How’s It Going To End?
I heard about The Truman Show over the years, but never made a point to watch it. When it came in for review, I was only mildly excited, but now having seen the film, I can definitely understand its appeal.
The premise is quite interesting; Jim Carrey stars as Truman Banks, a young man who sells insurance in the island town of Seahaven. Seahaven is a gorgeous town; Truman is a happy man, although the loss of his father and abrupt disappearance of a college love interest disturbs him. However, he has a stable job, a childhood friend, a wife, and the community is very nice.
What Truman doesn’t know until later in the film is that his entire life is a TV show that everyone else in the world is watching. Everyone in the fictitious town of Seahaven is an actor, including his wife, co-workers, and best friend; even his mother. The show has been running since Truman’s birth, nearly thirty years ago, utilizing some 5000 cameras hidden all over the town including behind Truman’s mirrors and behind the clock radio in his car. How this came to be I’ll leave the film to explain to you to avoid spoiling too much.
Truman slowly begins to become suspicious when he sees his father, now a homeless man on his way to work one day (this too was a scripted event). His father is ruthlessly pulled away from his grasp by some officers who force his father onto a bus. His trust for his wife, played by Laura Linney, and his best friend Marlon, played by Noah Emmerich, begins to fade as his suspicion of his reality grows sharply after this event. It’s really quite a spectacle to see how far the TV studio and producer Christof, Ed Harris’ character, go to hide the fact that Truman’s life is entirely fake.
The Truman Show features bits of comedy, but I saw this film as more dramatic than funny. You will also find plenty of emotion too, mostly coming from Carrey himself. Frankly, it’s really quite a fascinating film that not only provides a captivating story, but also a great script, powerful acting, and really does just about everything right.
Truman Burbank Comes to Blu-ray
The Truman Show Blu-ray release is pretty sweet. The extras don’t have anything new nor are any of them in HD, more on those shortly. The video quality blew me away though; the film doesn’t really have any special effects or CG, which is completely fine of course, but what impressed me so much was how sharp and vibrant the video was. For most of the film, my Blu-ray player (a PS3) reported the video running at well over 35Mbps, generally around 37 or 38Mbps, and it was evident in that the picture was pristine. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track doesn’t have to work too hard in that it’s a mostly dialogue driven film, but it sounded just fine.
As far as extras, there are a few. They are:
-How’s It Going To End? The Making of The Truman Show – This feature is split into two parts about equal in length, totaling forty-one minutes. Peter Weir, the director, takes most of the spotlight here, but there are some cast and other crew interviews as well, in addition to some behind the scenes footage.
-Faux Finishing: The Visual Effects of The Truman Show – This thirteen minute feature, also in SD (they all are), includes some interviews with the visual effects folks. This film doesn’t have any explosions or sci-fi scenery, but rather the real visual effects work came in meeting the challenge of filming it as though it were being filmed, if you follow my meaning.
-Deleted Scenes – There are four deleted scenes totaling about thirteen minutes. These scenes are pretty neat; one scene shows Truman asking Marlon about the airplane part that just ‘fell out of the sky’ early in the film. Marlon convinces Truman that this random piece of metal is indeed part of an airplane…this all of of course an attempt to convince Truman not to leave Seahaven.
-Photo Gallery – Over twenty still images from production are included.
-Trailers & TV Spots – There are two theatrical trailers and two TV spot promotions of the film.
And with that, let’s wrap up…