2023年楚门的世界英文影评.docx

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1、2023年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

2、 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 i

3、n 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 abs

4、olutely 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 doesnt know is that he is the central character in a soap opera an

5、d 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 Trumans life- Meryl

6、, 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

7、 supposed to have drowned in a boating accident when Truman was a boy, strange meages picked up on his car radio- awaken his doubts.Although members of the cast make strenuous attempts to diuade him, he decides to try and explore the world outside Seahaven; in particular he wants to travel to Fiji w

8、here 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

9、 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,

10、although it deals with some weighty iues, is never ponderous or exceively serious; indeed, it is often very humorous.The main source of humour is the contrast between the nave, trusting Truman and the behaviour of those around him, all living a lie and desperately trying to prevent Truman from findi

11、ng 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 impreed by Ed Harris as Christof, the shows enigmat

12、ic producer. Another factor in the succe 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

13、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 su

14、perbly crafted piece of work.Weirs direction is outstanding, frequently viewing events from the point of view of hidden spy cameras, such as the one in Trumans car radio.One stunning shot has the towns main street full of motionle extras, waiting for Truman to turn the corner.Jim Carreys performance

15、 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 intrusivene and obseion with celebrity

16、of the modern media; added relevance was given by the fact that it came out shortly after the death of Prince 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, simil

17、ar 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 Trumans final escape from Seahaven symbolic of mans need to break away from outdated religious dogmas.This is not an interpretation with whic

18、h I would agree- if one is trying to put acro a God is dead meage, 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 rath

19、er 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 mans need to explore- both to explore new places and also to explore new ideas and to break away from establi

20、shed ways of life and ways of thought- and on the nature of reality.Trumans 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

21、 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 楚门的世界英文影评 楚门的世界英文影评 楚门的世界英文影评 楚门的世界英文影评 影评 楚门的世界 楚门的世界影评 楚门的世界影评 影评楚门的世界 楚门的世界影评 楚门的世界 影评