THE TRUMAN SHOW

Trying Not to be Seen

What starts as a paranoid fantasy ends as an surreal allegory for existence itself. Pretty deep stuff for a Jim Carrey movie.

Many years ago, Paul Bartel created a short film called The Secret Cinema, which told the story of a man that discovers that he is the star of an ongoing series of films made with hidden cameras and shownweekly at an underground club (Bartel later turned his short into an episode of TV's Amazing Stories). The Truman Show takes the same idea and expands onit, updating it to match the current fixation with verite video shows.

Did you ever get the feeling you were the only Real person in the world? For Truman, that nagging suspicion that everyone else is in on some big joke that he's the butt of grows and grows. No wonder - he happens to be more right than he could ever imagine. Truman is the star of a 24-hour a day TV show that everyone in the world watches obsessively. And he's the only one who doesn't know it.

Carrey takes two steps forward to credibility by taking one step back toward humanity. Truman is his most human character and - despite the sci-fi trappings - The Truman Show is his most human vehicle, showing depth by setting its protagonist within the most polished facade.

Peter Weir, who plodded his way through such snoozers as Dead Poets Society and Witness, here returns to the wicked satire of his early picture The Cars That Ate Paris, but with a great deal more feeling. Much of that balanced sensitivity can be attributed to the outstanding script by Andrew Nicol, who contributed such fine work to last year's Gattaca. The atmosphere is complemented perfectly by a surprisingly restrained score by Philip Glass.

The Truman Show is a dark but uplifting drama that can easily stand with such films as Groundhog Day, or even (dare I say it) It's A Wonderful Life.

Car chases; 1984 atmosphere of paranoia; artificial world way beyond The Prisoner's Village.

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