Film Analysis - The Truman Show Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Film Analysis - The Truman Show - Essay Example These different stages in the story of a drama are organized in to a sequence by the construction of certain devises called as ‘narrative’.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It is the narrative that defines a story in terms of space and time. It also decides and structures the dramatic elements and the events of the story. The narrative can also manipulate the awareness of audience by using a series of â€Å"co-creative techniques† such as â€Å"flashbacks, replays of action, slow motion, speeding up, jumping between places and times for constructing the story world for specific effects† (Schmidt 2011). There exist some theories that govern the narrative that share some links with the theories of drama. Both the narrative and the drama draw their theories from Aristotle’s â€Å"Poetics†, where he explains that topics such as â€Å"character, plot, beginnings and endings, poetic justice, and the goals of representation, are as re levant to narrative theory as to a poetics of drama†. In the modern times, however, most theorists follow the view of Roland Barthes who stated that â€Å"narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting [think of Carpaccio's Saint Ursula], stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news item, conversation" (Richardson  2012).  Ã‚  Ã‚   Though there are similarities in the literary and filmic narratives, there exist diverse dissimilarities when the narrative strategy is articulated through the medium of films. Since films use various cinematographic modes for the aesthetic expression of narrative, the concept of generalization that rules a dramatic film and a literary text gets obscured. The filmic... This study is an analysis of a drama film, â€Å"The Truman Show† and the narrative constructed in it. "The Truman Show" (1998) is an American drama film directed by Peter SWeir and written by Andrew M. Niccol. The film has a voyeuristic setting that allows its viewers to gaze upon the everyday life of Truman. A few close-up shots of the producers and the main characters of the Show provide an insight as well as the base for the main plot of the film, which is Truman's life. The time marker and the show credits are inserted in the Show while allowing the show viewers to watch their star Truman. Thus, the filmic audiences are provided with a 'window within a window' style of spectatorship. For instance, Truman is being gazed by the hidden camera in Meryl's necklace; his neighbors, friends and colleagues; the actors on the set; the production crew; the 'global' audience members of the television show on the film set; the real film spectators in the theaters; and finally the gaze effected by the subjectivity and reflexivity of the narrative text. Reality is a perception created by the temporal and spatial continuum. A successive and mutual blending of images gives these images a chronological function. In this film, the representation of reality is done not by the conventional integration or dissociation of time and space and image and sound. The subject of the show, Truman’s life, is a continuum in the electronic space, for the broadcast viewers. Truman's life, like any theater performance, is a staged performance by a group of artists who plays their roles to perfection.