Weir, Niccol, and Kubrick: Pretty Damn Close
The Truman Show (Paramount Pictures)
I love film. I like the people we become after we see a film and are different afterwards because of seeing a film. I like them so much because they are, in effect, a journey through the mind of mankind's identity. One can even say that the best movies stand the test of repeated viewing and change us a little bit each time we see them. This is why we go on the ride—suspending our belief so that we can bend our perceptions permanently to alter who we are for the better, leaving behind convention and expired belief for something new.
Two films that have stood the test of time and sustained repeated viewing for me have been Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Christof's (Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol) The Truman Show. These two examples have survived to become timeless capsules that embody the altering spirit of film, its ability to change our minds, our perceptions of time and space, and ultimately change our vision of the world over and over again.
I saw 2001 when I was 11 years old in 1980 after its original release date of 1968 and I was fortunate enough to see The Truman Show when it came out shortly on DVD after it was released in 1998. It happens to be that Truman Burbank, our hero in The Truman Show is the same age as the years separating the release of these two films—thirty. We are introduced to Truman Burbank just 48 days before his thirtieth birthday just like the film 2001 quietly highlights the fact that it is Dr. Frank Poole's birthday on Hal's ship, the Spacecraft Discovery One. Birthdays are important in both these films, specifically because they are the foundation of the character's origins and subliminally represents a celebration of the acknowledgment of identity.
I have often surmised that Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol, the writer and director of The Truman Show, were paying homage to Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece by creating analogies that are in perfect alignment with each other in both meaning and ideology. For example, when I saw 2001 at the age of 11, I realized that, despite my young hubris, I knew nothing about the world around me after viewing the ending scene of the movie. It was revelatory to the point of affecting my perception in the real world. The same with The Truman Show. Truman Burbank is cleverly named after the true man and Burbank, California where most films are made that need studios for illusion. After I saw the last scene of The Truman Show, I had the same experience, that of a shift in my own outer reality that the movie successfully changed for the better. Both films had a ta-dah moment that I couldn't shake and this is what makes both films very similar in my mind.
Christof and Kubrick dare to ask the question, What is reality and can one relinquish the control necessary to move beyond reality and not sacrifice identity? Will we remain the same in awareness and person-hood if we leave the props and technology of appearance and sentient proof--to ultimately dislodge from the rational and controlled, and break through to the other side of the unknown? Is it worth it? In the unknown, do WE exist as Truman or Dr. David Bowman? The Truman Show poses this question with a higher power embodied in the character of Christof (played by Ed Harris) who controls reality, and 2001 asks the same question--with HAL at the helm who eventually must have his memory banks dislodged in order for Bowman to be free of lethal, controlling technology.
Both reigning forces in the films, Christof and HAL are powers that are in control, surveying our free will, and directing the actions of both heroes Truman and Bowman. At the beginning of The Truman Show, the light fixture that falls out of the sky and wakes Truman to a different reality, is named Sirius (9 Canis Major) translated in meaning as the brightest star in the sky. Yet, it falls to Earth waking Truman to his new fate. Dr. David Bowman is falling through space toward Jupiter, eventually to be witness to Kubrick's vision of a star baby as large as a planet. Each film asks the viewer to abandon what is known for what is unknown, to give up what you once were for what you can become.
Each man, Truman and Bowman must go through altered states of facing fear to get to the entryway of breaking through to the other side of awareness, whether it be a world without Christof and the eagle eye of TV or a world where, beyond the Jupiter Mission and HAL's disconnection, there resides a very different reality where Bowman sees himself dying and then being reborn as a star baby.
The question arises again, What is reality and can one relinquish the control necessary to move beyond reality and not sacrifice identity? Should one even attempt to answer this question if it is an existential problem that has no one answer. It is in effect, a paradox because when one totally relinquishes what is known for the unknown, they are not themselves anymore. Hence, we are left in The Truman Show to ponder what is beyond the dark door beyond Christof's studio and in A Space Odyssey what or who is the star baby and what is it doing in the middle of space the size of a planet? Where did Truman go? Where did Bowman go? Where is everyone and why are we in this hand-basket?
This is the answer—there is no answer that can be shared with the audience because it is every man/woman for him/herself. In other words, each person must go through their own epiphanies and their own battle with the powers that be, the confines of reality, and the next step of the unknown. When Christof says, “Cue the sun...” or when HAL won't open the pod bay doors, we realize we are at the mercy of the conditions of life, whether they be technological or artificial. We are at the mercy of the Pavlovian conditions of existence and this is why both The Truman Show and 2001: A Space Odyssey draw us in in real time, begging us to experience the film in real time, to awake to the epiphany of the ending scenes again and again. Hence, repeated viewing succeeds in its transcendental purpose.
Each film holds up its story as a timeless metaphor for the human condition that can be shared in the dark with popcorn, soda, and wide-eyed wonder, forever preserving its form and function in conjunction with the audience's own personal vision. So, to answer the question, What is reality and can one relinquish the control necessary to move beyond reality and not sacrifice identity? is different for each person. I may not know the the nature of reality, but what I do know is that in 103 minutes and 139 minutes, Peter Weir, Andrew Niccol, and Kubrick came pretty damn close.
Tracy Ross is a graduate of Augsburg University’s MFA program in Minneapolis. She is the author of three previous poetry volumes and a dystopian fictional memoir. Her first collection of short stories, *Binary Logic*, was just released in November 2022. She is currently working on a collection of essays on popular culture, convention, and the literary life. Her favorite pastimes include watching hours and hours of MTV in the dawning of its beginnings, admiring the architecture of Chicago on long walks, and meditating in the Boundary Waters Forests of Northern Minnesota. Her influences are the science fiction of Philip K. Dick, the visions of Ursula K. Le Guin, and the Transcendental poetry of Keats. She lives and works in Minnesota.
