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Truman Show (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Paramount Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (21st May 2009). |
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The Film
 More than 10 years after Jim Carrey added dramatic acting roles into his typical routine of straight up comedy, it’s a bit odd to look at his performance between his years on “In Living Color” (1990-1994) and “Ace Ventura” (1994) all the way into his great dramatic performance in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004). However after getting the chance to revisit “The Truman Show” (1998) on Blu-ray it makes perfect sense as this film offers a good transition from Carrey’s comedy into more dramatic work (except for “23” (2007) which was just plain terrible), especially considering Peter Weir’s directing. Though Weir hasn’t really been seen making movies in the past few years, it was almost exactly a 10 year difference between bringing a good dramatic performance out of Carrey and getting Robin Williams an Oscar nomination for 'Best Actor' in “Dead Poet’s Soceity” (1987). Though Carrey didn’t get an Academy Award, the praise he earned (along with the Golden Globe) holds up to be well earned in a more mainstream dramatic science fiction piece that greatly relies on Carrey’s ability to pull the film along on his own. Largely credited for calling the increased popularity of reality television, “The Truman Show” is based on the idea of a corporation, in this case a television studio network, adopting a single person, Truman (Jim Carrey ) and then basing an entire show around his every living moment. In the show’s 30th year, Truman is living an apparently idyllic suburban existence in the island town of Seahaven. Over the years of Truman’s life within the simulated reality of the show some have tried to let him know about the fictionalized world that he lives in, but none truly convinced him to leave except for the vague memory of Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), a college crush who interfered with the preset plotline and was disappeared from the world of the show, supposedly to Fiji. However much Truman may think about leaving his home, his fear of the water keeps him back, manufactured by the show’s director Christof (Ed Harris) writing Truman’s dad out of the show by having him die while sailing with Truman in a storm. Yet Truman starts noticing strange occurrences in his life that makes him think that people are watching; a lighting rig falling from the sky, a radio malfunction that tunes him in to the crew’s radio, or the bizarre way his wife seems to promote goods whenever she talks to him. With a new urge to escape, Truman has to combat his fears of water along with the town that all want to keep the show going. Though it was released a year before “The Matrix” (1999), “The Truman Show” seems to play around with the same ideas in a much lighter sense of science fiction, as the simulated reality of “Truman” isn’t nearly as pervasive as “The Matrix,” or nearly as prone to all leather skin tight suits, but touches on the idea of wondering what is real. Rather than simply being about reality television, the film is more a long meditation on media consumption, with the jabs at product placement and how manufactured the life of Truman becomes that he rejects it. Yet the audience, whose lives watching Truman serve as brief interludes in the film, are drawn to the show no matter what. If Truman’s playing along with the life people are engrossed, yet when he starts to reject the world he’s been placed in they cheer him on all the same until his arc is over and story complete, now comes the next channel. But the film makes it incredibly easy not only to buy into the story of the film, but the story of the Truman Show within “The Truman Show” as Weir’s directing brings out a lot of interesting angles that highlight the more hidden camera style of the show. The frequent use of slightly blacked out rings around the frame to give it more of a security camera feel, though still obviously in high quality film stock, help make the fictional show feel real for the audience watching the audience watching the Truman Show in the movie “The Truman Show.” Sure it may seem like I’m adding more layers than necessary, but it works the way that Weir’s directing and Andrew Niccol’s script work together to create a nice piece of fiction. Overall “The Truman Show” is a solid effort on all parts, between the acting of Jim Carrey to everyone in the supporting cast, including Paul Giamatti as the control room director who likes to sit around and eat pizza with only 5 or 6 speaking lines in the film. The script and directing make for a solid and well rounded experience of an immersive film with a solid and compelling story that barely clocks in over an hour and a half, making it a great experience that draws the viewer in without feeling the need to drag it’s feet with unnecessary characterizations or details about the world that exists.
Video
I was at first a little hesitant about the film’s video settings that I’ve seen for 90’s movies before: a 1080p 24/fps resolution with 1.78:1 aspect ratio and AVC MPEG-4 encoding, and it hasn’t fared particularly well. “The Truman Show” however sets a newer standard with it’s good transfer and high clarity without blurring or muddying the image. Looking particularly high-definition without loosing any of the grain from the specific scenes where it adds the feel of a TV or a security camera when necessary.
Audio
Presented with an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack mixed at 48kHz/24-bit, also available are French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. The film uses the TrueHD sound well in keeping all the technical aspects well in check and moving the sound through the system, but more importantly giving more voice to the music by Burkhard von Dallwitz and Philip Glass that help to enhance the film and bring the tone to another level. There are no pops, drops, or flaws in the technical aspect of the audio, leaving the great soundtrack to prosper on its own. There are English, English for the hearing impaired, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles.
Extras
“The Truman Show” may be sorely lacking an audio commentary track from the director or star of the film, but tries to make it up with some featurettes, 4 deleted scenes, a photo gallery, a teaser trailer, theatrical trailer and 2 TV spots. The first featurette is “How’s It Going to End? The Making of ‘The Truman Show,’” which comes in 2 separate parts, playable together for 41 minutes and 47 seconds: - "Part 1" runs for 18 minutes and 22 seconds, dealing mostly with the basis of the film and the inception between the writer, director production crew and building of the film itself. There are some interesting points about what the show was originally going to be and how it transformed from a dark sci-fi piece about a man being watched in New York, to be a more lighthearted effort that still had the same kind of emotional grab. Though nearly a quarter of the piece talks about predicting reality television, there are some great and worthwhile insights in this part of the featurette, dealing with casting and creating character bibles with lengthy backgrounds that never get explored in the film, but simply exist for depth’s sake. - "Part 2" runs for 23 minutes and 25 seconds, this second part of the making of delves more into the actual production of the film, finding the town of Seaside in Florida that would become Seahaven, but also going into the production design for creating a world of hidden cameras between the weird camera effects and the sets that were created as well. Yet in terms of themes or what they’re dealing with it doesn’t diverge too much from "Part 1" making it seem like they split it up simply to make it more palatable to watch two 20 minute segments rather than a full 40 plus minute featurette. “Faux Finishing, The Visual Effects of ‘The Truman Show’” runs for 13 minutes and 16 seconds. This final featurette deals with the stylized direction of the film that would make the world look too nice and artificial compared to a real place, to generate the feel of the simulated reality. I’m always a fan of the production design featurettes and this one does a good job of covering how all the effects came together to make for the feel and look of ‘The Truman Show’ within “The Truman Show.” Next are the four deleted scenes: - “Product Placement” runs for 5 minutes and 25 seconds, a few different shots of all of the different products that blatantly exist within the Truman world, as well as the way actors would model different products of clothing while in the world. - “Truman Suspicious” runs for 4 minutes and 23 seconds, a few different scenes of Truman looking at the world around him more skeptically, starting to figure out that it’s all fake. - “The Future Cast Meeting” runs for 2 minutes and 8 seconds, Christof discusses a new plot direction for Truman moving towards a new love interest and distributing character backgrounds and synopsis. - “Truman Missing” runs for 1 minute and 11 seconds, more of the search for Truman after he disappeared and made his way to his escape boat. The photo gallery contains 40 images of production stills as well as behind-the-scenes and on set photos of the cast and crew. The teaser trailer runs for 1 minute and 54 seconds. The theatrical trailer runs for 2 minutes and 35 seconds. Finally come the 2 TV spots: - “Newest Lights” runs for 33 seconds. - “Newest Vital Signs” runs for 32 seconds.
Overall
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