Being John Malkovich
I can't believe this movie made it to print. Never mind that films this willfully surreal rarely appear in the multiplex (it's as if Delicatessen was distributed by 20th Century Fox), but the presence of the title character is a shocking coup. Or perhaps not that shocking - playing oneself in addition to a parade of psychological demon-possessions is a role any actor would have been foolish to pass up, although it requires a certain admirable humbleness on Malkovich's part to portray himself performing the hilariously quotidian tasks of ordering chenille-looped taupe bath mats and pompously working at line readings. Bitingly intelligent, wickedly comical and strangely moving, Being John Malkovich is the most fascinating movie currently playing, and is easily one of the best movies of the year.
Those who I've breathlessly commanded to go to this movie seem to know little about it - if this includes you, work to keep it that way before you see it. But see it, and see it soon. Virtually every scene is invested with a keen, off-kilter wit that is unheard of in mainstream film, and the premise alone deserves some kind of Salvador Dali award - a repressed puppeteer unearths a portal into the brain of the quasi-famous celebrity behind a filing cabinet on an office building's 7 1/2 floor (don't ask, just see it) which allows anyone to use the man's head as an observatory for 15 minutes before being dumped out onto the New Jersey Turnpike. Are you kidding me? The eye-popping opening scenes alone made me long for a resurgence in the art of puppeteering, for god's sake.
And that's just the beginning. The film is so consistently phantasmagorical that things like a 60-foot performing replica of Emily Dickinson, sexually-obsessed 105 year old filing clerk or neurotic simian pets just glide by without special notice. But none is specifically a throwaway, or displays weirdness for weirdness' sake - the incredible events become credible due to the actors' straightfaced acceptance of events and a rock solid development of theme. This makes the wry comedy even better (although, to be honest, much of the humor is more intellectual than visceral - while there are number of bust-out-laughing moments, most of the "jokes" just provoke a sort of head-shaking, "I can't believe I'm seeing this" amazement with comic undertones. While there are dry patches, the movie is so relentlessly ingenious that any such flaws are easily forgiven). John Cusack and an near-unrecognizable Cameron Diaz are fabulously tattered as the puppeteer and his unfulfilled wife, each finding in Malkovich an escape from themselves; each conducting an affair, the latter finding "actualization as a man." Catherine Keener is equally superb as the chilly opportunist whom the puppeteer falls in love with (her dismissal of his declaration of love is simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious), and Malkovich quite literally throws himself into the role of himself with enough relish to cover every frankfurter in Wrigley Field. There better be another Oscar nomination for this guy, and here's hoping third time's the charm. As the thematic lynch-pin, Malkovich is astounding.
And what a theme! Being John Malkovich has more ideas than Thomas Edison in a patent office. Using its puppeteering-as-control metaphor, it can be variously interpreted as a dystopian take on virtual reality, an incisive satire of our celebrity-obsessed culture, a screed on the nature of identity, the human desire for immortality, or a desperate romantic fable wherein the obsessed will go to any lengths to obtain the object of his desire, completely subduing his own identity to do so. It's all these things and more, although I believe that the last interpretation is the final point. And such obsession naturally involves a measure of sadness - if you have to change yourself to make someone love you, then who are they really loving? It's easy to miss the surprising poignancy amidst the general madness, but the ending (despite unnecessarily explaining the quote-unquote reasons behind the dementia) provokes thoughts that lie too deep for tears, as one wag put it. Being John Malkovich is a triumph.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998, 1999 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker