Movie poster of Truman's World
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > face freedom and truth</h1>
30 years ago, Omnicom Television Productions adopted an abandoned baby, named him Truman, and decided to build a reality show around him, cultivating him into the world's most popular reality show protagonist.
Since birth, from walking, first kiss to love, everything about Truman has been secretly recorded by photography, and all his life has been broadcast live around the world twenty-four hours a day.
The place where he lived was called Taoyuan Island, which was ostensibly a normal island, but in fact it was a huge studio. In addition, his parents, wife, friends, and neighbors are all actors involved in the performance, and everyone knows the facts clearly, except Truman himself.
Truman
At the beginning of the film, the whole world is presented with a scene of bright sunshine and clear skies. Truman went to school, worked, and got married step by step, no different from a normal person. His mother was gentle and loving, his wife was beautiful and virtuous, his good friendship was brotherhood, and he "had a fairly leisurely job."
But in his own heart, he always felt that his life was "quite far from the ideal".
According to the arrangement of the script, when Truman was a child and his father went to sea, his father fell into the sea and died, so he was extremely afraid of the water, and he had never even been out of Taoyuan Island. But all this calm was shattered by a coincidence: Truman met his long-dead father on the street.
Incomprehensible things happened one after another in Truman's world: his first love girlfriend was suddenly forcibly taken away, and the route played on the car's radio was exactly the same as his planned itinerary.
Everything seemed to be holding him back, not giving him the slightest chance to leave Taoyuan Island.
In the elevator of the office building, there is a room surrounded by many scenes, and when they are ready to leave, the mother and wife panic and "warmly" to stay, and when they want to book a flight to Fiji, they see the frightening news of the plane crash posted by the airline...
Everything seemed to be holding him back, not giving him the slightest chance to leave Taoyuan Island. Truman began to fall into a state of confusion and gradually realized that he seemed to be being watched, and his behavior was under the control of others. He gradually doubts the authenticity of this world, and when he can't bear it, he chooses to flee Taoyuan Island desperately and pursue the truth he wants.
Under more than 5,000 overwhelming shots, Truman thus began his secret escape plan full of obstacles. The sea he feared the most under man-made control became his only passage to the real and free world, and the director Keith Tu directed the storm to organize Truman's ship forward, and ordered that Truman be forced to sail the ship back to shore with lightning.
However, at this time, Truman had no remorse, he tied himself to the ship, shouted "you want to stop me, only kill me", and finally broke through the shackles and left this illusory world.
Schvia
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" Data-track="13" > is it reasonable? </h1>
In the whole movie, the only person who wants to tell Truman the truth is his first love, Shivia. However, because of her whistle-blowing behavior, the director forced her to leave Truman's side.
With the exception of Shivia, the other actors in the film's reality show are numb controlled. For them, acting is just a job to survive, and Truman, he is not regarded as a person with self-will, but a commodity imprisoned in the television for people to watch, a free labor force to perform programs for free.
In the past thirty years, the touching affection, the love that has been there, the love that has stayed together, and the loyal brotherhood that have been seen are nothing more than the tear gas predetermined in reality shows. Therefore, when Truman questions whether Meilu really has a love for herself, she only cares about facing the hidden camera, smiling and advertising cocoa powder.
The crowd watched Truman's live show
After all the disguises are revealed, they return to the life of the actors themselves, but even they can't tell whether they have ever been sincere to Truman.
Compared with the actors, the audience is more indifferent to Truman's encounter - in the 30 years of reality TV broadcasting, although they are occasionally infected by Truman's story, most of the time, they are staring at the TV screen expressionlessly.
In the environment where these audiences are located, there are all kinds of goods printed with Truman's head, and Truman, as a striking commodity symbol, has long been imprinted in their hearts day after day.
No one has ever thought to tell Truman the truth about all this, and no one has ever asked director Kissot about humanists– where this right to control one's destiny comes from.
The Gate of Freedom
At the end of the movie, Truman reaches the end of Taoyuan Island and walks into the door of freedom that belongs to him.
No one was afraid that he would turn back in front of the door, no one would worry that he would regret it behind the door. After Truman's reality show was discontinued, they calmly and indifferently chose other programs, and did not show a trace of nostalgia for Truman's life story.
This is also a metaphor for the phenomenon of realistic entertainment to death in the film, and the director throws the question to every audience: should the public stop passively accepting the social situation presented and represented by the media? Should one satisfy one's own voyeuristic desires follow the principle of not violating the freedom of others?
If in this society, everyone paralyzes themselves with "existence is reasonable", then what kind of pathology will the whole society be, and how sad should the whole world be?
Directed by Keith Duc
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="25" > powerful media and interests first</h1>
Director Kisto is the representative of the powerful media, and in the reality show, he is God, the master of everything.
In the film, the director Kisto's desire to control power is portrayed strongly and dramatically: when Truman fled, he ordered the entire cast to go out and arrange for them to search for Truman's whereabouts like uniform zombies;
He controlled the time when the sun rose at will, so that the moon was also used by him, becoming his giant searchlight; he created the sea storms and lightning that nature had bred, and concentrated them on Truman's ship, thus forcing Truman to return to the constructed life...
As the initiator, he fits a real person and a virtual space and constructs a "reality" in this way. This reality narrows the distance between the audience and mass entertainment, so that the audience can find spiritual sustenance in it, so as to set off a carnival of entertainment culture.
Movie stills
However, this satisfaction is inherently manipulated and controlled, and the industrialization of entertainment can never provide man with freedom and individuality, but can only materialize human desires, thus initiating entertainment and its production of entertainment products with compound needs.
The media's use of this logic has had a huge impact on all aspects of mass life, but there is no regulation to justify its influence and require it to adhere to the right direction, which leads to the result of the constant distortion of the values of social groups, and finally the whole world becomes insensitive.
Because of the unequal subject relationship between the audience and the media, when a few people like Truman condemn the abhorrent reality and intend to fight it, they will always be tragically too weak.
Entertainment is produced by people and serves people, but after growing to a certain extent, it is in turn used by some people with hearts to control human beings, and entertainment development is the embodiment of human development, but people are therefore restrained and difficult to gain freedom.
All that can arouse the audience is curiosity and no pity
"The viewer is aroused only by curiosity and without any pity", a status quo that leads to the suffering and loneliness of the awake individual in society, and the inability to extricate himself from the status quo.
The only thing worth mentioning is that at the end of the movie, Truman walked out of the studio, out of the magnificent but from the artificially made sun, moon and stars, out of the audience's vision, into them.
The glass cover is broken, the once-bound people break out of the cocoon, and the audience of truman show celebrates Truman's successful escape by applauding and cheering for his successful escape, as a way to celebrate Truman's successful escape from the control of the program director Keithd and their own vision - Truman is actually their self projection, and their other self reflects on this self.
Thus, in the moment when one self is stripped from the other, this brief escape gives both a breather.
Truman's world stills
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="38" > existentialist interpretation</h1>
The question of human existence has always been one of the eternal themes explored after the awakening of human self-consciousness, and the existentialists' thinking about existence is particularly profound.
It is well known that existence precedes essence is the basic position of existential philosophy. Sartre's existentialism, in particular, is based on free choice—in his theory that human freedom is predestined and a priori in any situation; choice is a necessary, inescapable responsibility.
Among them, "freedom" as the core of his thought is not only reflected in his existential philosophical thought, but also in his artistic creation.
According to Sartre, the creator of art, as a free man, appeals to other free men as spectators, and he has only one subject, which is freedom. As individuals, man should first exist, appear, and then define himself and everything else in the world.
At a time when the process of industrialization is gradually deepening, thinking about the existence of man and the free choice in the process of his existence is of extraordinary significance for resisting the alienation of man.
"Truman's World" is such a film that shows people's pursuit of freedom to achieve the real existence of the individual, although for more than thirty years since his birth, Truman has been living in Taoyuan Island, which has lost his freedom and passively accepted regulation.
However, from the time of the film's performance, that is, the 10909th day of Truman's life shooting, the entire film was accompanied by Truman's hesitation about the authenticity of life and the exploration and pursuit of freedom.
Optimistic Truman
Although the road ahead is unknown, although the world outside Taoyuan Island is completely strange to Truman, he finally chose to escape from everything that was illusory, walked out of Taoyuan Island, and pursued the freedom that life deserves.
Compared with a stable job, a perfect family and a comfortable Life in Taoyuan, Truman chose the real world outside Taoyuan Island, so that he could make decisions freely in life and take responsibility for his own free decisions.
The film finally ended in Truman's farewell to the director in the play, "If I can't touch you again, I wish you morning and evening, good afternoon, and good night."