The Truman Show

The Truman Show (1998) is about a man whose entire life is broadcast live, and who is the only person who does not know it. Truman Burbank is thirty, sells insurance, and lives in a small island town. His wife is an actress, his closest friend is an actor, his neighbours are actors. The town is an enormous studio and the sky is a ceiling. He has been on air since he was born. The date matters. It came out in 1998, before the reality television boom. Big Brother began the following year. So the film is not criticising a trend, it is describing something that had not happened yet. The genuinely remarkable part is that the film's title became a psychiatric term. In 2008 the brothers Joel Gold and Ian Gold, a psychiatrist and a neurophilosopher, coined Truman Show delusion for patients who believe their lives are being filmed and broadcast. Joel Gold had been seeing such cases at Bellevue Hospital since 2002. The term is not in the official diagnostic manual but it is used in the literature. Jim Carrey had only played comedy until then, and this was his first serious role. Peter Weir keeps the sky slightly too blue and the town slightly too clean, which is where the unease comes from. It runs 103 minutes. Good for: satire, science fiction that does not look like science fiction, and modern classics. Fine with teenagers. Less good for: there is a drowning, and the subject is surveillance and manipulation.