Wednesday, August 22, 2007

In which I review a movie from my cabinet at home




I've been thinking about the Truman Show today. I love that movie. I take it waaaay too seriously, which I have to assume was kind of the point. I mean, surely, you don't write lines like, "People accept the reality with which they are presented," unless you intend to be deep - don't you think? If you haven't seen it - briefly - Truman was adopted at birth and raised in a world created by a television studio. He thinks he's living his life, but everyone else around him is just acting, and his decisions are subtly made for him by the producers. The concept completely fascinates me and, frankly, I've been there. I've made decisions that were really kind-of sort-of made for me. I've lived life in a fog sometimes, refusing to see what was real and what was ridiculous.

The scene I keep thinking about today is the one where Truman is pouring his heart and fears out to his "best friend". And the whole time the best friend is placing, removing, and re-placing the same six candy bars into a vending machine because he doesn't actually do that for a living. I don't know why - it's just making me smile today. And I need the smile, because on the inside I'm actually Truman getting out of the boat and hitting the wall that's painted to look like the sky. It's awful when you realize life is happening to you instead of your actually living it. I've been here before. And I eventually get a breakthrough. Because it's almost all perspective. It's waking up and looking around from an objective point of view to see which things are real and which things are just for television. So to speak. I guess normal people would just say, "I'm reexamining my priorities." But where is the drama in that?

2 comments:

May Vanderbilt said...

Loved this post! I think I walked around in a fog until I graduated college. Then the cruel world greeted me and I finally had to decide what I believed and thought. I know it sounds silly but it was really shocking to me at the time!

And I love this movie too. I actually grew up right near the town where it was filmed. It's called Seaside and it looks very much like a perfect world. It's a bit freaky.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for commenting, May! And apparently it's not silly at all, because we've both been there and surely we're not the only ones. Seaside is real? Maybe I'll visit it someday and get that eerie feeling and start freaking out a little to try and make people, you know, ad lib . . .