St. Peter's Foot: Movie Review

Cue the Sun: Becoming Real on The Truman Show

Movie review by Fr. Rand York

Paranoia has long been a favorite subject of Hollywood, along with its cousin narcissism, but there is perhaps no more poignant presentation of it than The Truman Show. I say “poignant” because this movie is keenly focused on the consideration of a central question: “What if it really is all about me?” This is paranoia with a purpose.

Truman Burbank lives with his wife Meryl in the picturesque seaside town of Seahaven. His life is remarkably prosaic, yet poetically so. The routine of Truman’s life is realized in the idealized 1950’s, when your neighbors all knew your name, people were polite and well-scrubbed, and students feared spitballs rather than bullets. Truman’s very name recalls the president who ushered in those magic (and now elusive) years.

Yet, his first name is also a challenge for him to be and to become a true man. A man not crippled by fear to cower and crumble, but emboldened by hope to conquer and become. His last name, on the other hand, hints at the obstacles that lie in his path on his journey to becoming real. Burbank is a TV city. How many shows have been brought to us: “Live! From Burbank, California, it’s the (Fill in the blank) Show!” In Burbank, panache trumps substance. Will Truman become a true man? Or will he be just another Burbank?

Truman is the unwitting star of a real-time 24 hour reality TV show that is all about him. There is no script, only hundreds of hidden cameras strategically placed throughout the home, neighborhood, and town where he lives and works. This world into which Truman was born, and where he has spent his entire 30 years, is itself counterfeit. It is peopled entirely by actors, including those who play the roles of his family. Seahaven is set in the world’s biggest soundstage, so large that its massive dome is visible from space.

It is all the brainchild of a television producer evocatively named Christof. God-like, Christof lives and works in the sky (the blue domed ceiling), directing the show from there. His faux omnipotence is nowhere better expressed than when he utters the now-famous line: “Cue the Sun.” Because there is no script, there really is no master plan for Truman’s life, only a master plan for the show. Instead, Truman is simply on display to the television viewing public living outside his bubble during every waking (and sleeping) moment of his life. The show itself has a twofold mission: 1) to bring Truman’s life to the viewers 24/7, and 2) to keep Truman unaware of this.

The Truman Show is a movie that requires more than the usual suspension of disbelief. That being said, it is also a movie that successfully taps into deep places in the heart of the viewer. I am reminded of my own childhood, when for a brief period of time I was convinced that my existence was a grand experiment, and that everyone was in on it except for me. As I have grown, I have begun to realize that in living out our individual lives, we actually do play to an audience of millions in one sense, but to an audience of One in another. Christof himself pays homage to Shakespeare’s wisdom: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” The great difference is that everyone with whom Truman comes into contact really is “in on it,” and his “audience of one” is a brilliantly insane television producer.

Christof, however, can only play God; he cannot be God. There is a kind of flawlessly messy chemistry in life, and its power supersedes all that would attempt to rein it in. This chemistry forges a connection between Truman and Sylvia (an actress who plays the character Lauren in the show) that is so strong it cannot be broken even by writing Lauren out of the show and having Truman marry Meryl.

The messiness of life shows in the one place where Truman feels truly free to be himself…his basement. The rest of his house, neighborhood, town and world are orderly and manicured. Seahaven is picture-perfect and as well-kept as Disneyland itself, but Truman slowly awakens to the realization that it is only a façade filled with surgeons who can’t operate, elevators that don’t go anywhere, and a wife who is a little too perfect and who turns everything into a commercial. Unlike the rest of his world, Truman’s basement is a sanctuary of messiness for him. It is a place of reality. It is where he keeps his secrets.

Truman’s biggest secret is a montage attempt at recreating Sylvia’s face with strips torn from ads in women’s magazines. Sylvia’s character, “Lauren,” disappears from the show (and therefore from Truman’s life) when she and Truman begin to get too close. It is Christof’s plan for Truman to marry a cast member who is fully compliant to the wishes of the producer, and Sylvia is not that person. They do manage one rendezvous on the beach before the show moves in to put a final stop to the budding romance. It is there that we see Truman’s only real kiss in the entire movie. Perhaps it is the only kiss we are shown because it is Truman’s only real encounter with love. Sylvia cares more about Truman than about the show, and when she senses the show closing in on her, she tries to warn Truman that all is not as it seems. An actor playing her father finds them on the beach and takes “Lauren” (Sylvia) away, telling Truman that they are moving to Fiji. This is the story of true love lost in the fulfillment of the expectations of others. For the rest of his life in Seahaven, Truman’s deepest desire is to find her again any way he can, by trying to go to Fiji, or by recreating her face.

The pretend-God Christof shows his disdain for free will by interfering every time Truman acts in any way that would undermine the grand design of the show. This interference takes many forms, from traffic jams to forest fires to nuclear plant accidents to changing the weather itself. Christof may be able to control the weather, but he cannot control or even understand Truman’s heart.

The real God honors free will, which he created mankind to exercise. He delights in people discovering and becoming who they are. He alone understands the human heart and is not threatened by what we do.

Still, Christof does not believe Truman will ever leave. In an interview, he is asked: “Why do you feel that Truman’s never come close to discovering the true nature of his world?”

Christof answers, “We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented.” This is very much like Albert Speer’s explanation of how he was able to successfully deceive Hitler in the final weeks of World War II: “He’ll believe me because he wants to.” But what happens when the world you have chosen to accept thwarts the desires of your heart?

The Truman Show considers the dense theological and philosophical questions of our reason for being, free will, and deep longings. While Truman ultimately breaks free of a prison he never even realized he was in until the end, this story serves primarily as a starting place for a real discussion of the real.

Truman: Who are you?

Christof: I’m the creator.

Truman: The creator of what?

Christof: A show – that gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions.

Truman: A show. Then who am I?

Christof: You’re the star.

Truman: Nothing was real.

Christof: You were real. That’s what made you so good to watch.