reality. Numerous films have been made that reflect this myth
including:Altered States (1980), Brazil (1985), Dark City
(1997), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), The
Matrix (1999), Open Your Eyes (1997), Pleasantville (1998),
Solaris (1972 and 2002), Thirteenth Floor (1999), Total Recall
(1990), The Truman Show (1998), and Vanilla Sky (2001).
More films can be found in the Film Indexin the category
Dimensions of Realityunder Inspiration. All of them develop
elaborate metaphors that comment on the act of perception. I
recommend watching one of these movies and focusing on the
allegorical message about our perception of reality in order to
gain more clarity about this previous section. The following
two Movie Previews illustrate how such films can support the
ideas illuminated above.Movie Preview:The Truman Show (1998)
Director Peter Weir and writer Andrew Niccol
devised a carefully crafted object lesson on the need to
question our reality.
Truman Burbank lives an ideal life in an ideal, if
limited, world. Like each of us, he accepts his reality,
shrugging off the occasional odd moment that just does
not seem to fit the picture (as when a strange man leaps
out of a Christmas present shouting incongruous
protests and then is quickly wrestled out of the living
room). Truman accepts his reality. What else is he to
do? He is happy, more or less. And yet a subtle
uneasiness seems to pervade his world.
As the audience gradually learns, Truman’s world is
an elaborate hoax perpetrated on him by television
producer Christof. From his control room high in the
artificial “sky,” Christof and his minions work 24/7 to
maintain the increasingly complex illusion of reality and
to prevent Truman from discovering it, which, of
course, he does inevitably, thus moving the film into the62 E-Motion Picture Magic