This feature was published on September 20, 1998

A Frankensteinian character

By Ervell E.Menezes

IF the Bard of Avon said "all the world’s a stage" that line could today well be changed into "all the world’s a TV show" for after the stage came the cinema and now it’s the TV or idiot box.

And somehow Hollywood is at its best when satirising this medium. One can name a number of such films. The late-1970s brought Network which capitalised on the suicidal tendencies of an anchorman. Peter Finch played the lead role and picked a posthumous Oscar for it. The French director Bernard Tavernier did even better in Deathwatch (Hollywood made) in which a lens is implanted in the eye of TV reporter Harvey Kietel to capture the last few days in the life of a woman (Rommy Schneider) afflicted by a terminal disease. Then there was Broadcast News (William Hurt and Holly Hunter) and others. The small screen and it’s power on the public is phenomenal and is often misused.

The Truman Show is a fable about a man, Tuman Burbank whose life has been a staggeringly popular 24-hours-a-day TV show and he is the most famous face on TV. He is an unwitting star of a soap opera based on his life. Every moment of his life is being filmed by 5000 concealed cameras and broadcast to world-wide audiences.

Now, having a show in which the rest of the cast are actors and only the hero unwittingly real is implausible and almost impossible to be kept a secret for 30 days, let alone 30 years. But Hollywood loves this "anything is possible" premise. So one has to accept an unlikely situation to even get initially involved in the film. Remember Being there where Peter Sellers played a man brought up on TV alone? He knew nothing about the world outside. Frightening: This splendid isolation.

Australian-born director Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock) and The Year of Living Dangerously) has taken up this challenge to make a scathing attack on the manipulating media and strangely he has chosen Jim Carrey to play the lead role of Truman Burbank. From the time Isaw Mask Iwas sure this updated Jerry Lewisism of Carrey’s wouldn’t last long. It was okay in the

1960s when Jerry Lewis could evoke spontaneous laughter. Not today, it becomes laboured. It was obvious that Jim Carrey would have to change his act and The Truman Show provided that break for him. It gave him a chance to create a new persona and it had to be done gradually. At least 50 per cent of that mad, gawky Jim Carrey had to go before the serious or semi-serious Carrey emerges.

The enormity of the subject allows one to forget the comedian Carrey and concentrate on what’s happening to him or rather the hero Truman Burbank. Married to the perennially Perky Meryl (Laura Linney), Truman lives in the immaculately planned community of Seahaven, an entiseptic paradise where people are forever cheery and nothing untoward ever happens.

The only scar Truman carries with him comes from the long ago death of his father from a boating accident, which has given him a great fear of water. But the young man also harbours a secret yearning — a wanderlust stimulated by his fleeting romance with Lauren (Natascha McElhone), a beautiful student snatched from his embrace some years ago and spirited away to Fiji, where he, therefore, longs to go.

In the course to time, however, cracks appear in his life’s perfect veneer that arouse suspicions. He sees a homeless man he’s sure is his own father. Then a radio malfunction allows him to overhear a transmission intended for the "extras" who constitute the population of Seaheaven and make up the supporting cast of the Truman Show.

It is Lauren who lights the spark of doubt before she is banned to Fiji. His close friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich), who has been with him since seven, tells him "the last thing I’d even do is lie to you," a subtle way of telling him the truth. In fact the opening lines of The Truman Show say "nothing you see on the show is fake, it is merely controlled," a clear play on words.

Truman’s inventor and manipulator, Christof (Ed Harris), talks about truth and gives his own definition of it but when he sees that Truman is trying to escape it means a blow to his 30-year-old show. We see it from day 10,909 to day 10,913.How will a story like this end? Who’ll win? That’s the question. It is the creation of a Frankensteinian character, not monster. He may not be brutal or scarry, but can he overcome his creator?

Considering the implausibility, Peter Weir puts together an interesting little story. There may be a few blanks like how did the father suddenly come into the picture and why would Lauren be the only one to tell him the truth about the show?Jim Carrey is at best fair and this could be because he cannot overnight shed the image he has created in the last five years. Natascha McElhone who did very well as the woman who was able to stand up to the great artist in Surviving Picasso picks up from where she left off there to provide a very credible cameo but Ed Harris’ role is essentially academic. Not the greatest show on earth or on TV (or about TV) but quite watchable. It could also mark the beginning of the transformation of Jim Carrey.