BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (1999)

Have you ever wanted to be someone else? To see the world through someone else’s eyes? Our innately curious human nature causes us to wonder what it must be like to live as another person, making us crawl through small doors that lead into black rooms. We may not know what’s on the other side—but we’ll be sure to find out.

Or at least, that’s what Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) did. A struggling puppeteer, Craig gets himself a job as a filer to make ends meet at the behest of his wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz). On the strangely short 7½ floor, he becomes infatuated with Maxine (Catherine Keener), and then discovers a portal into another dimension: actor John Malkovich’s consciousness.

Spike Jonze’s film is a tour de force surrealist masterpiece, bolstered by Charlie Kaufman’s exceptionally original screenplay. Implementing a hilarious absurdity and an uncanny, dreamlike phantasmagoria, the creative duo presents some of the most innovative comedy of the late-20th-century. Aided by career-defining performances from the likes of Cusack, Diaz, Keener, and our eponymous thespian, Being John Malkovich is an acutely bizarre comedy unlike any other.

The film’s success is undoubtedly due to the sheer wealth of ideas going on underneath the surface. These themes are so adeptly woven into a farcical tale of longing and identity that one would be forgiven for not even realising that they are present, shaping a nightmarish investigation of the spirit, the soul, and the self.

Early in the story, consciousness presents itself as an enigmatic riddle that must be solved. As Craig watches an iconic puppeteer stun the masses, he sagely intones to Lotte’s pet chimpanzee: “You don’t know how lucky you are being a monkey. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer.” Our main characters long for an escape, a removal from the daily drudgery of their consciousness. Ironically, they achieve this by absconding into someone else’s psyche.

All the characters who enter Malkovich’s head want something better than what they currently have. Their ego dissolves as they don the persona of an established Hollywood actor, providing a glimpse into the mentality of someone other than themselves. It isn’t that Malkovich is ever doing something extraordinarily exciting or elitist; it is purely the novelty of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.

Unsurprisingly, many find this to be a profoundly moving experience. After Craig’s first venture into the great unknown of Malkovich’s mind, he comes out of it changed: “I mean, it raises all sorts of philosophical questions, you know? About the nature of self, about the existence of a soul. You know, am I me? Is Malkovich Malkovich? […] Do you see what a metaphysical can of worms this portal is? I don’t see how I could go on living my life the way I’ve lived it before!” The unimpressed Maxine points to an open window, irreverently providing the distressed Craig with options.

It is this existentialism that defines Being John Malkovich. Indeed, Maxine’s suggestion that Craig can always jump off a building from 7½ floors up mirrors Albert Camus’ infamous axiom: “The literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that prevents you from killing yourself.” Craig has just discovered that human beings are stripped of their essences; Malkovich is not entirely himself, and everyone else may not be either. Consciousness is not a unique, inviolable component of the human experience, but a lens, a room at a common peepshow.

Additionally, it is no accident that Craig crawls into the consciousness of an actor; it’s symbolic of how the inherent meaninglessness of our universe renders us all performers in our attempts to create meaning. At the beginning of the film, the title card comes down in front of a stage, with the curtain being drawn back to the sound of overwhelming applause. Everything we see takes place behind this curtain, with small micro-universes occurring simultaneously inside.

On this stage, Craig possesses Malkovich as his puppet, whereupon he uses the thespian to create another world of marionettes. Kaufman’s elaborately designed symbolism and story reflect a line from Shakespeare’s 1623 play As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”  

In this respect, creativity itself becomes a theme, one present from the very beginning; Craig’s struggle to find an appreciative audience is what sets the strange plot in motion. Performing a street marionette show, Craig’s artistic expression takes an overtly sexual turn as the two puppets begin gyrating against the wall that tragically separates them, as though the scene were an excerpt from The Wicker Man (1973). This display earns him a fat lip after a disgruntled parent punches him, to which Lotte hilariously laments: “Not again!”

Much like how one critic describes John Malkovich’s revolutionary foray into puppeteering, there is a desperate humanity to Kaufman’s characters. Each of them tries to cling to something they hold dear, with Craig disappearing into his art in an unnerving way. He describes his love of puppetry a bit like a demented Atticus Finch might: “Perhaps it’s the idea of becoming someone else for a little while. Being inside another skin.” Such a transcendental escape can become dangerously addictive.

But Jonze never allows Kaufman’s script to become overbearing or pretentious. The absurdity of the narrative is allowed full room to breathe in uncommonly funny situations. Floor 7½ is evidence enough of that, but the dented elevator door provides an insight into the attention to detail that both Kaufman and Jonze bring to the story. It’s the funniest film of both men’s careers.

The humorous interactions include a receptionist who’s hard of hearing (but cocksure enough to convince her employer he has a debilitating speech impediment), a ridiculous orientation video, and a chimp who is struggling with feelings of inadequacy stemming from a lingering childhood trauma. The effect that the portal has on Lotte’s self-perception also throws into sharp relief the absurd rationale of such Road to Damascus moments: “I’ve decided I’m a transsexual—isn’t that the craziest thing?”

Jonze’s greatest achievement—especially in his directorial debut—lies in how he created a wholly believable sense of surrealism to match the vision of Kaufman’s script. Malkovich’s foray into his own consciousness, crawling into the little door behind a filing cabinet, creates a great sense of intrigue and capitalises on the daft nature of the story: “What happens when a man goes into his own portal?”

The film’s surrealism extends to what is perhaps cinema’s strangest love triangle: Maxine and Craig (from inside John Malkovich), and Maxine and Lotte (from inside John Malkovich). It’s utterly ridiculous, yet comically brilliant, leading to the most bizarre of adulterous betrayals: “You were him last night, weren’t you? And he was with her…” As Lotte is held captive with an ape in a cage, it’s evident that love has truly never been so confusing.

As soon as Craig opened that portal, it was as though he had stumbled upon a Pandora’s Box. Though it’s not exactly that he let out all the Evil of the world, but let all the Evil into John Malkovich. Madness, insanity, and a shrewd business model all take place inside John Malkovich’s head, the troubled actor being used as a conduit for the lechery and opportunism of sociopathic delinquents.

It’s debatable whether this is Spike Jonze’s best film. Though Adaptation (2002) represented another stellar combination between him and Kaufman, and Her (2013) was a sublime writing debut for the career director, I still wonder if the creativity on display in Being John Malkovich was ever topped within his rather sparse filmography.

And while Jonze must be credited for his capable direction, it still feels like the brainchild of Charlie Kaufman, no matter how many alterations were done to the script. Much like the inside of Malkovich’s brain, the film has the fingerprints of a master all over it. Kaufman has made a career for himself as Hollywood’s most eclectic, innovative writer (with the only exception perhaps being Christopher Nolan), though it has struggled to find him enduring box office success or sustained critical acclaim.

But when Kaufman strikes gold, the result is quite unlike anything else made in mainstream Hollywood today. You simply can never, ever know where the plot is going. It’s a superb script, one which was every bit deserving of the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’, though it lost to Stuart Beattie’s American Beauty (1999) in a move which some would question.

In addition to this, Lance Acord’s cinematography is also stellar. From the unconventional angles inside floor 7½, and the disembodied image within Malkovich’s cranium, it provides a surreal treat for the eyes. The visual style contributes to the hilarity and strangeness of the story in equal measure.

If this weren’t enough, the performances are all stellar. There’s always something funny about watching an actor play themself, and Malkovich unsurprisingly brings his normal sense of gravitas and exaggerated intonation to the performance. This is my favourite John Cusack role, 10 years removed from playing the love-sick puppy in the overrated and mawkish Say Anything… (1989), and it’s a special highlight of Cameron Diaz’s career, as well.

Keener ever so slightly steals the show, however, earning herself an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ in the process. The film also benefits from great cameos, firstly with future Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer, then with Charlie Sheen, in what is potentially the most Charlie-Sheen-esque cameo of all time: “Hot lesbian witches! It’s fucking genius!”

With an ominous ending, one that deserves to be more powerful than it ends up feeling, Jonze and Kaufman’s tour de force represents one of cinema’s greatest débuts. It is visionary, bizarre, and utterly confident. Potentially having influenced some of the greatest films of this century, such as Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), Being John Malkovich is a philosophical comedy gem that is worth watching over and over again.

USA | 1999 | 113 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Spike Jonze.
writer: Charlie Kaufman.
starring: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, Orson Bean, Mary Kay Place, John Malkovich.