The cinematography draws our attention to the physical features of Truman’s habitat that would belong in a movieset by moving the camera to awkward angles that not only contains him but also as many of the objects as feasible. This allows the Truman Show to advertise its products while filming the main attraction. In some of the scenes there is also a black fadeout on the camera edges to indicate low quality small cameras designed to capture intimate shots.
Litter and the slumpockets that are sure to exist in a real town are non-existent in Seahaven. In no matter what country from every New Yorkian city to a small outback community, rubbish on the ground always outnumber 10 times the size of the human population. Seahaven with its spotless streets is a illusion of the perfect heaven. No one lives in poverty and the neighbourhood is clean and quiet. As a matter of fact, Christoff is projecting into Truman’s mind a vision of a dreamworld that is Seahaven. While commenting heavily on the outside world’s disasters and violence, no bad aspect of the real world is allowed to leak in and contaminate his master plan.
Note the scenes in which we are made aware of the relationship between Truman and his audience. How do these scenes reveal what is really going on?
A number of dedicated viewers of the Truman Show are introduced to us. They are the people of the real world looking into the intimate life of a real person un-knowingly living in a make-believe movieset, the size of a small city. There is a obese man who lives in his bathtub and who also lives to watch the Truman Show. This also applies to two old couch-potato ladies, one of them whose obvious favourite possesion is a cushion with Truman’s face stitched on. The appeal of the Truman Show is worldwide and apparently very riveting as demostrated by scenes of an oriental family quite enjoying the show. Some moments could be so riveting that even two secruity guards put their butts in the firing line, abandoning their jobs, so glued were they to the last scenes, of Truman escaping his artificial world. Two barmaids also stopped the flow of alcohol to customers, thinking that the Show demanded more attention.
What the director of the movie achieves by putting in scenes of the audience, is keeping us, the watchers of the movie, mindful of the fact that Truman is actually in a T.V show which he is the unwitting star 24/7.
What impression of Christoff is established through his interviews with the audience?
The scrpit writer of the “Truman Show” portrayed Christoff who is the director of the Truman Show in his interview as a cold-hearted and calculating human being. Christoff’s character overall impresses on me as one of the great entrepeuners of all-time. It is undisputable, he single-handedly thought of and directed the entire live life passage of a real human being, from birth to adulthood. Many real people in the movie including a mysterious girl, Slyvia, that Truman fell head-over-heels in love with in highschool, he believes that Christoff is a manipulating pig. She asks whether he feels at all guilty about twisting a man’s life in such a sickening way and making a mockery of it in front of the entire world. When Christoff was asked this jarring question by Slyvia he looked straight at the screen with a lot of confidence and replied, “The world that you live in is the real sick place. What I gave Truman here is a chance to be separate from the outside world and live in a sancturary.”
I reckon that he has a lot of confidence in himself to be able admitt that he has put Truman in a cage with pretend animals of the same species. But this cage is tens of kilometres wide and enforced by bars, rather with something more effective than anything, a lie. In the interview we are shown that Christoff thinks rather highly of himself. As he believes that Truman was adopted by his company he feels he has the rights to be able to do whatever he wants to Truman, and this includes humililating him as the live star of a television show.
However what we can’t deny is that no matter how much evil Christoff possesses, and how highly he thinks of himself, he is very, very smart to be able to make Truman to stay in Seahaven without suspicion for more than 30 years. Christoff also made a comment that is remarkably philosical, “Why should we suspect anything? We take the world in which we live in for granted.”
