I was really moved by this movie. Based on his previous movies, I didn’t think of Jim Carrey as a good actor. But this movie changed that.
Everyone watching this movie will relate to the movie’s plot as it speaks to the existential questions that arise in every human. We can imagine the reality tv boss as God. Our own experience of thrownness feels like God is playing with us just as the reality tv boss is playing with Truman.
In the ending sequence, I wept when the tiny boat reaches the end of horizon and hits the blue sky wall. The utter devastation Truman experiences when he realizes he has been played all his life.
The ending of Truman Show is often considered one of the greatest moments in the history of cinema. It's a really great sequence that also stayed with me since then. I was never too much into Carrey acting on comedic roles, but I really like his dramatic ones.
Definitely up there as one of the greatest endings, the melancholy it represents is just so on point. Another similar film like that would be 'Being John Malkovich', - a film that was utter perfect all the way til the end.
The thing I absolutely love about the end is that what happens after is completely left open. Did he find peace or was it disappointment at the horrors of what was outside the dome? We will never know, it is just something you have to wonder and accept. It is not for us to know, it is but the feeling a dream you can never grasp like the clouds behind a distant mountain.
This resembles my feelings towards Tom Cruise. I always thought of him as an action star and nothing more (well, a Scientology-kook as well, but that detracted further). But his performance in Magnolia was so convincing to me that I started seeing his acting skills in a different light.
He is a good actor, no doubt there. He can be darn funny too, check ie his stint in Tropic Thunder.
That doesn't change the fact he has some very deep internal issues/fears that Scientology has managed to hook on very tight and kept their grip so effectively. It fucked up his marriages and is a stain on his brand/legacy that literally everybody knows about but respectfully act like they don't see it. Almost a bit like Truman show :)
I felt the same way about Tom Cruise until I saw Collateral, which quickly become my favorite movies of his and possibly one of my favorite movies of all time.
Before watching the Truman Show I actively avoided Jim Carrey movies because I really disliked his over the top acting. Just like in your case, this movie completely changed my view of Jim Carrey, even the performances in previous movies that I had disliked so much. I may even call this my favorite movie of all time.
Btw, Jim Carrey has never won an Academy Award, and neither has The Truman Show, which is quite a shame.
For me the equivalent was seeing Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. I was channel surfing and this came up randomly. It was absolutely captivating, and was easily the best portrayal of mental illness I had ever seen in cinema.
Adam Sandler! That goofy idiot that plays in low-budget comedies that won't even make you laugh once!
Someone on Reddit explained that Sandler is a true genius because he doesn't work too hard, does "fun" low-stress movies, and takes his friends along to "assist" in beautiful tropical locations. All probably as a tax write off.
Carrey was absolutely amazing as Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Sure it was just a kids movie, but there was something really sinister in his performance. Really amplified the sense of true powerlessness that the kids had in their lives, what a terrifying world to live in as a child.
I think Carrey is seriously underrated as an actor.
It’s as if you wake one day and suddenly find yourself in the midst of things without anyone asking you whether you actually wanted it. You don’t choose your epoch, parents or the nation or the religion you are into. You find yourself “thrown”. I meant it like that.
>>> In the ending sequence, I wept when the tiny boat reaches the end of horizon and hits the blue sky wall. The utter devastation Truman experiences when he realizes he has been played all his life.
A single spoiler can't really ruin the experience of that movie imho. Also the age of the movie aside, if you expect comments about a movie's story don't contain any information about that story that's on you.
The film is not a mystery, it is a satire using the framing of Plato's allegory of the cave. There's no twist, its purely comedy and commentary about his antagonists and their motivations.
I watched Dark City years after watching The Matrix (on opening in the cinema) and I enjoyed it very much, have watched it multiple times over the years.
This is Mr. Hand [Richard O’Brien] talking in ”Memories of Shell Beach”:
> It was a very groovy movie, you see?
> I remember saying to Rufus Sewell [who played the protagonist], I said, you know, it actually, truthfully, it really doesn’t matter, does it, whether it’s a box-office success because we’re going to get paid as actors anyway, sorry Alex [Proyas] but this is true, we’re gonna get paid as actors anyway and isn’t it nice to be part of something which is groovy?
There were several movies with a similar theme that came out around this time. The 13th Floor is another good one, although Dark City and Matrix were better IMO. I think the backdrop of the Internet really taking off sort of had everyone thinking about worlds within worlds more than they were before.
>And then there’s the audience: massive, constant, mistaking exploitation for fandom. As Truman struggles to escape—the island, the show, and the life that has been imposed on him—he commandeers a boat. The producers create a storm. He falls off the vessel, struggling in the water, gasping for breath. He could die, before their eyes. The audience at the Truman Bar is rapt. “I got two to one he doesn’t make it,” someone shouts. “Hey, I want a piece of that!” yells another. The exchange is 25 years old. It hasn’t aged a bit.
This comment completely ignores the ending where is clear that EVERYBODY watching him is happy, nay, ecstatic, that he escaped. It's part of the reason why the ending is so uplifting. It turns out that his fandom across the globe with their How Does It End? t-shirts really were rooting for him all along, just like us in the audience.
I see it differently: while I agree that the audience is on Truman's side, they only care about him as much as they would care about (say) whether Ross and Rachel end up together.
I take the final shot (two guys looking at the now-dead channel and saying "I wonder what else is on") as a sign that the audience will go back to their lives without even questioning what they just saw, with Truman being just another sacrifice in the altar of the TV gods.
Or perhaps despite our wish that our existential travail be officially registered somewhere by some big Other, one's life "as a movie", our "walking through that door" is ultimately our own and our own in such a way that won't be registered with some sort of social registration.
Oh I agree. The euphoria doesn't last. People need to get on with their lives. None of us have any personal connection to these people nor could we influence their lives even if we tried. It's TV. Switch off or change the channel.
I disagree, and i think so does the director, due to one very deliberately written line. "So, what else is on?" by the security guards at the end. They did not care about him, they moved on a second after
You can be rooting for him but ultimately indulging in his exploitation all the same. Yeah, people want the happy ending, but they will be fine with a tragic one, so long as they are entertained.
One of my favorite games is Space Channel 5. On the surface it seems rather cutesy, inspired by 1960s space-age aesthetics like from The Jetsons and Barbarella. But narratively it's considerably darker. See, (spoiler warning) it turns out that the orchestrator of the alien invasion main character Ulala is documenting is the head of her own network, who staged the invasion in order to boost ratings for his network. It was actually a biting commentary on popular Japanese television of the period, as well as news and media in general; the turn of the millennium is when shows like Susunu! Denpa Shōnen (which famously locked a man naked in an apartment and forced him to acquire everything he needed including food and clothing as prizes in magazine sweepstakes, ultimately awarding him nothing for his trials) were on the air, and incredibly popular.
So the future of The Truman Show was playing out in Japan, in real time, at right around the same time.
I always wondered how much the 1959 PKD book "Time Out Of Joint" about the man living in a fantasy world winning prizes which turn out to be intuitive defences in a space war influenced this story.
The Jury Duty (2023) TV series is like a real life Truman show. If they really did what they said (Jury Service, but everyone, including the Judge and clerks is an actor except the main "star") then I feel really bad for him. The reveal episode is cringe. I just hope he is really an actor too.
> "I had many reservations, and the biggest one was the wild card of this one human being who's being dropped into this situation that is all fake and manufactured," Marsden says. "Is this even something that is ethically right to do, to play with someone's human experience over the course of three weeks of their life?"
> From the beginning, Marsden told show creators Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (who also worked on The Office) that he didn't want to participate in a prank show. But they assured him that Jury Duty wouldn't be cruel or mean-spirited. Instead, Marsden says, the intention was to create a "hero's journey" for Gladden.
I thought it was handled about as best as it possibly could be, and he reacted fairly well. What really sold me was his podcast appearances afterwards, which I'd highly recommend checking out.
Having watched enough Derren Brown I wondered how and why he passed whatever tests and rounds were created to pick a contestant. Derren Brown goes to great lengths to pick great “suckers” for need of a better word.
They picked a good one - I think he “acted” better than the actors in terms of facial expressions, reactions and general gravitas.
They had to pick someone smart but not cynical/sceptical , not crazy in any way, with a personality, but will behave etc, and who had some leadership skills.
The texts like this say sometimes more about the author than the object of the text: IMO the author completely missed the deeper levels about the individual living soaked in lies, but recognizing them and, in his case, literally sailing "to the end of the world" to escape. The author wrote from the spectator perspective, not from the person's escaping.
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Everyone watching this movie will relate to the movie’s plot as it speaks to the existential questions that arise in every human. We can imagine the reality tv boss as God. Our own experience of thrownness feels like God is playing with us just as the reality tv boss is playing with Truman.
In the ending sequence, I wept when the tiny boat reaches the end of horizon and hits the blue sky wall. The utter devastation Truman experiences when he realizes he has been played all his life.
I was deeply impacted by this movie.
The thing I absolutely love about the end is that what happens after is completely left open. Did he find peace or was it disappointment at the horrors of what was outside the dome? We will never know, it is just something you have to wonder and accept. It is not for us to know, it is but the feeling a dream you can never grasp like the clouds behind a distant mountain.
I enjoy dumb movies toe but, like you, I prefer him in the "not totally dumb" movies.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a movie I like a lot too.
That doesn't change the fact he has some very deep internal issues/fears that Scientology has managed to hook on very tight and kept their grip so effectively. It fucked up his marriages and is a stain on his brand/legacy that literally everybody knows about but respectfully act like they don't see it. Almost a bit like Truman show :)
Btw, Jim Carrey has never won an Academy Award, and neither has The Truman Show, which is quite a shame.
Adam Sandler! That goofy idiot that plays in low-budget comedies that won't even make you laugh once!
Someone on Reddit explained that Sandler is a true genius because he doesn't work too hard, does "fun" low-stress movies, and takes his friends along to "assist" in beautiful tropical locations. All probably as a tax write off.
Brilliant.
Score of 7.5 on IMDB is not too shabby! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/
I think Carrey is seriously underrated as an actor.
I guess no need to see that movie now.
Thanks for that.
Dead Comment
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/
When I first saw The Matrix I said to myself, they stole all the ideas in this film from Dark City.
Here is Dark City’s director Alex Proyas: “Alex Proyas on: The Matrix copying Dark City” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxjsetVIRM
And this is a juxtaposition of some scenes with background music: “The Matrix vs. Dark City.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moW17YHl6B8
This is Mr. Hand [Richard O’Brien] talking in ”Memories of Shell Beach”:
> It was a very groovy movie, you see?
> I remember saying to Rufus Sewell [who played the protagonist], I said, you know, it actually, truthfully, it really doesn’t matter, does it, whether it’s a box-office success because we’re going to get paid as actors anyway, sorry Alex [Proyas] but this is true, we’re gonna get paid as actors anyway and isn’t it nice to be part of something which is groovy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrK4U6PEu94&t=1029s
Always upvote Dark City mentioning :)
This comment completely ignores the ending where is clear that EVERYBODY watching him is happy, nay, ecstatic, that he escaped. It's part of the reason why the ending is so uplifting. It turns out that his fandom across the globe with their How Does It End? t-shirts really were rooting for him all along, just like us in the audience.
I take the final shot (two guys looking at the now-dead channel and saying "I wonder what else is on") as a sign that the audience will go back to their lives without even questioning what they just saw, with Truman being just another sacrifice in the altar of the TV gods.
Thanks for totally spoiling it for me :(...
So the future of The Truman Show was playing out in Japan, in real time, at right around the same time.
Deleted Comment
So much Philp K Dick has turned up in movies.
I am shamefully behind on the PKD library...
> "I had many reservations, and the biggest one was the wild card of this one human being who's being dropped into this situation that is all fake and manufactured," Marsden says. "Is this even something that is ethically right to do, to play with someone's human experience over the course of three weeks of their life?"
> From the beginning, Marsden told show creators Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (who also worked on The Office) that he didn't want to participate in a prank show. But they assured him that Jury Duty wouldn't be cruel or mean-spirited. Instead, Marsden says, the intention was to create a "hero's journey" for Gladden.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173271968/jury-duty-james-ma...
It was definitely real.
They picked a good one - I think he “acted” better than the actors in terms of facial expressions, reactions and general gravitas.
They had to pick someone smart but not cynical/sceptical , not crazy in any way, with a personality, but will behave etc, and who had some leadership skills.