Logans Run Vs. the Truman Show

Truman Show vs. Logan's Run

In the last two weeks, we have watched two movies that are alike and different in some very interesting ways. We first watched the Truman Show and then Logan's Run and saw two very different views on faith, or religion, in film.

In the Truman Show, the main character, Truman, is adopted at birth by a company that wants to make a documentary of his entire life. Everything that happens to Truman is a result of decisions made by those in the company, especially the main person in charge, Christof. All of the events that take place in Truman's life including the sun and moon rising, all of the weather, and all of the human interaction that Truman has on a day-to-day basis. Everyone in the city of Seahaven (where Truman was born and lived his whole life) is just a part in the game as hired actors to work in Truman's created world. Throughout the movie, however, Truman begins to sense that some things are very odd in his life. He notices that much of the same stuff happens the same way every single day and it strikes him as quite peculiar. Thus, he searches for meaning in his life and the real truth behind everything that is happening to him. In the end, he discovers that he has in fact been living in a made-up world and that nothing to this point has been natural or real. He is given the choice to remain in Seahaven where Christof has told him everything will remain the same and he will have no worries, or to experience the real world. Truman chooses a real life and steps out of the set and into the real world.

I liked this movie a lot for a number of reasons. First, it makes you really think about life as we know it. Some things often seem fake or fabricated and the Truman Show lets you imagine a driving force behind some of those strange things in life. More importantly, it

brings to attention the idea of a controlling God that makes everything happen for a reason. There are a couple quotes from the Truman Show that illustrate a god-like presence in Christof throughout the movie. One of them comes at the end of the movie when Truman has discovered that the world that he lives in is in fact a false one. He asks Christof very pointedly if anything around him is real. Christof replies saying that Truman is indeed the only thing that is real and that everything else around him has been created for his benefit. This quote is interesting to me because it demonstrates the innocence and sincerity of Truman's life and how he has lived it like anyone else would in his own pursuit of happiness. It is ironic though that everything around him that has caused his actions and emotions is not real and instead is a plot to invoke certain "natural" responses out of Truman. In the end, the quest for knowledge, something very similar to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is too much and Truman must know what the real world, along with the pain and suffering, is like.

A somewhat different vision of religion is portrayed in the second movie that we watched, Logan's Road. In this movie, the main character is a man named Logan who is living in a world far in the future. In this futuristic place of 2274 A.D., everyone is in domed cities and because of the immense population growth, everyone dies at the age of 30. As a

result of these life clocks that are on everyone's palms, they know exactly when it is their time to die. At this point, they find out if they will receive "renewal" at Carousel or not.

However, there is no such thing as renewal and everyone is blown to pieces in front of those watching and cheering below. Logan's role as a "sandman" is to regulate anyone who decides that they want to try and outlive their allotted 30 year stint. Logan 5 as he is officially called, along with other sandmen, chase down and shoot anybody who tries to run and escape into the so-called "Sanctuary." This "Sanctuary" is said to be the only place that runners have to go to avoid the great computer. The movie gets interesting when Logan begins to realize that one day, his time will be up too. He is assigned a mission by the great computer that tells him he has to find the "Sanctuary" and kill the 1,000 plus people that are missing runners supposedly hiding there. When he starts his mission, he starts thinking about the fact that he is now a "runner" and could in fact be hunted down and killed himself now at any time. He is taken to the first stage of "Sanctuary" by Jessica 6 who turns out to be his fellow runner and later his lover. When Logan and Jessica find out there is not only an outside world, but also no real Sanctuary where all the runners have flocked to, they decide they must tell the rest of the people still left in the "City." In the end, the computer is destroyed and all of the people living in the domed "City" are set free by Logan and Jessica.

It is interesting in Logan's Run to try and fit the idea of religion in with the futuristic situation in which the characters find themselves. When considering that the all-knowing and powerful computer may be considered a god-like entity, one would have to assume that the computer in Logan's Run represents somewhat of a wrathful and unforgiving god that simply

regulates life on Earth so that it does not get too overpopulated. Furthermore, it is easy to make some kind of connection between "Sanctuary" and a heaven-like place but odd when

considering the fact that those supposedly in "Sanctuary" have run away from this god-like figure. It is also interesting how the "outside" in Logan's Run is similar to the world outside of "Seahaven" in the Truman Show. In both cases, the outside world