Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Every second of every day, from the moment he was born, for the last thirty years, Truman Burbank has been the unwitting star of the longest running, most popular documentary-soap opera in history. The picture-perfect town of Seahaven that he calls home is actually a gigantic soundstage. Truman's friends and family - everyone he meets, in fact - are actors. He lives every moment under the unblinking gaze of thousands of hidden TV cameras.
The Truman Show is a genuinely singular film — its high-concept premise about simulated reality and mass surveillance was prescient and executed with rare intelligence and warmth. Jim Carrey delivers a career-best dramatic performance, supported strongly by Ed Harris and Laura Linney. Christof Burrows's production design and Peter Biziou's cinematography create an uncanny, artificially lit suburban dreamworld that is visually distinctive and purposeful. The concept is wholly original for mainstream cinema at the time, earning top Novelty marks. The ending, while emotionally satisfying on a surface level, is where the film slightly pulls its punches — the escape is perhaps too clean and the implications of Truman's freedom left underexplored, making it the one category that falls just short of exceptional.