Week6: Character types and development

The Truman Show

The film tells the story of Truman, the protagonist of a popular soap opera, where everything around him is fake and his family and friends are all actors, but he himself knows nothing about it. In the end, Truman has to do whatever it takes to get out of this virtual world.

Truman starts off very innocent and simple, and after meeting a passer-by who looks exactly like his father and faces a series of very strange events, he then meets Mary – a young girl who is a mass actor on the show. Mary is very sympathetic to Truman and gives him some kind hints that force him to start re-examining his life. From this moment on, Truman begins to grow as he explores and confronts the world he lives in.

The main character’s breakthroughs and psychological changes drive the plot again and again. For example, In a manipulated world, Truman’s escape is blocked by a nuclear power plant leak, a volcanic eruption, a full plane and a broken-down bus. Eventually, Truman is forced to choose to overcome his fear of the sea to escape in a motorboat.

The characters in a film are the premise and vehicle for everything that happens, and play a decisive role in weaving events, advancing the plot and even the direction of the story.

Truman is the ‘active’ protagonist: acting in direct conflict with the people and the world around him in the pursuit of his desires, they remain in a relatively stable and active state throughout, pursuing their goals with determination despite the escalating conflicts and changing events and scenarios.

The legend of 1990

The story of an abandoned baby named “1900” who becomes a piano virtuoso on an ocean liner.” Abandoned on a cruise ship in 1990, the main character is adopted by a black boilermaker and given the name 1990. When the boilermaker tragically dies at the age of eight, the unsupervised 1990 goes to a piano and plays the first piano piece of his life. Growing up, 1990 became famous as a mysterious maritime pianist. Later, he fell in love with a girl who travelled by boat. He was torn between getting off the boat for love and going after her, but he gave up. A decade later, the ship became a derelict, and when it was about to be blown up, he still chose to stay on board and disappear into the world with the ship.

From a narrative point of view, the narrative is not told in the first person, but rather through the recollections of the flapper who was most closely acquainted with 1900, projecting layers of his past with him at the time, a storytelling style that only makes the legend of 1900 seem more mysterious. The director’s use of montage, which flexibly switches between reality and memory, is at the same time a clear reminder to the light of the dual threads of the film. One of these threads is the growth of 1900 from childhood to becoming the ship’s pianist, a thread that extends from the point at which Danny discovers 1900 to the point in time at which the narrator, the flautist, is located, and the other thread is the story of the flautist, who is so unhappy with his life that he is about to give up the music he loves most, when he happens to hear a song recorded by 1900 in a musical instrument shop. The other thread is about a horn player who is so unhappy with his life that he is about to give up the music he loves most. The thread was centred on the time of the flautist and shot out to all points in time, to every place and every point in time where 1900 had been, and likewise to the Victoria, which had fallen into disrepair. He knew that 1900 could not be separated from the ship any more than he could be separated from his music.