This blog post analyzes the feature film ‘The Truman Show’ through a documentary lens, examining how the film constructs and reflects reality.
The film we will analyze for its documentary elements is ‘The Truman Show’ (1998). The protagonist, Truman Burbank, is an ordinary salaryman. At least, that’s what he believes. He is married to a woman named Meryl, works at an insurance company, and is a man who developed a fear of water after witnessing his young father drown. But one day, he encounters his father, whom he believed drowned, on the street. Witnessing his father being dragged away by unknown individuals, he becomes convinced that his life is anything but ordinary. He is the protagonist of The Truman Show, broadcast live 24 hours a day. Viewers worldwide have watched his every move on TV, from his birth to his current age nearing thirty. He is a star to everyone, yet he himself has no idea. All the people around him are actors, and his home is a studio set, yet he remains completely unaware until he meets Sylvia. In college, Truman meets Sylvia, the woman of his dreams. She tells him everything is a fake, created just for him. Hearing she is leaving for Fiji, he resolves to find and follow her, albeit belatedly. He attempts to leave with his wife but fails repeatedly, realizing he can’t even trust his family or friends. He tries to escape his hometown alone. Finally, evading the cameras, Truman reaches the sea. The show’s producer tracks him down and tries to lure him back by exploiting his fear of water, but fails. Truman ultimately finds true freedom and walks out into the outside world without hesitation.
The film’s theme can be summed up in this line: ‘If your life is full of lies, if everything you believed was just a handful of entertainment for others, can you laugh?’ I remember being deeply shocked when I saw this film as a very young child. After watching it, I couldn’t easily shake the thought that the world I lived in might be fake, and that my family and friends could be actors hired by the government. That’s how powerful the film’s realism was; it made me wonder if my own world might be like that too.
I believe The Truman Show contains many documentary-like elements. The opening sequence is a prime example. The opening of The Truman Show features an interview with the broadcast producer creating the show. This part can be seen as taking the form of a narrated documentary. Additionally, interview footage of the actors participating in The Truman Show appears. They describe Truman’s life, broadcast live to the entire world, as sublime and blessed. But is Truman’s life truly sublime and blessed? The feeling of discovering that the reality you knew was all a lie, and that the people you trusted were fabricated characters within the medium of broadcasting, is impossible to easily imagine.
If the opening sequence of The Truman Show can be compared to a commentary documentary, then the footage of Truman that occupies most of the film can be considered an observational documentary. Due to the nature of The Truman Show, there is no script. Therefore, cameras are hidden everywhere, and the people acting around Truman strive to ensure both Truman and themselves are clearly visible on camera, while keeping it as hidden from Truman as possible. The way Truman is captured on camera in this manner resembles observational documentary filmmaking, where cameras are placed throughout a location to record events as they unfold. The Truman Show is filled with numerous documentary elements. These elements combine to create a feature film that feels like a documentary. In a way, The Truman Show is a film about making a documentary, and this very process makes viewers perceive it less as a scripted movie and more as a documentary recording reality.
Every person is granted the single right of freedom. By showing Truman, who has had that freedom taken away, the film connects the theme of the feature film with the documentary’s critical inquiry. Watching this film, we see it raises a single critical question: ‘We determine our path forward through the will to choose, we look ahead, and we anticipate change. But there is no expectation in a choice made without will, no hope in a future without expectation, and no effort in a human without hope. Choice brings consequences, and consequences demand responsibility. Taking responsibility, making choices—these are our own affairs, and no one else’s.” When we see this film raising such a critical question, it can be said to be a feature film heavily infused with documentary elements.
