Three decades later, The Truman Show feels freshly disturbing – and astoundingly prescient

Peter Weir’s dystopian comedy, starring Jim Carrey as the unwitting star of his own reality TV series, takes on new resonance in the techno-capitalist eraGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailThe great Australian director Peter Weir is perhaps underrated as an auteur, simply because his filmography doesn’t follow any thematic or stylistic principle; each of his contributions feels like a complete work of art unto itself. While Picnic at Hanging Rock remains his finest work, his foray into Hollywood culminated in the utterly transfixing, intermittently horrifying Jim Carrey vehicle The Truman Show. Almost 30 years after its theatrical release, the film has only grown in stature and prescience.Ostensibly a dark satire on voyeurism and the inexhaustible manipulations of the media, The Truman Show predated the television juggernaut Big Brother by a single year, and it’s hard not to see something causal in that. Both are about surveillance and the murky line separating reality from entertainment; both involve hidden cameras watching the participants’ every move. The key difference – the one that gives the film such moral potency – is that Truman doesn’t know he’s on TV.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

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