From the beginning of the
movie, we viewers are aware that Truman is a main figure of ‘The Truman Show’ –
a TV show. Truman’s name is included in the titles, communicating to us that
Truman is an important part of the TV show. In the opening credits, it tells us
that Truman is played by himself and that Christof is the ‘creator’ of the
show. In the opening scene, Christof reveals that there is ‘nothing about
Truman which is fake – no scripts, no cue cards. It isn’t always Shakespeare,
but it’s genuine. It’s life.’ It then cuts to a shot of Truman, talking into a
mirror, obviously not aware of the camera hidden there. This also shows us that
Truman is key to the TV show.
Weir has used camera
angles very effectively by using a high angle shot of the dog, Pluto. They got
this shot by placing a camera in Truman’s ring. Weir also got quite a good shot
by putting a camera on the neighbour’s bin, but when he picked up the bin it
made the shot quite fuzzy.
Later in the film, when
Truman is at his most vulnerable, the director uses characterisation and
dialogue to show how Truman is being manipulated By Christof and his staff.
They are sitting on the edge of the bridge and Marlon is talking to Truman to
try and convince him to stop believing that anything is amiss. We see a
shot/reverse shot of conversation between the two characters, where Marlon is
looking into Truman’s eyes and telling Truman, “If everyone is in on it, then I
would have to be in on it. The truth is, there is no ‘it’.”
At the climax of the
film, Weir, the director, again uses plot and setting to show the separation
between Truman and the real world. He has left Seahaven by boat to find Sylvia.
He endures bad storms brought on by Christof, the director. His boat capsized,
but he recovered and asked if that’s all they’ve got and continued on his
journey. He continued to sail and crashed into the wall of the unrealistic
world he had been living in all of his life. Truman shows his anger by punching
the wall and this shows us his frustration that he has been living in a fake
world.
