The Truman Show
rated - HOT! HOT! HOT!
I'm coming straight out with it on this one: this is my idea of a just-about perfect film. It is intelligent, beautiful, artful, funny and visually clever. It has ideas, philosophy, music and emotion. It tells us something about the world we live in and the people we are. It is perfectly cast. It has a director who can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear - but here he doesn't have to work with a sow's ear. In short, it's a wonderful film.
The script Peter Weir worked from was by Andrew Niccol, a young New Zealand writer. The ideas behind the story actually have some similarities to a film from 1997 - The Game (which I detested). But it is quite apparent that Peter Weir has worked his script over extensively, and made it into something unique. The finished script has all the hallmarks of Weir's work - the spirituality, the humanity, the musicality, the intelligence. In a film with a setting as complex as this one there is the potential for the plot to have too many holes in it, making it hard for people to accept the basic premise. That is what happened with The Game . But Weir is too much the professional, and he takes too much care of his stories, to ever let that happen. We are in sure hands from start to finish.
Casting Jim Carrey was a masterstroke. Carrey's sheer artificialty is absolutely perfect in the role. He doesn't act - he performs - and that's just what's called for. Ed Harris always brings a great intelligence to his roles, and he's well cast here. His gravity balances Carrey's unpredictability very well. And that's another thing - what audacity it was to take an actor known for the unpredictable physicality of his performances, and cast him as a man whose life is completely controlled!
There are many hilarious moments in the film, many very beautiful ones, and several extremely touching ones. But most of all this film is very intelligent. I realised at one stage that I was watching the film on 3 levels - I was watching Truman's performance, Jim Carrey's performance and Peter Weir's performance - and that's enough to keep my mind well-and-truly occupied, thankyou very much Mr Weir. It was thrillingly fulfilling. Don't miss it!