Peter Weir
The Truman Show

"Good morning, Truman!" "Beautiful day, isn't it, Truman?!" How kind and friendly are those who offer daily greetings, kind and friendly, to our Truman: they are ad hoc persons, perfect. That is precisely the problem: they are perfect.

As we know, perfection does not exist in humans, everyone has some flaws - a minimal perfection, which would allow for a good life, in my opinion, is achievable only by admitting human imperfection. The people who greet Truman (Jim Carrey) are fake, false, and do not exist in reality. They are the same people from advertisements who, at 7:00 in the morning, get up with a smile on their face, warm and welcoming towards their family members. But does Truman not notice? Absolutely not, he thinks this is normal. How can it be otherwise, since from birth he hears these greetings and feels the "perfection" around him. All this, however, is fiction. Truman does not know that he has been, since birth, the protagonist of the "fantastic" The Truman Show.

A television show, conceived by the mind of Christof (Ed Harris) - any analogy with Christ? - which follows Truman's steps in life, in space, and in time. He lives in a "fake" city, with a "fake" wife (Laura Linney) (an actress playing the part of "wife"), with a "fake" job, with "fake" friends, and so on. The only "original" is Truman (the name derives from True Man, Real Man?). But can an "original" ever live with the "fake"? In other words, can the imperfect, because human, Truman live in a situation of perfection? Absolutely not. First of all, the perfect does not fit with the imperfect, precisely because they are different and opposite. Secondly, because the "perfect man," as we know from the premises, struggles to live without admitting his own imperfection, therefore the various actors cannot long continue to play the part of "perfect." It is thus that poor Truman - after the famous "car error" - realizes he "lives" in a "perfect" world, constructed ad hoc, but unnatural.

How to dismantle this world alone, without anyone as "natural" as him? The only way is to be as natural as possible, instinctive and impulsive. Truman challenges the artificial. This, despite itself, after several attempts to "save face" by courting Truman, is destined to checkmate. Truman's final move, of a battle without precedent, is to leave the city – something the show’s "actors" had tried to prevent in every way. It will be a winning gesture, because when, with his boat, he touches the "background" of the set, Truman will stab the artificial to death, declaring himself, finally, a man free to live immersed in naturalness.

In the films of Peter Weir that I have seen, nature reigns supreme, or inevitably emerges, and human artifice is nothing but a mere louse, annoying, but fundamentally a loser.

In Master and Commander, the only way to defeat and survive the ship (artifice) is to rely on animal mimicry (nature); in Picnic at Hanging Rock, nature is revealed to be uncontrollable and mysterious by man; in Dead Poets Society, the ideal and winning teaching proves to be the one that gives students free rein, that escapes the artificial building and the alienating class structure.

I would conclude with a question: Does Truman, in the end, become "free" because he is aware of his "imprisonment" in natural determinism, as philosopher Spinoza would say, or "free" to arbitrate his own choices far from artificial determinism?