This scene was exquisitely filmed. Truman is alone on a boat out in the middle of beautiful nowhere, farther out than he'd ever been obviously, when the bowsprit of his boat ruptures the back panel, a painting of a beautiful sky, of a movie set that literally forms the wall between reality and fiction. Initially, Truman doesn't believe it, so he touches the wall and the crack and the truth begins to seep into his conscience. And cracks don't necessarily mean that he's free; cracks need to be cleaned up. A new world is beginning, and the old one is cracking. The camera then pans out to a distant shot to capture the fact--that his world was just a wall, one of many to create his world.
He tries hitting the wall, angry that it deceived him, angry that he volunteered for such deceit. He slumps at the total losses in such belief and momentarily despairs. The fight for truth is too much. Everything that he's believed in has collapsed. It's the bitter taste of being a fool.
He gathers himself and begins walking along a plank at the foot of the wall. From a distance, he looks like he's walking on water, an apt Christian figure to say that he has become his own savior by shedding the deceit.
Then he finds a staircase with no rail, and he climbs it, elevating his status to hero when he finds a door with the word "Exit" printed on it, an exit from the Milligram Experiment. Still no joy from leaving a made-up, prefabricated world. In fact, on the other side of the door, he can't see anything in the pitch-black. It's a world unknown. Could this new world be a repeat of the old world he's leaving, or could it be worse? The tradeoff for him is worth it, because how everybody's desire to control him was a betrayal of his intelligence and light.
The show's creator trying to convince him to stay. "You were real, which made you so good to watch." Quite a psychopathic remark.
to push it all the way through to know how hollow the world he's been living in is. He lets out a sigh upon that knowledge as if he'd suspected the emptiness, the vacuousness of it all along but never got an outside opinion to confirm it. As his hand goes searching for confirmation the look on his face is "I knew it all along," and he did. But that knowledge barely pierced his conscience. He just didn't have a critical mind. He was raised on innocence, reaffirmed by loving, doting parents who wanted to extend their parenting years of a child for as long as they could, so he had no reason to believe that innocence inspired by parental love wasn't the best model.
Then he steps out of the boat alone and begins to investigate, to walk along a plank that is supposed to be the water. Here he is playing the role of Jesus walking on water with Truman being his own best savior.
The Truman Show, 1998. There was another great movie that year, 1998, named Enemy of the State, starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith.
