I saw The Truman Show for the first time last night. It came out the summer of my first MMT, so I was traipsing about Europe and largely ignorant of its existance. A couple of friends told me I should see it, but I never really had the chance before coming to China, where DVDs are cheap and you don't know what's pirated and what isn't.
On the surface, the movie could easily be considered a mockery or rebuttal of the Christian worldview or an expression of the power of "free will" (better termed "free choice"). It's sort of a modern Everyman play. Truman has lived his entire life (literally--he was even born on TV) in a controlled environment where everyone knows that he's just living a TV show, although he doesn't. The creator of the show, Christof, can manipulate every aspect of Truman's life apart from Truman's responses. In the course of the movie, Truman figures out that something is very wrong with his world and tries to escape.
The names of the protagonist and antagonist are hardly veiled references to the function of the characters. Truman is supposed to be man as he really is. Christof is "the creator," a god-figure. In the end, Truman successfully (though honorably) rebels and leaves the show, hence the apparent triumph of free choice over sovereignty or man over God.
If the movie is reflective of reality, then Truman is a genuine hero, a slave who outwits and overcomes his invisible captor. Many people view reality this way. They think that God is a manipulator, and we in turn must do everything we can to manipulate him back, to outwit and overcome him. Some do this by rejecting his existence. Some do it by ignoring him. Some do it by playing the system, trying to placate and manipulate him through sacrifice, prayer and any other good deed.
The manipulator-creator Christof in the film reflects man's understanding of God. He views himself as protecting Truman from the evils of the world, giving him everything reality ought to be rather than what it is. He talks, with obvious care and emotion, about watching Truman his entire life (30 years). While Truman's sleeping, we see Christof stroke his televised head. But in his interactions with Truman, Christof is always interested to see what Truman will do. Christof is at best intellectually curious about his "creation," and Truman's life is his grand experiment. When Truman leaves the show at the end, we see from Christof's face that he is now a broken man. Christof's entire life and identity has been The Truman Show. He loved Truman because he controlled Truman, not because of who Truman really was. And Christof needed Truman to complete himself. The show has ended, and so has Christof's power, experiment and his very definition of himself.
I would say that The Truman Show is a very good movie and does accurately reflect the common understanding of reality and particularly the common understanding of man's relationship to God. It's a praise-worthy and accurate representation of a flawed understanding, though. It (and we) forgets one very important aspect of God's nature.
God is Good.
I firmly believe that God is sovereign. His control over all of Creation is absolute. Everything that happens happens as he has and does decree it. Attempting to view things from God's angle (a dangerous, proud and inherently flawed task for a man), there are no accidents, no twists of fate. Yet God is in no way a manipulator because he is truly, thoroughly and incurably Good. Man cannot get his mind around that fact. We do not and cannot understand incurable goodness, we who are prone to corruption and manipulation, we who have motive upon motive built throughout our conscious actions. We who wish to be the Manipulator, bending all things to our broken wills.
Part of God's goodness lies in his completeness. God has no need of man or any other part of his creation. Unlike Christof, God could (and did) exist quite happily apart from us. God did not create us because he needed to be loved or needed something to love. He was not lonely who has dwelled for eternity in Trinity. Man does not define God's existence. God created because he is Good and he chose to create. Unlike Christof, who loves from afar (loving an idea rather than a person) and interacts only to manipulate, God freely entered our history through Jesus--the true Christ--man on man and face to face, because he is Love and he chose to rescue us. He uses all of our choices and actions to accomplish his purposes because he is Good and is working even broken things into his goodness, causing them to be whole.
Christof is no god, and God is no Christof. We who manipulate, bite and devour one another, who define ourselves by the power we have grasped, cannot understand the incurably Good; we cannot understand God. But even with a broken understanding, we can know that there is Goodness and Love beyond our comprehension, goodness without corruption, love without gain-seeking or manipulation. We can and need to know that God is, and that through Jesus, he is the Rewarder of those who earnestly seek him, who honestly desire Truth.
Posted by jonhanneman at February 15, 2004 10:11 AM | TrackBack