At the moment I'm watching The Truman Show, which I've seen more times than I can count. Peter Weir's 1998 film follows Truman Burbank as he is born and raised, unaware, in a TV-set world. What's interesting to me this time around is the hybrid camera technique, alternating between narrative and documentary styles. About a third of the film's shots are framed from the perspective of "hidden cameras" that document Truman's artificial world and broadcast it. These cameras often hide behind objects in the foreground or simulate the POV of shirt buttons, car radios, or other actors' hidden-camera POVs.
Although there's something to be said about inserting documentary camera angles into a narrative film, I was caught by the idea that this camera style is almost, but not quite, reflexive. Unlike a film like Fight Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, or Godard's Pierrot le Fou, in which characters will stare into the camera and address the viewer directly, the actor-characters of The Truman Show (with the exception of Truman, the only inhabitant of his world who is not an actor or extra) address a fictional viewer when they acknowledge the camera, whether it be to advertise a product or, when Truman escapes, to speak to the crew monitoring the live feed. It's almost as if the film creates a false fourth wall in order to break it.
What's distinctly postmodern about this concept is the way that the camera does not commit entirely to this style. Like 2009's District 9, this film hybridizes narrative and fiction in a playful way, cut with comedy. Although some political message can be construed from the film (a criticism of America's obsession with TV culture, perhaps--especially interesting because this was made just before the advent of reality television shows) the message is not overt. Jim Carrey's comedic performance as the goofy but pensive Truman, full of slapstick and his famous rubber-face expression, make the dense, multi-layer plot digestible.
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