Truman Show Scene Analysis

‘The Truman Show’ is a comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir. The film talks about a man - Truman Burbank who’s unaware of being in a reality television show for the whole of his life. The scene of Truman in the cellar is significant in the film because the audience is able to see the feelings deep inside of Truman and how it raises the tension. The camera shots and angles used in this scene illustrate Truman’s emotions perfectly. Meryl’s unreasonable clothing and voice elicits curiosity from the audience. The setting of the scene matches with the mystifying signs that Weir has left. All these elements were composed with the objective of assembling the idea in audience’s mind that something is about to happen.

In this scene, the real emotions of Truman Burbank are unleashed when he was alone. Firstly, the camera zooms in the lock as he carefully unlocks it to arouse audience’s curiosity. Then it zooms in the inside of the chest to make audience more eager to find out what he’s trying to do. Followed by a long shot of Truman sitting down in order to make him look small. In order to finally show the audience what Truman was looking for and at the same time hint that he misses his dad pensively; there’s a close up on the photos of Truman and his dad that he’s looking at. In order to elicit more misery, there’s a medium shot on Truman sitting down looking at the photos to make obvious to the audience that he is distressed and also the reason of it. When Meryl walks in, close up shots of her foot is on screen to notify that Meryl is coming. After she walks in, when she is talking to Truman, it looks like she is tall because it’s a low angle on her while he is kneeling down. That was in order to suggest that Meryl is more powerful and fierce than Truman.

The actors’ costumes and dialogue played a big part n building up suspense in the scene when Truman was in the cellar. Meryl was wearing a white dress and laced-up shoes thus looking very formal. Truman was