27 years on: The Truman Show review- Peter Weir’s psychological comedy-drama film that is certain make you question the reality in which you live in 

Jim Carrey stars as Truman Burbank, who stars as himself, in a 24-hour television broadcast of his so-called normal life, and we tune in just as he is starting to figure things out 

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📷: Truman (Jim Carrey) looks up at his fake sky, where a mysterious object has just fallen from… 

Ollie Polkinghorne 

The Truman Show is an existential masterpiece. We follow Truman, played by the great Jim Carrey, living a life of lies on the too-good-to-be-true island of Seahaven, where everyone, from his wife, to his best friend, to the man at the magazine stand, is an actor, and this island is really just a giant television set, with hidden cameras in odd places, such as an electric pencil sharpener, or a car radio. Through these cameras, Truman’s life is being filmed and broadcasted to the world, live, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

We, along with the people of the world in which the film is set, observe Truman as he notices slight anomalies in his life, like a stage light falling from the sky, that is, just ten minutes later, covered up as “aircraft shrapnel”. But the beauty of this film is that it is near impossible to pinpoint the exact moment where Truman connects all the dots and realises that nothing around him is real. Yes, there are some key realisations and discoveries, but the slight glint in his eye could mean that Truman is aware that his life is a performance, long before he makes it blatantly obvious, and is just playing the part and waiting for the perfect time to pounce. 

 This film takes Shakespeare’s famous “All the world’s a stage” quote very much literally, where Truman’s world is, in its entirety, a stage. Christof, played by Ed Harris, is the mastermind behind the spectacle, watching from Truman’s moon like a sort of God, or a father looking down proudly on his son.  

Jim Carrey proves himself able to take on a more serious, emotionally complex role, stepping away from the dim-witted character of Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber, and the troublemaking Stanley Ipkiss in The Mask, all without losing his iconic goofiness, winning himself a Golden Globe in 1999 for his acting masterclass in The Truman Show. The concept of actors playing actors is reminiscent of the infamous “play within a play” from act 3 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and this is expertly executed by Noah Emmerich, being his actor-character, Louis Coltrane, when speaking to Christof, and his actor-character’s character, Marlon (Truman’s best friend), when Truman is nearby. The complexity of the layers of observation and acting is what makes this film so special.  

Andrew Niccol’s ingenious, thought-provoking story, along with Jim Carrey’s masterful acting and Philip Glass’s unforgettable music, create a film that will go down in history as one of the greatest of that era. There was nothing like quite it at the time, and few have dared to try and replicate it since. The Truman Show is simply one of a kind.