楚门的世界 The Truman Show 英文影评 review by Kevin Lally

第一篇：楚门的世界 The Truman Show 英文影评 review by Kevin Lally

楚门的世界 The Truman Show 英文影评 review by Kevin Lally 2008-03-14 23:11:23 来源：Internet 浏览次数：2903 文字大小：【大】【中】【小】 简介：Jim Carrey proved he could play it straight(well, at least a portion of the time)as a family man in Liar Liar, his 1997 comedy blockbuster.With The Truman Show, the elastic-faced, loose-limbed dyna...Jim Carrey proved he could play it straight(well, at least a portion of the time)as a family man in Liar Liar, his 1997 comedy blockbuster.With The Truman Show, the elastic-faced, loose-limbed dynamo shows he can also be as serious as needed, in the title role of this imaginative tale of an electronic-age guinea pig.Screenwriter Andrew Niccol, whose directing debut, Gattaca, cautioned against the potential tyranny of genetic advances, again finds reasons for paranoia in technological progress, as an innocent named Truman Burbank becomes the unknowing, all-consuming subject of a 24-hour television network.Niccol's unconventional fable is superbly realized by director Peter Weir(Fearless, Dead Poets Society, Witness), who fashions a disorienting visual style to fit the artifice and pent-up anxiety of Truman's world.Niccol and Weir shrewdly immerse the audience in this oddly cheerful environment, without immediate explanations of what's really going on behind its sunny fa‡ade.Truman lives with his wholesome wife Meryl(Laura Linney)in a picture-perfect house in the squeaky-clean island community of Seahaven, where he works for a large insurance firm.His days pass by uneventfully, until a series of incidents shake him out of his complacency: A huge piece of lighting equipment falls out of the sky.A homeless man appears who looks just like Truman's dead father.Strange radio transmissions, like stage directions, come out of his car radio.For the first time, Truman begins to suspect that something is rotten in Seahaven.Nearly halfway through the film, we learn the truth: Since birth, Truman has been watched by a phalanx of hidden cameras, his every waking move transmitted to an increasingly addicted, international television audience.Seahaven is actually the world's largest studio set;the sky, the ocean, the stars and the sunsets are fakes, and the weather is controlled by outside forces.What's more, everyone Truman encounters in his daily routine is an actor-even his wife and his best friend Marlon(Noah Emmerich)are on the payroll.This enormous charade is the handiwork of Christof(Ed Harris), a megalomaniacal conceptual artist who sees nothing wrong with the mass-appeal social experiment he's concocted.Christof has kept Truman from puncturing the boundaries of his world by staging a childhood boating accident in which the boy's father apparently drowned;Truman has been deathly afraid of the water ever since.The other key incident in Truman's life was unplanned-a budding romantic affair with a 'college student' who tried to spill the secret of Seahaven, but was suddenly sent away to the island of Fiji(or so Truman believes).The Truman Show begins just before this fantasy world begins to crumble, following a long and profitable run for Christof and his network backers.Niccol cannily maintains our involvement throughout, first by keeping the action shrouded in mystery, then by giving us a strong rooting interest in Truman's poignant quest for identity and freedom.It's an ideal role for Carrey: Truman's freakish situation offers him several dramatically valid opportunities to cut loose in the patented Carrey fashion, while maintaining the essential humanity of this socially deprived Everyman.In career terms, the part of Truman Burbank is an important turning point for this gifted comedian.The Truman Show strains credibility, however, in its cynical view of a world that embraces what is, after all, a rather cruel and disturbing experiment.Granted, the daily spectacle of audiences cheering brawls and fistfights on 'The Jerry Springer Show' proves we haven't come far from the Roman Coliseum era, and the public's salacious interest in scandals ranging from O.J.to JonBenet Ramsey reveals a whopping insensitivity to personal tragedy.But The Truman Show, despite its attempt to put an upbeat final-act spin on its hero's struggle, takes it as a given that the world would look in on Truman's unwitting imprisonment without much more than a few scattered protests.This one important caveat aside, Weir and Niccol have come up with a bracingly original cinematic experience, an eerie but entertaining vision of one man's struggle against a high-tech Big Brother he doesn't even know exists.Dennis Gassner's hermetically sealed production design and Peter Biziou's resourceful cinematography make a perfect fit with Weir's lively, lyrical directing style.It may be Jim Carrey's show, but he shares the bill with some equally daring high-wire walkers.楚门的世界 The Truman Show 英文影评 review by ROGER EBERT 2008-03-14 23:12:33 来源：Internet 浏览次数：1277 文字大小：【大】【中】【小】

简介：``The Truman Show'' is founded on an enormous secret that all of the studio's advertising has been determined to reveal.I didn't know the secret when I saw the film, and was able to enjoy the lit...关键字：楚门的世界 The Truman Show

The Truman Show'' is founded on an enormous secret that all of the studio's advertising has been determined to reveal.I didn't know the secret when I saw the film, and was able to enjoy the little doubts and wonderings that the filmmakers so carefully planted.If by some good chance you do not know the secret, read no further.Those fortunate audience members(I trust they have all left the room?)will be able to appreciate the meticulous way director Peter Weir and writer Andrew Niccol have constructed a jigsaw plot around their central character, who doesn't suspect that he's living his entire life on live television.Yes, he lives in an improbably ideal world, but I fell for that: I assumed the movie was taking a sitcom view of life, in which neighbors greet each other over white picket fences, and Ozzie and Harriet are real people.Actually, it's Seaside, a planned community on the Gulf Coast near Tampa.Called Seahaven in the movie, it looks like a nice place to live.Certainly Truman Burbank(Jim Carrey)doesn't know anything else.You accept the world you're given, the filmmakers suggest;more thoughtful viewers will get the buried message, which is that we accept almost everything in our lives without examining it very closely.When was the last time you reflected on how really odd a tree looks? Truman works as a sales executive at an insurance company, is happily married to Meryl(Laura Linney), and doesn't find it suspicious that she describes household products in the language of TV commercials.He is happy, in a way, but an uneasiness gnaws away at him.Something is missing, and he thinks perhaps he might find it in Fiji, where Lauren(Natascha McElhone), the only woman he really loved, allegedly has moved with her family.Why did she leave so quickly? Perhaps because she was not a safe bet for Truman's world: The actress who played her(named Sylvia)developed real feeling and pity for Truman, and felt he should know the truth about his existence.Meryl, on the other hand, is a reliable pro(which raises the question, unanswered, of their sex life).Truman's world is controlled by a TV producer named Christof(Ed Harris), whose control room is high in the artificial dome that provides the sky and horizon of Seahaven.He discusses his programming on talk shows, and dismisses the protests of those(including Sylvia)who believe Truman is the victim of a cruel deception.Meanwhile, the whole world watches Truman's every move, and some viewers even leave the TV on all night, as he sleeps.The trajectory of the screenplay is more or less inevitable: Truman must gradually realize the truth of his environment, and try to escape from it.It's clever the way he's kept on his island by implanted traumas about travel and water.As the story unfolds, however, we're not simply expected to follow it: We're invited to think about the implications.About a world in which modern communications make celebrity possible, and inhuman.Until fairly recently, the only way you could become really famous was to be royalty, or a writer, actor, preacher or politician--and even then, most people had knowledge of you only through words or printed pictures.Television, with its insatiable hunger for material, has made celebrities into ``content,'' devouring their lives and secrets.If you think ``The Truman Show'' is an exaggeration, reflect that Princess Diana lived under similar conditions from the day she became engaged to Charles.Carrey is a surprisingly good choice to play Truman.We catch glimpses of his manic comic persona, just to make us comfortable with his presence in the character, but this is a well-planned performance;Carrey is on the right note as a guy raised to be liked and likable, who decides his life requires more risk and hardship.Like the angels in ``City of Angels,'' he'd like to take his chances.Ed Harris also finds the right notes as Christof, the TV svengali.He uses the technospeak by which we distance ourselves from the real meanings of our words.(If TV producers ever spoke frankly about what they were really doing, they'd come across like Bulworth.)For Harris, the demands of the show take precedence over any other values, and if you think that's an exaggeration, tell it to the TV news people who broadcast that Los Angeles suicide.I enjoyed ``The Truman Show'' on its levels of comedy and drama;I liked Truman in the same way I liked Forrest Gump--because he was a good man, honest, and easy to sympathize with.But the underlying ideas made the movie more than just entertainment.Like ``Gattaca,'' the previous film written by Niccol, it brings into focus the new values that technology is forcing on humanity.Because we can engineer genetics, because we can telecast real lives--of course we must, right? But are these good things to do? The irony is, the people who will finally answer that question will be the very ones produced by the process.

第二篇：楚门的世界英文影评

Life is starting to imitate satire.“The Truman Show” was only made seven years ago, but it predates the current mania for so-called “reality” television shows such as “Big Brother”.The idea behind such shows is that they present the viewer with a slice of actual reality-real people in real situations with real emotions-rather than the simulated reality of drama or the edited reality of documentaries.The flaw in this idea is that nothing is more unreal than a reality show.The presence of the cameras has a distorting effect, inducing artificial behaviour patterns in those who appear in front of it, and the sort of people who star in such programmes are almost invariably eccentric exhibitionists.“The Truman Show” takes the central concept of reality TV shows one stage further in order to overcome this flaw: what would happen if we made a reality programme about a person who has absolutely no idea that he is appearing on television? Truman Burbank is an insurance executive, living in a small American seaside town called Seahaven, and happily married to a nurse named Meryl.Or at least he thinks he is.What Truman doesn't know is that he is the central character in a soap opera and that his whole life is a fiction.The company he works for does not exist.Seahaven, the island it stands on and the surrounding ocean are all part of a gigantic set, specially created for the programme and sealed off from the outside world in a gigantic geodesic dome.Everyone in Truman's life-Meryl, his mother, his colleagues at work, his best friend Marlon-are actors playing out their roles in his drama.For thirty years Truman has accepted his world unquestioningly, but at the beginning of the film a series of incidents-a light falling from the sky, the reappearance of his father, who was supposed to have drowned in a boating accident when Truman was a boy, strange messages picked up on his car radio-awaken his doubts.Although members of the cast make strenuous attempts to dissuade him, he decides to try and explore the world outside Seahaven;in particular he wants to travel to Fiji where he has been told that his former girlfriend Sylvia now lives.(Sylvia was written out of the show when the scriptwriters decided that he should marry Meryl instead).The film has certain similarities with another film from the late nineties, “Pleasantville”, which dealt with an inverted version of the same idea;two teenagers from the real world are magically transported into the world of a fifties television show.In my view, however, “The Truman Show” is the better of the two.“Pleasantville” deals with its political themes in a heavy-handed way with some very obvious symbolism.“The Truman Show”, although it deals with some weighty issues, is never ponderous or excessively serious;indeed, it is often very humorous.The main source of humour is the contrast between the naïve, trusting Truman and the behaviour of those around him, all living a lie and desperately trying to prevent Truman from finding out that it is a lie.I had previously thought of Jim Carrey as a rather annoying actor whose appeal was based upon the idea that manic overacting is in itself funny, but here as Truman he is very good indeed, both amusing and touching.I was also impressed by Ed Harris as Christof, the show's enigmatic producer.Another factor in the success of the film is its visual look.Seahaven(like the town in “Pleasantville”)appears as an eerily perfect, not-quite-real version of the typical American small town, but was actually filmed in a real place, the purpose-built village of Seaside, Florida.There are similarities with the cult British sixties television series “The Prisoner”, which was also filmed in an eerily perfect seaside village, Portmeirion in North Wales.Critics have been lavishing enormous praise on this movie since it opened in America last June, and probably rightly so because it is a superbly crafted piece of work.Weir's direction is outstanding, frequently viewing events from the point of view of hidden spy cameras, such as the one in Truman's car radio.One stunning shot has the town's main street full of motionless extras, waiting for Truman to turn the corner.Jim Carrey's performance has been singled out for particular praise, and though his acting is of a much higher standard that his usual comedy antics, it is not exactly Laurence Olivier.This said, an Oscar nomination would have been well deserved.The film is obviously a satire on the intrusiveness and obsession with celebrity of the modern media;added relevance was given by the fact that it came out shortly after the death of Princess Diana.There is, however, more to it than that.Much has been made of the film as religious allegory;it has been pointed out that Christof whose name is clearly, and quite deliberately, similar to “Christ”, is a God-figure, whereas Truman(the “True Man”)is a symbolic Everyman.It has even been claimed that the film is an anti-religious allegory, with Truman's final escape from Seahaven symbolic of man's need to break away from outdated religious dogmas.This is not an interpretation with which I would agree-if one is trying to put across a “God is dead” message, it seems odd to provide a God-figure who is very much real, not mythical or illusory.The imagery of the final scenes – the calm after the storm, the ascent up a flight of stairs into the sky and clouds-also struck me as religious rather than secular.Moreover, the film seems too complex to be reduced to any single allegorical meaning, although it certainly deals with the relationship between man and God.It also touches on man's need to explore-both to explore new places and also to explore new ideas and to break away from established ways of life and ways of thought-and on the nature of reality.Truman's world may seem unreal to us, but as Christof says, “we accept the reality we are presented with”.This is a brilliant, multi-layered film, part comedy, part satire, part philosophical speculation, and in my view one of the two best movies of the late nineties.(The other was “American Beauty”).I felt it should have taken the “Best Picture” Oscar for 1999-“Shakespeare in Love” is a good film, but “The Truman Show” is a great one.It confirms my view that Peter Weir is one of the best directors currently working

第三篇：《楚门的世界》英文影评

Movie Review of the Truman Show

Born as a TV star, Truman is living in a small island called Seahaven for the first half of his life.But he doesn’t know that everyone and everything happened around him is fake.Nor dose he know that the place he lives for so many years is actually a huge studio.With the plot spreading, Truman gradually realizes that there is something wrong with his life;It seems that everybody and everything is focused on him.Leading by his dream, he managed to get out;leaving the world that was created for him and went to that unknown outside, dark and dangerous.Freedom is an eternal topic in western movies and is also very important for all of us.How can a people live without freedom and privacy? I see that Truman lives in such an amazing environment that everybody in the world can see him and there is no privacy for him at all.But after he finds that he is living in a fictitious world, he makes up his mind to leave the studio to live a life that belongs to him.To get the girl he loves and his freedom back, he overcomes his psychological barrier and fights with the storms and lightening made by the chief conductor of the movie---the Truman Show.Finally, Truman makes it and get out of the fictitious world although he knows that there maybe many unknown obstacles waiting for him.This is the power of freedom and love.Another thing I’d like to mention is that when reporters ask why Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world

until now, and then the answer is that we accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.I was shocked when I heard this.In our daily life, we get used to what is happening around us so we never ask why this just happens.Although we live our lives everyday, life itself is the thing easiest forgotten by us.If we pay more attention to our life, we may find that there are so many things for us to do to enhance our life.We are usually getting numb with time going by.So be curious about the things happened in our life and you may find that life is interesting and happy.Cherishing your life and enjoying your life, you can make a big difference.

第四篇：《楚门的世界》英文影评

My thought about Truman

All the people can know about Truman, such as his life.For 10,909 days, it has been on the air, using more than 5000 cameras to show every moment in every day of the life of him.But unfortunately, it is he that didn’t know.Around the world, everyday there were millions of people watching his life which had already been set.I thought it may be terribly sorrowful of him to accept such a truth.Thus he got mad, and nothing can hold back his heart for freedom.We know his name is Truman, which stands for truth.But his life is full of falsehood.No one told him that until he finally got it.The director said, the life in the island is the truth.Truman used his action to prove it a lie, a total lie.Freedom is the thing that exceeds everything in the world, nothing can be in place of it.Of course, if he chose to live in the island, he can be original pop star, he can get many things comfortably.Yet as a bird, we choose to fly in the sky.As a man, we also need to our own sky.The movie might tell us this moral.Although Truman was born to be a man losing freedom, he was still a man.His option is himself, not making fun of others.The ending of movie, audiences were touched by his perseverance, and then switch the TV channel.It’s so ironical about their behaviors.However, the society is just this look.So what we should do is to pursue our own bliss.If Truman gave up himself, the god will also abandon him.We are what we do, and we need our freedom and perseverance.

第五篇：楚门的世界英文影评

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《楚门的世界》英文影评

Movie Review of

The Truman show was really a very good movie, we can learn some truths from it, the lively perform and the touching story let us moving, I feel very happy about at last Truman run out the ‘truth’ world by other make, in spite of other attitude and choose his life.Born as a TV star, Truman is imprisoned in a small island called Seahaven for the first half of his life.Of course Truman don’t know he is a star, at first we all think Truman was a man, ordinary, like the life around us, he has many desires and very easy to meet, he has work、wife、parents、friend and so on, live a normal life, everything look normal, but with the develop of the plot, we know everything is arranged, his work、wife、parents and everybody around him are all actor, when we know it , all the audiences care about him ,Truman start to find his friends, his wife and everybody, everything are focus on him, And at last, he finally realized that there was something wrong with the world he lived in.Leading by his dream, he managed to get out, leaving the world that was created for him and went to that unknown outside, dark and dangerous.Audience see the Truman’s ‘truth’ live, the director aim to attract the audience’s eye, when Truman happy he would give him time to create some trouble, when in its depressed, then size the opportunity to open it alive.The most moving is the end of the movie, Truman is awake, and he told the camera, really the ‘God’ strike played out.Panic talented director, he will lose the audience, he strove to retain Truman, the director told him to leave the control of the world is very dangerous, but Truman was out of the door, walks over to the dark unknown world, he said that the world waiting for him no matter what, he did not care, Buddhism, the ‘epiphany’ one said, and that a complete self-sufficiency of human nature is dead in the dust covering it, it lost, Truman is the insight it seems, he should get back the lost self, the self-contained complete and carefree nature.The audiences are cry, they feel very happy just because Truman , He get truth life with his struggle, no matter how the world was, the importance is that he choose his life , he decide his friends、wife and so on about himself, no one can make Truman’s life.Not only the story was very good, but also the dialogue was worth to remember, such as first, Good morning, and in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

Second, I have given Truman the chance to lead a normal life.The world, the place you live in, is the sick place.Third, I have given Truman the chance to lead a normal life.The world, the place you live in, is the sick place, of course these only part of the wonderful dialogue, but I very like these dialogue.We can learn some thing from the movie, actually life is like a show, no matter in virtual world or fact life , we all play role in different part, we all should bravery in the fact of new life, new challenge, we should let us life become funny and live a meaning life.Weather we may give up something or not, I think life should make by you, no one can do it except you, I hope everybody can do it.