The TV screen within which you can see Truman gives you a perspective of how people see Truman living his normal and daily routined life in a happy hometown, whereas in the film Pleasantville it starts off with someone flicking through the channels and coming to rest on an advert promoting the ‘Pleasantville Marathon’ a 24 hour back-to-back marathon. You can see the contrast within the two worlds of Pleasantville and David and Jennifer’s world full of complications and difficulties and the world seems like a negative place as they learn about famine etc in school. Pleasantville has happy family life but on the other hand there is the mother arguing over the phone with her ex-boyfriend. Another contrast is black/white and colour, portraying that the 50’s were the good old days and that the present days are bad.
So in Pleasantville and Seahaven, where Truman lives, there is not much difference, as their life is lived like a routine over and over again and life is good as there are no negative points due to the fact that things are perfect.
Media is portrayed negatively in The Truman Show as Truman is never given a choice about his role; he is tricked into believing that his life is real. The scenes of people watching The Truman Show are shown as being silly and fixated by what happens to Truman, showing that they are obsessed with other people’s lives. The Truman Show is a typical 50’s sitcom with no violence and no swearing, which is nothing like the real world, this is fake reality to Truman which Christof created for him.
Media is also portrayed negatively in the reality of David and Jennifer’s world as they mainly focus on the bad things that happen to the world E.g. famine, in the real world things aren’t so negative, whereas in Pleasantville, which is set in the 50’s, shows that everyone is friendly, living their happy lives, and they live their life like a routine similar to The Truman Show.
The main storylines and themes of the two films are quite different. In Pleasantville people fear what they don’t understand; sexism and racism are also themes of the film. Sexism is shown in the way that women should stay at home and do the domestic things in the house, where the male figure goes out to work and fends for the family; in this case The Truman Show is different as both Truman and Meryl work. Racism was part of the film when the Pleasantville community were separated into coloured and non-coloured communities just because they were afraid to mix. From racism, hatred started to grow within the people and the society became ‘evil’.
The main storyline for The Truman Show is a life story of Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) who is the star of a reality TV show, but he doesn’t know that everything around him is fake, including the people closest to him. We soon learn that there are other doubts in Truman’s heart, a lost love Sylvia (Natascha McElthone) – a girl who tries to reveal the reality to him before being mysteriously transported to ‘Tahiti’. It was this lost love that drove him to discover the truth about the world he lived in. The main themes expressed in this film are romance/love, adventure, truth and reality. These main themes are completely different to Pleasantville’s themes.
Music is used in Pleasantville as a way of showing when people started to change, emphasizing that something special was happening, they stated listening to pre-rock ‘n’ roll 50’s music and therefore the characters started to become more open minded, and the music also gives us an idea of the year. In The Truman Show music was used effectively by changing with the emotions within the scenes and by dramatizing the characters emotions. Music was used to create tension and suspense in the audience and as it was a reality TV show music played in the background all the time and there was theme music to go with the show.
Character wise in the Truman show Truman is a nice, naïve, naturally curious, funny and quite a rebellious person like Jennifer as he wants to move away from the perfect world and Jennifer wants to change the people around her and she changes the natural balance of things in Pleasantville.
Truman’s wife Meryl (Laura Linney) plays a bubbly character and seems like a very fake character because she is so into her character that she tends to over do it and she finds it hard when Truman begins to change as he starts to realise the things going on around him. Truman believes that everyone is against him, not telling him anything and the people closest to him start acting out of the ordinary, he begins to become aggressive and obsessive.
Truman’s best friend since early childhood is Marlon (Noah Emmerich) and they see each other like brothers, Marlon’s character is very manipulative as he begins to influence Truman with an intention to deceive him telling him things that are not true, this is because he is an actor in the false world created for Truman. The creator of the show Christof is very domineering and likes things to be done his way at any length; this controlling thought has led him to believe that he owns Truman.
The characters in Pleasantville are quite similar. David is a shy and quiet boy, fairly geeky but as he started to change into his character Bud he was outspoken like Jennifer.
Jennifer is very outwards and always has been, her character is a sleezy teenager and the relationship between her and David is edgy as she is always rude to him and it is this rebellious attitude that causes the unevenness of the natural balance in Pleasantville. Towards the end, Jennifer who plays the role of Mary-Sue does eventually start to change. Bud and Mary-Sue’s mother is played by Joan Allen who is a housewife. Once things start to change she changes as well, you can see this as she has an affair with the diner owner played by Jeff Daniels and in due course leaves her husband. Within her character she is not very confident but is naive.
Looking at the good things of both films we can say that it shows a good comparison between real life and TV life although in The Truman Show it might not have been so evident. Pleasantville highlights some of the issues from the 50’s like racism and some moral issues.
Both films were directed skilfully and the costumes were well researched, and both images of the ‘perfect world’ were set out marvellously. And of course the acting cast were superb showing emotions and ambition. The Truman Show is suitable for the whole family but some might say that a few of the scenes in Pleasantville are unsuitable for young children due to sexual contents.
Some of the bad points of the films were that in Pleasantville the black/white scenes might have been a bit off putting for some audiences as it created an outdated look, things in the past, and that the ending of the film was quite predictable. In The Truman Show the opening sequence and the beginning was rather slow and it was difficult to follow as it gave certain hints at the beginning of it being a TV show and there were different shots of the characters doing their own thing and talking, e.g. Truman playing with the soap in the bathroom and Meryl talking about how The Truman Show was her life.
I think that Pleasantville will attract teenagers as an audience. They’d probably like the film because there are teenagers involved in the film but might have found it a bit boring during the black/white periods but started to get a bit more interested when it was in colour. A good point about the film is that it keeps the audience in suspense and this is what teenagers like and enjoy. They can also see how the teenagers in the 50’s were like and for them to establish the differences between now and then.
Although teenagers might not have been the target audience for The Truman Show it would interest them because of Jim Carrey who is known as a comedian and also because they like the aspect of live TV and looking at someone continuously.
On the whole I think that both films were beautifully produced, directed and acted.
