The Truman Show
Saving Private Ryan
Elizabeth
Shakespeare in Love
Mask of Zorro and
Out of Sight
1998 saw the production of, at least, five very good movies in four separate genres which have not seen much original in them for a while, science fiction, war, historical epic and the swashbuckler. A sixth very good movie is in a very popular category that has had lots of entrants in recent times: the light-hearted adaptation of an Elmore Leonard crime novel. I cannot make my mind up completely which I order I would rank the six but it is rare for so many good movies to come along at the one time.
The Truman Story gives lie to the idea that original ideas are passe in the sf movie business. Mind you, most of the genre is still given over to Star Wars imitations and to extended episodes of children's sf television series, such as Star Trek. But every so often (by my reckoning about once a decade) some movie-maker takes the elements of sf and actually fashions something that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. By my reckoning The Truman Show is the first such movie since Groundhog Day.
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Classic sf involves placing recognisable human beings in realistic situations that are separated from our everyday experience by some scientific or technological change - a space drive has been developed or time travel or ESP abilities or some such. The "McGuffin" in The Truman Story is that the protagonist has been, for all his life, the star of the eponymous television show, an extrapolation from the current tendency to lifestyle television.
Gradually Truman Burbank is realising that his world is different from that which he knows and is beginning to suspect why.
Like most very good movies, The Truman Show is based on an excellent script - by Andrew Nicol whose script for Gattaca demonstrated some appreciation for the more cerebral side of SF. Truman's awakening, placed neatly in a many-faceted narrative in which we see his world, the production studio and the outside world in a series of episodes which gradually reveal all to us, and to him, is very well-handled. But the movie relies even more on the empathy of the audience with the protagonist. Here the director, Peter Weir, took a great chance by casting a clown in the central role.
Jim Carrey achieves something that his nearest filmic ancestor, Jerry Lewis, could not: he creates a sympathetic dramatic character whose fate is of interest to us. I was surprised by how good a job Carrey did, given my antipathy to his earlier "comic" persona. To me, at least part of the credit goes to Weir who has previously demonstrated his ability to get good performances out of his lead actors.
But what really made The Truman Show work so well was the satire of television and of the lifestyle show. Ed Harris' Christof personifies the director immersed in his work, for whom there is no other outlet. Another classy performance from a classy actor. The show within the film is well done too. The satire is highlighted by the interpolation of "ads" within the show - just a small extension of the current overuse of "product placement" in film and television - and by the improvisation necessary to maintain the "reality" when it slips.
Peter Weir, who has not directed a film since Fearless, is back in fine form. His control of his subject and of the narrative flow is flawless in The Truman Show. That such an original and challenging idea was translated so well into the final film is a credit to all concerned.
(Optional aside: some people have made comparisons between The Truman Show and David Ross' Pleasantville, apparently because both involve a television show. Now Pleasantville is a nice - and I use that term in its blandest sense - movie with a good idea or two and a great execution of the special effects but it does not compare comparison with the thoughtful speculation in Truman.)
As noted above, this is an excellent movie but I say that with reservations. The framing (modern) story is gratuitous and, particularly, the anti-climax unnecessary, overly cloying and purely Spielbergian.
That said, the two major battle scenes are among the best bits of pure film produced and directed anywhere and at any time and adequately communicate the director's point about war, heroism and sacrifice far more effectively than the manipulative final scene. I would have paid good money just to see those two sequences.
Between the two battles (and the framing story) Spielberg has paid homage to the other great WWII movie, Battleground. Like SPR, Battleground concentrates its narrative on the efforts of a squad of men, in that film fighting what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Like Spielberg's company, the William Wellman's soldiers have little idea of the grand strategic sweep of the battle, or even of the tactics of their generals, they just have to "do and die". Similarly they represent a cross-section of (white) American society in those days of a segregated army.
Battleground loses nothing in comparison with SPR in that middle section of the movie but does not have the immediacy of the combat scenes which highlight later movie. On the other hand, Wellman knows how to end a movie without rubbing the audience's nose in the message he is pushing.
Ultimately, my yardstick for movie greatness, the one that I use to separate the good stuff from my favourites, is whether I want to see it again and again. SPR fails that last hurdle, remaining a good movie, with great sections, but one which could have been very great if the director had left well enough alone and trusted the intelligence of his audience.
Six of the best continued
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]