Truman Burbank's entire life, from before he was born, has been the subject of a television show, The Truman Show -- only he doesn't know it. All the people in his life are actors, all the places sets, all the objects props. Fans around the world watch his every moment in real time, 24 hours a day, following his personal ups and downs, speculating on what's gonna happen next.

He begins to suspect something is up. A movie light falls from the sky and crashes into his street. A technical problem causes the communications among the camera crew to play on his car radio. The actor playing his father, whose character died years ago, sneaks onto the set. "Dad" tries to talk to Truman, and is whisked quickly away by bystanders -- something that has happened before, most notably with a girl in college who tried to tell him the truth before she, too, vanished: yet not before becoming the symbol of all Truman desired, all that was somehow kept from him.

Potent themes are set in play. The success of The X-Files makes it clear audiences strongly identify with the notion that what they have been told is reality is false, and that this has been orchestrated by dark forces for unknown ends. In The Truman Show, the conspiracy also implicates television: the town and people are just too perfect -- television perfect. And overlayed onto these ideas is the notion of complete exposure, the idea that what one considers secret and private is on public display.

For sheer smartness regarding the contrast between media-created reality and what we call by consensus "the real world," this film is what Wag the Dog aspired to be, and hangs together even better. (Of course, my attitude toward Hollywood movies that presume to debunk Hollywood is a little cynical, I must confess.)

As Truman catches on to his position, he becomes unpredictable, and by dodging his daily routine manages catch a few irrefutable glimpses of the falseness of his "reality". He then tries to escape, but like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day, is thwarted by the seemingly unsurrmountable limits of his personal nightmare.

The film cuts between Truman, trapped in his world, and the people watching him on televisions. We also visit behind-the-scenes, the stagehands and cameramen of Trumen's reality, and especially the mastermind, Christof. The conflict comes to be focussed on this Creator, in absolute control of his creation and a rebel who refuses to submit to the overwhleming forces challenging him, ala Prometheus. This "vindictive God" pose seems at odds with the name Christof -- the choice of that name would seem to raise expecations that the Creator might become a character in his own story, perhaps to redeem or rescue Truman.

Indeed, the question "How Will It End?" is the slogan of The Truman Show, and director Weir raises the stakes by so drawing attention to his film's own climax. Alas, for all the knowing set-up, and the subtle flirtation with anti-religious Promethean themes, The Truman Show evidences absolutely no consciousness of its own Hollywoodesque contrivedness, its own deus ex machina. How it does end (and if you don't want to know, STOP READING) is that Truman sails to the end of his world, finds a door, and walks out -- to the "real" reality, one presumes. But the exact moment Truman exits through that door, the filmmaker enters Hollywood fantasy. Peter Weir may be a fine craftsman, but he tends to be oblivious to the questions his movies raise. In the likewise well-made Witness, the obvious question -- What is the nature of law, i.e. from whence comes our notions of right and wrong? -- is lost in the race to action and romantic entanglement.

In this case, the question is not simply "How will it end?" but rather, "How can we know what seems to be the ending is real?" If Weir was truly interested in reality, he'd have to admit to the audience that locating the borders of the real is not as simple as bumping into a set wall. A more truthful end to this film would have been to leave some questions whether the reality Truman enters through that door is real, or just another fantasy. (Or, perhaps, to leave some question whether Christof's own "reality" was "real"!) In any case, there should have been at least a little understanding that the task of apprehending reality is going to get tougher on the other side of that door. Thus, a film which presumes to pass judgment on Hollywood's phony "reality" turns out to be just another example -- just another spurious claim to reality that gets deservedly debunked.

Yet behind this bogus claim, and all the others, those of us who keep looking can't help but notice those tantalizing flickers of Something going on still further behind the scenes.