The Truman Show Review

The premise could have been a sketch and instead it is one of the most durable American films of its decade, because Weir commits to the texture of the lie rather than the mechanics of the reveal. Seahaven is shot in bright pastel with lenses that keep finding hidden vantage points, buttons and dashboards and rings of light, so the surveillance lives in the grammar rather than in dialogue. Jim Carrey gives the performance that proved the rest of his career was a choice, playing Truman's cheerfulness as something he is doing rather than something he is, so the cracks read as effort failing.

Ed Harris makes Christof a man who sincerely believes he is offering love. Laura Linney is very funny selling kitchen products with dead eyes. The script's ideas about media were sharp in 1998 and have become uncomfortable since, with an audience that watches a man's private life for decades and calls it affection. The ending is exactly right, a bow and a door, and it refuses to show what happens next. Almost nothing here has dated.