experienced getting lied to or finding out someone is a fake friend. But no one has experienced it on the level that Truman does. We can empathize with Truman and be glad that our lives won’t ever be that bad.

I also really liked that Truman was intelligent. Sure, he only learned what he was allowed to learn and was gaslighted to the moon and back, but Truman still found a way to discover the truth by being clever. All his theories were interesting to watch and see how they played out. You can see every moment in the movie where Truman realizes the rabbit hole goes deeper and he’s planning something else.

The overall premise of the movie was so interesting. As I mentioned before, I’ve had thoughts of what it would be like if I were the star of a show like Truman. It was very cool to see that scenario actually played out on screen.

This whole movie is a masterclass of gaslighting and manipulation. I found it pretty easy to draw a comparison between this level of gaslighting and what happens in the real world today with media manipulation. It was just an interesting thing I noticed. And a warning to not be a sheep.

What I didn’t like:

I felt the bigwigs in this movie were pretty stupid. Maybe it was cockiness from knowing they had tricked Truman for 30 years. Or maybe that just made too many rare mistakes too close together, and Truman got lucky. I’m not sure. But it felt like the villains in this movie were pretty dumb. In their attempts to gaslight Truman and get him to stop investigating, they just made it worse. In the middle of an argument with his wife, they make his wife do an advertisement for hot chocolate. Like, bruh… that’s clearly sus. Why not skip all of the overly fake stuff for a while to get the show back on track? I honestly think I would’ve been a better villain. I would’ve made sure that Truman never got suspicious in the first place.

Truman had better be happy that he never had to outsmart me.

The only other thing I didn’t like was the conversation I had after the movie.

I was sitting there on the couch with my girlfriend. We talked about the movie and whether we liked it or not. I brought up how I had thought about being in Truman’s situation before, and she said she had, too. Then I dug a little deeper.

I asked, “What if I actually am in a TV show, and people made this movie just to gaslight me into thinking it couldn’t be real.”

My girlfriend then broke the news to me. She said that I actually was in a TV show. And that she was an actor. And that our relationship was fake. And that my whole life was a lie…

It was pretty funny at the moment. 

But now, because of that conversation, I will live my whole life thinking in the back of my mind, what if I am actually on a TV show and can’t trust anyone?

Thanks a lot, Sarah.

I’ll just continue to ignore it, though, and continue to brighten the days of the millions of people who are watching The Micah Vick Show.

Thanks for tuning in, people.

I highly recommend The Truman Show if you haven’t seen it already!