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A portal into the head of a famous actor? What better way to find out what it's like Being John Malkovich |
Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: John Cusack (Craig Schwartz), Cameron Diaz (Lotte
Schwartz), Catherine Keener (Maxine Lund), John Malkovich (John Horatio
Malkovich), Orson Bean (Dr Lester), Mary Kay Place (Floris), Charlie Sheen (Himself),
W Earl Brown (JM Inc Customer)
Is there a more consciously eccentric film ever made than Being John Malkovich? Can you imagine
the pitch to the Hollywood suits?
Our hero, Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is a weedy, bitter
puppeteer (as well as creep and potential stalker), whose wife Lotte (Cameron
Diaz) fills their house with rescue animals, from talkative parrots to a chimp
with PTSD. Needing to make ends meet, Schwartz takes a filing job at a company
based on floor 7½ of an office block (it’s a low ceilinged floor built between
the other two floors – it’s cheaper on the rent obviously) where he becomes
obsessed with his sexy co-worker Maxine Lund (Catherine Keener), who is
resolutely not interested. But all this changes one day when Schwartz finds a
fleshy, dark tunnel behind a filming cabinet that takes someone into the mind
of actor John Malkovich (John Malkovich) – for 15 minutes, before expelling you
onto the New Jersey turnpike. Sounds like a business interest for Schwartz and
Maxine (spend 15 minutes in someone else’s body!), but the experience of being
in someone’s body slowly begins to change Schwartz, Lotte and Maxine – and
having his brain invaded has a terrible impact on Malkovich himself.
If that’s not the oddest plot you’ve ever heard, then I
don’t know what films you’ve been watching. The film was the brainchild of
Charlie Kaufman, who developed from this into one of the most distinctively
gifted screenwriters in Hollywood, a master of the quirky and weird, the
off-the-wall and the science fiction tinged everyday fantasy, blessed with the
ability to mix in genuine human emotion amongst the oddness.
Being John Malkovich
is an inspired idea and Kaufman’s script is ingenious in its structure and
progression. Never once does the film settle for the expected narrative
development or the conventional structure. It’s a livewire of a film that
constantly leaves you guessing, switching tone and throwing logical but
unexpected plot twists at every turn. There are plenty of moments where you
could expect events to take a conventional turn, but the film never settles for
the obvious.
Kaufman’s inspired script was lucky enough to find a quirky
visual stylist who was willing to embrace it as much as Spike Jonze did.
Jonze’s direction is a masterclass in small detail, slight twists and little
touches of invention that never draw excessive attention to themselves but
combine to make a thrillingly off-the-wall final picture.
Jonze knows that the jokes and surrealism of Kaufman’s
script are so effective that they don’t need a firm directorial hand to lean
the humour on – they work absolutely fine presented almost as written, and make
for terrific entertainment. He shoots the low ceiling of floor 7½ with such
straightforward confidence that each scene becomes hilarious for its stooped
actors and crammed rooms. Jonze can therefore concentrate the flourishes on
core moments, from the puppetry that Schwartz and later a Schwartz-controlled
Malkovich make their life’s work, to assorted training and educational videos
that pepper the film at key moments.
Like Kaufman as well, Jonze’s storytelling works because he
inherently understands human emotion and isn’t afraid to throw it into the film
alongside the humour. Plenty of directors would have been happy to have all the
principals settle into being comic stereotypes, or overplayed pantomime
figures. Jonze encouraged the actors to find the depth – and sometimes the
darkness – in their characters, to ground the film effectively with touches of
real life tragedy and human flaws that give weight to the surreal sci-fi
elements – so much so that they start to feel as real as the rest.
John Cusack’s Schwartz is a bitter, increasingly twisted
fantasist and dreamer – the sort of guy who believes that his lack of
willingness to compromise his art in any way is a strength (his puppetry shows
are highly complex, sexualised, high-blown, poetry-inspired hilarious puffs of
pretension). Schwartz could have become a joke or a guy with a big dream – but
the film increasingly shows him to be a dark, obsessive, cruel even dangerous
outsider, who has no problem with harming other people to get what he wants,
his moral compass is driven by his self-assessment of himself as a man treated
badly by others, so doing what he wants is somehow deserved. It’s an
increasingly dark portrait of a man who has more than hint of danger to him.
Keener, as the focus of his obsession, also does
extraordinary work as a woman the film is not afraid to present as unpleasant
in her selfishness, casual cruelty and greed – but a woman who slowly allows
herself to open up and reveal an emotional openness and romanticism someone
watching the start of the film would never expect. Similarly Diaz’s
downtrodden, sad wife at home flourishes and grows as a person, as she finds in
herself a new comfort and ease with who she is, from inhabiting the mind of
another person. Both are excellent.
The film explores fascinating ideas of identity – Lotte and
Maxine find a freedom and an exciting otherness in being a passenger in another
person’s body, and use it as voyages of self discovery for themselves. Schwartz
on the other hand sees this body – just as he sees all human beings – as just
another puppet for him to control, another way of adjusting the world to match
his requirements, rather than change anything about himself. While some lose
themselves in Malkovich’s body and find the experience rewarding, Schwartz can
only find happiness when bending the body to his own will.
And what of Malkovich himself? Well has there ever been a braver performance
in film? Malkovich is superb as an arch portrait of himself as a rather
self-important actor, with an unknowable coolness about him, an intellectualism
that makes him a man easy to respect but strangely hard to relate to, a face
that is distinctive but a strangely unrelatable style that makes him hard to
remember (it’s really an extraordinarily funny and brave performance). As
Malkovich realises what is happening to him, the film plays with real beats of
tragedy and even horror – what would it be like to be forced into being a
passenger in your own head? This is nothing compared to the horror Malkovich
encounters when he enters the tunnel himself – to find himself in a world where
everyone looks like Malkovich and can only speak using the word “Malkovich”.
Being John Malkovich
uses its surreal ideas to explore profound – and even chilling – ideas of
control, destiny, personality and identity. With several superb performances, a
brilliant script and controlled and intelligent direction, it’s a film unlike
any other – and continues to delight and surprise twenty years on from its
release.
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