The Truman Show

I'm a huge Jim Carrey girl.  I'd even argue that I'm a bigger Jim Carrey girl than I am a Joaquin Phoenix girl.  Even in saying that, I still have Phoenix as my background on my laptop, so I lost my own argument here.

Anyways. The Truman Show. A satirical science fiction, or the definition of a mind-screw.

God, even that movie poster gives me the heebie-jeebies.  This film "stars" Truman Burbank, a man running his own show without even knowing it.  Burbank was adopted into this system which capitalizes off of providing 24/7 coverage of his daily life.

People will tune in at any time on any day just to see Burbank go about his day, until one day he falls for an extra, Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), on the show that is his life.  Explaining this is harder than I thought it would be, but I'm realizing now that fact has reigned true on every one of my other posts as well, so I guess that's the point.

What I think is really incredible about this film is if you're watching it with no prior knowledge without having been told the synopsis, the second that the spotlight falls on Burbank, it's like a light switch goes off in your head, like "woah, where is the border of the universe?"

Over a series of events, Burbank finally comes to terms with the fact that he is being filmed, and his only plan from then on is to escape this false life he has been living.  Burbank sets off to get to the edge of his fake world when the creator of the show, Christof (Ed Harris), steps in and tells him that he is safe in this fake world and he won't find any answers he seems to be seeking in the real world,  but Burbank's only goal at this point is to have freedom.  Burbank finally reaches the end of the world, which is really trippy.

After he escapes and the however-many year-long documentation of his life comes to its eternal end, the avid viewers of the show who have been shown here-and-there throughout the film simply seek something else to watch on television.

This is where I start to compare this film to society today.

We can become so infatuated, sometimes to an unhealthy degree, with other people's lives through the media.  For example, we can be so obsessed with a celebrity that we plaster their faces all over our walls, wear them on our clothes, and spend our free time watching them and keeping up with their every move but in reality, we don't actually know who they are.  This raises my question of: is this an unhealthy way to live?

Are we really free if we chain ourselves to these people who live their life on a stage, in some cases giving us false expectations for our own lives as well?

I guess we don't really care enough to answer that.