Spoiler warning for Stranger Than Fiction and The Truman Show.
It would be an understatement to say that 2020 felt like a complete disruption of reality as we knew it. With this disruption came a sudden clarity around who is really in control and how certain privileges — namely, racial, and socioeconomic — insulate those in power from facing the consequences of their mistakes. And with that clarity, most if not all of us seemed to have an awakening to the various roles we play in our own lives and the lives of those around us — a “main character moment,” if you will.
This notion of being the protagonist — that is, embodying a particular type of self-importance in which a person views their life as a narrative — trickled its way into our lives not only through actions to combat (or evade) the tangible and invisible forces that confined us to quarantine, but also through the online platforms to which we became tethered. On Tik Tok, arguably the most prominent platform of the pandemic, users capitalized on this trend by creating amusing, self-deprecating videos intent on inspiring people to “start romanticizing your life” and “think about yourself as the main character.” At the same time, some conveyed the opposite, joking about their anxiety of “being perceived” by others. On Twitter, it’s considered best to avoid being the main character altogether.
Without unmitigated access to public and communal spaces, the pandemic intensified how we saw ourselves and how we wanted to be seen, distorting and remodeling the way we branded our identities, expressed our grief, and carved out unique little worlds within the one in which we were held captive. This thorny blurring between the gritty realism of existence and these attempts at rationalizing our own significance through the realities we construct echo the thematic threads of Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction.
These brilliant, ambitiously high-concept comedies revolved around ordinary men who take control of their lives when they realize they’re living in a superficial reality dictated and puppeteered by ambitious, morbid God-like creators. In addition to their endlessly rich texts and clever dialogue, The Truman Show and Stranger Than Fiction each illuminated and examined the power of the self, the moral quandaries of authorship, and most importantly, the desire for autonomy when unexpected external forces disarm our sense of the world. They also benefited from the impressive, understated central performances of Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell, respectively, who play the protagonists in each story. Expanding on their usual unhinged comedy shtick, the two iconic funnymen inhabit these dramatic, soft-spoken roles with aplomb, neatly subverting preconceptions about their acting ranges; even mirroring their characters’s disorientation.
Harold Ramis’s 1993 time loop classic Groundhog Day was arguably the movie most often referenced in describing what life in 2020 was like, but The Truman Show makes for a strong second contender. With its contained setting and creeping sense of social alienation boiling underneath so-called normalcy, the 1998 satirical dramedy carries an especially poignant weight in the context of this past year. It illustrates, with humor and accuracy, the pervasive social fears that manifest during life-altering, status quo-shattering events. Similarly to the reality-bending, Y2K-paranoia films it predated — Pleasantville, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich — The Truman Show distilled this quiet unease through a trippy, self-reflexive lens. Its story centers on a prototypical everyman named Truman Burbank (Carrey), who discovers that his idyllic life is actually the premise of a long-running television series created by a devious, Kangol hat-wearing producer named Christof (Ed Harris).
Everything is a lie and everyone is a liar in Truman’s life except for him — hence, the double entendre of his name, “true man.” From the 5,000+ cameras that record and monitor his every move to the all-too paradisal suburban town he resides in, Truman’s authenticity stands out as a stark contrast to his absurdly artificial and deceptive surroundings. The people who populate his inner life, namely his wife Meryl (Laura Linney) and best friend Louis (Noah Emmerich), are mere actors masking ulterior motives, conspicuously advertising products during their interactions with Truman, while downplaying his suspicions that everything isn’t as it seems. The only person Truman can really trust and rely on is his college classmate and love interest Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), who, in a flashback sequence, reveals the truth to him about his circumstances before Christof’s henchmen take her away and forcibly write her off the show. Despite multiple attempts to seek her out, Truman is kept at bay by Christof’s manipulation of his environment, the likes of which include reinforcing a childhood trauma involving water in the event that Truman treks overseas.
The physical and spiritual entrapment Truman faces throughout the film evokes several visceral parallels to the pandemic: the loneliness of being unable to convene with our loved ones, the emotional exhaustion of being stuck in a perpetual state of dread, the casual apathy and negligence of those who want to uphold a corrupt system that doesn’t negatively affect them, and the dizzying cognitive dissonance of existing in one reality while some seem to exist in another. But unlike our world, where staying quarantined is a public safety necessity (unassisted by tepid statewide and national lockdowns), Truman’s urgent struggle to escape the confines of the massive Hollywood dome that acts as his hometown is a noble act. In fact, it’s imperative that he leave in order to both find his way back to Sylvia and fulfill his self-actualization.
Truman’s path toward true agency doesn’t come without its limitations. It rests primarily on his ability to overcome Meryl and Louis’s gaslighting and complacency, as well as Christof’s capitalist interests and obsessive, paternalistic protection over him. Although Christof’s philosophy for possessing Truman reeks of narcissism, his belief that we accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented represents a profound thesis for The Truman Show, with an ironic twist. Yes, we do accept our reality the way it’s presented to us, but only because those in power, like Christof, have the tools and access to shape it. By questioning his reality, Truman refuses to take anything at face value, and learns a valuable lesson along the way: we can also accept the reality we create for ourselves if we’re willing to fight against the one we’re inextricably bound to.
After Truman deceives the cameras and searches for his way out, his journey from obliviousness to enlightenment culminates in a sublime ending that, in a strangely paradoxical way, both reaffirms his main character status while subverting the label entirely. Through forgoing his aquaphobia and sailing the shores for an exit, Truman defies the fears ascribed to his character and constructs a new persona, one that is entirely his own. Desperate to maintain dominance, Christof forces his reluctant staff to create a rainstorm that nearly kills Truman. But as Truman recovers and reaches the actual edge of his world, Christof figures he can persuade him to stay by speaking to Truman from “heaven” through a loudspeaker, literalizing his omnipotence. Despite Christof’s protests, however, Truman embraces his anonymity and gives a final signoff, reclaiming his catchphrase — “If I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night” — as a righteous “fuck you” to Christof and his hollow, idealistic creative vision. It’s a soulful, cathartic conclusion that underscores the beautiful freedom in letting go of the expectations and demands of others in favor of making our own choices, despite what conflicts may come.
While The Truman Show provides a compelling dissent against being the main character, Stranger Than Fiction advocates for the opposite, recognizing that there is some value to embracing that symbolic title. Contrary to the easily distinguishable hero-versus-villain dynamic in The Truman Show, Forster’s criminally underrated meta comedy offers a moral grey area around the relationship between its egotistical artist and clueless subject. Writer’s block-afflicted author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) struggles to kill off the main character in her new book, an IRS agent named Harold Crick (Ferrell), who is made aware of his potential demise when he begins hearing Karen’s narration of his day-to-day routine. Receiving help from college professor and literary expert Jules Hibert (Dustin Hoffman), Harold is given the rare opportunity to find meaning in his mundane, ordinary life before it ends.
The first half of Stranger Than Fiction plays like a less satirical and more novelistic version of The Truman Show. Instead of a fake, simulated Hollywood set, Harold’s reality exists concurrently with Karen’s narrative. Instead of characters manipulating the protagonist into questioning his own sanity, the people in Harold’s life are just as baffled as he is. Instead of an almighty creator intentionally exacerbating the protagonist’s efforts to transcend his imprisonment, Karen unknowingly blocks Harold’s failed attempts to evade his death. These are not necessarily improvements over The Truman Show, but rather intriguing and frequently witty developments that add nuance to how we reckon with our fates when they’re already sealed. Do we really possess free will, this film seems to ask, or is everything already determined for us? Are our lives comedies or tragedies or both?
Fortunately, during its stunning and surprisingly dramatic second half, Stranger Than Fiction interrogates these existential predicaments with poise and affection. Unlike Truman, Harold finds it within himself to embrace the inevitable and metamorphosize out of his cocoon of solitude by changing his habits and building his relationships with his co-worker Dave (Tony Hale) and his client/love interest Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Unlike Christof, Karen actually has a moral conscience and finds it genuinely difficult to kill off Harold once she finally meets him. Here, the main character learns to live his life, aware of his looming expiration date, while his creator learns to come to terms with the impact her writing has on both a literal and figurative level.
Karen’s assistant Penny (Queen Latifah) convinces her to let Harold read the manuscript, but, afraid of what feelings of dread may emerge, Harold asks Jules to look it over first. After reading it, Jules affirms that Harold must die, seeing that his death would not only confirm Karen’s novel as her greatest work to date, but also be integral to his arc as a main character. “It’s the nature of all tragedies,” Jules says. “The hero dies, but the story lives on forever.” This equally moving and devastating observation suggests that our legacies carry just as much, if not more meaning than the lives we lead; that being alive is as much of a responsibility as it is a curse.
But after Harold reads the manuscript and tells Karen that he accepts the ending, Karen fails to go through with the deed and rewrites the resolution, having Harold get hit by a bus and survive due to his wristwatch blocking his artery and preventing him from bleeding to death. Karen’s justification of this revision serves as a powerful and honorable contradiction to Jules’s assertion; she believes that a man who knows he’s going to die and accepts it anyway deserves a chance to live. Her ability to see Harold for his humanity as opposed to his literary utility is striking not just because she decides to value his life over her creative success, but also because it conveys with beautiful simplicity how people in power should treat those who don’t have any. Everyone should have more than the basic means to survive; we should have the opportunity to live too.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. It might seem like some of us are meant to be protagonists, while others are just antagonists, supporting characters, or even background extras, but in the grand narrative of life, we all possess the capacity to find meaning and truth in our individual and collective struggles, to fight against the villains who seek to suppress our voices, and to see ourselves as worthy enough that people root for us to succeed. The stories we tell about others can be just as vital as the ones we tell about ourselves.
