Being John Malkovich

"Being John Malkovich" (1999)
Directed by Spike Jonze

Here is the film's premise: A professional puppeteer discovers a secret door in his office that leads to a portal-of-sorts into John Malkovich's mind. Needless to say, this is a very strange film about a very strange collection of people.

We follow Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), a dirt-poor, unemployed man whose dream is to become a famous puppeteer. But no one wants to employ someone for this strange "hobby," especially when the guy is an eccentric, long-haired nerd. His even more eccentric wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), supports the "family," which includes a parakeet and two chimpanzees. Craig eventually finds work as a file sorter on the 7 1/2 floor of an office building, which sounds strange, but the way that the director, Spike Jonze, and the excellent writer, Charlie Kauffman, introduce Craig's new work place is visually brilliant and humorous. Craig meets a coworker, Maxine (Catherine Keener), and falls in love with her, even though she is an opportunistic and painfully blunt jerk - in one instance, Craig takes her out for a drink and when he tells her that he is a professional puppeteer, she immediately asks for the check.

And this is all before Craig unwittingly discovers the mysterious passageway that leads him into John Malkovich's mind. It is at this point that the film takes off, as Kauffman's script and Malkovich's performance - we view him, presumably from the point-of-view of Craig, as a normal guy living his everyday life, who is also, in a self-referential joke, an overrated actor - add brilliant, comedic touches to the film. One scene, in which Malkovich travels through the doorway into his own mind, is particularly hysterical while bringing up a number of interesting questions about our place in the world; it is not everyday that you see numerous clones of John Malkovich dressed in drag.


The rest of the film is a postmodern science fiction story. Craig, Maxine, and Lotte all abuse poor Malkovich, compelling him to fulfill their strangest sexual desires without fear of retribution to themselves. Sexual identities change. Alliances shift. These people are not happy with the way they are and Malkovich serves as their safety valve; he is literally their puppet. But in the end of the day, this serves only as a temporary solution to these characters' deep-rooted sense of being unfulfilled. Whether they are entirely successful in learning how to stop running away from themselves is left for us to decide.

Rating: 9

First Viewed: 6/3/08
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