BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (USA Films) Starring: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, Orson Bean, John Malkovich, Mary Kay Place. Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman. Producers: Michael Stipe, Sandy Stern, Steve Golin and Vincent Landay. Director: Spike Jonze. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, sexual situations, adult themes) Running Time: 112 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Leave aside for a moment -- and you won't hear this out of me very often -- such mundane questions as what BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is "about," or what it "means." It is a rare occurrence when a film so completely engulfs me in its singularity that I know I'll miss something if I try to figure it out while watching, but that's exactly what happened with BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. It's no coincidence that the ad campaign featured music from BRAZIL; like Terry Gilliam's stunning 1985 film, it's a vision that begins "somewhere in the 20th century," then takes a left turn into somewhere inspired and unexpected. For nearly two hours, you can revel in the pleasure of letting its surreal, subversive humor roll over you in waves. For hours afterward, you can peel away its layers of significance and realize how truly extraordinary it is.
Attempting to distill screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's story into a few short sentences can't possibly do it justice. Its protagonist is Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), a struggling street puppeteer at a crossroads. Encouraged by his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz, coiffed a la early Roseannadanna) to find a day job until "the puppeteering thing" takes off, Craig goes to work as a filing clerk for LesterCorp on the 7-1/2th floor of Manhattan's Mertin-Flemmer Building. Soon Craig discovers two fascinating things. The first is Maxine Lund (Catherine Keener), a worker in the Mertin-Flemmer Building with whom Craig instantly becomes obsessed. The second is a tiny door hidden behind a filing cabinet, a door that allows anyone who enters to experience 15 minutes through the eyes of actor John Malkovich (John Malkovich).
There are so many improbably wonderful moments in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH that it would be criminal to deprive potential viewers of the joy of discover. Suffice it to say that Kaufman and director Spike Jonze (the video and commercial wunderkind making his feature film debut) find a new and hilarious place to go every time you think they can't possibly find anywhere more whacked-out than where they've just been. A minor supporting character like Floris (Mary Kay Place), "executive liaison" to the company's eccentric boss Dr. Lester (Orson Bean), can steal a scene with her stone-faced insistence that everyone else around her has a speech impediment; even the unresolved childhood issues of a chimpanzee can become a twisted vignette. Every performance is a comedic gem, none more so than a turn by Malkovich that re-defines "self-deprecating" (even in a film where his consciousness is the center of the universe). There are giggles, there are guffaws, and then there is laughter that comes from sheer awestruck surprise. Guess which kind BEING JOHN MALKOVICH engenders.
If BEING JOHN MALKOVICH had been nothing more than a blissfully bent comedy, it still would have been one of the year's best films. Buried beneath the surface surrealism is an exploration of identity that slides from the addictive nature of virtual reality to the appeal of performance. I speculated after the film whether the premise would work with just any actor -- BEING HARRISON FORD, for instance, or BEING JULIA ROBERTS -- and I don't think it would. Malkovich's unconventional looks and chameleonic character acting become one of the film's running jokes (no one can quite remember what movies they've seen him in), making him the ideal vessel for a visitor to re-create himself. Craig's despair at his own failures leads him to believe that his own identity mocks him; a look in the mirror by his puppet-self leads to an explosion of rage. Playing into the messages of a culture that convince you someone always has it better, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH sends Craig on a mission to get what he can't have in his own life by taking over someone else's. His ultimate fate is the worst kind of tragedy: an existence over which he has no control at all.
There's plenty more to BEING JOHN MALKOVICH for those willing to poke around for a while -- students of Medieval French philosophy may ponder the significance of Craig casting his own puppet doppleganger as Abelard in "Abelard and Heloise," considering where he ends up in the film -- the kind of stuff you just don't expect to find in contemporary film. You certainly don't expect to find it in a film that's ridiculously entertaining even if you don't think about it afterward for a second. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is a kind of pop masterpiece -- funny, insightful, smart, playful and heartbreaking. Few films provide such a thrilling sense of discovery, a discovery that lingers from the first frames to subsequent days.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 head games: 10.
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