BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (director: Spike Jonze; screenwriter: Charlie Kaufman; cinematographer: Lance Acord; cast: John Cusack (Craig Schwartz), Cameron Diaz (Lotte), Catherine Keener (Maxine), John Malkovich (Himself), Orson Bean (Dr. Lester), Mary Kay Place (Floris), 1999)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
First-time film director and former music video director Spike Jonze has come up with a tantalizing feast for the self to nosh on, cooked by Charles Kaufman's original screenplay, that offers up some very intangible delicacies on its plate, such as a psychological, personal and sexual identity study, allowing the eater to suspend belief about what is being digested and be allowed to tastefully enter into the mind of another being. It is a playful and provocative look at determining one's identity and how celebrity is viewed from within, featuring an actual celebrity, the performer, John Malkovich, who is playing himself, as the mind who is being entered. If someone could market via virtual reality how to actually do that, it might cost as much as $200 for a 15 minute sightseeing trip down that path, the charge established in the film for such a trip, while for the movie viewer it is only for the nominal cost of a movie ticket that one gets to have such a unique experience.
Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), the film's wormy, unemployed New York puppeteer and unlikely protagonist, appearing scraggy looking and acting despondent and unhappy with his lot in life, as someone who knows his craft but is not appreciated by the public he wishes to conquer and therefore can't do the work he believes he was put on earth to do. The last straw for Craig, is seeing his successful competitor put up a gimmicky display overhanging a highway in Weschester County, of a gigantic 60-foot Emily Dickinson, entitled "The Belle of Amherst." He rationalizes his failure to get noticed by stating, "Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate."
At home, he is lost in his own problems, with his schlump-like pet store employed wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), who is a pet enthusiast, having an assortment of pets in the house, including a chimpanzee whom she loves more than her husband. The husband is the one who cheerfully is being nagged by her to get a job until something materializes for him as a puppeteer. So he scans the newspapers, and our hero seeks out a job as a filing clerk for the Lester Corporation, absurdly located on the 71/2th floor in a Manhattan skyscraper, that has low ceilings forcing everyone to stoop when walking. The running gag being, that the overhead and the rent are also low here.
Employed on the same floor as our hero, is an attractive, fast-talking, sarcastic bundle of promising sex, Maxine Lund (Keeler), who has our hero tongue-tied and in a flirtatious mood, who is not rebuffed by her dislike of his physical appearance. She is perfect for the part of the film's bitch.
What also excites him about his new job, is that he discovers a portal behind his filing cabinet that goes tunnel-like down into the mind of John Malkovich and after 15 minutes throws him out on the grassy side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Since the glimpse into Malkovich's head is more or less fictional, it's delightfully funny to find Craig turning up inside the man's head and to find the actor eating toast and reading The Wall Street Journal in his Park Avenue apartment.
A business partnership between the scheming Maxine and Craig is consumated, as the two decide to advertise in the newspaper and take celebrity seeking visitors into the secret portal all-through the night. When Lotte finds out about the portal, she is exhilarated by the experience of being inside the actor's head and watching him on a date with Maxine. Lotte becomes the second member of the Schwartz family to fall head-over-heels for the irresistible Maxine. It seems when inside the head of the actor, the Schwartz's are able to attract the elusive Maxine, but when left to their own identities, she treats them as nobodies.
Having their fun with this nutty script is Orson Bean, as the 105-year-old entrepreneur, Dr. Lester, who is the head of the Lester Corporation, and is devilishly amusing as the lecherous businessman and the man who knows more about the portal than it appears he does, as he uses it as a way of living forever by changing identities. Also seen at work is Floris (Mary Kay Place), as a confused secretary who is an expert on speech impediments but who doesn't realize she suffers from one herself, and gives an outstanding supporting performance, adding more punch to an already zany story.
The film was brilliant in spots but towards the end ran out of enough nourishing food to sustain its steady diet of farcical comedy. But even as it was petering out, it still managed to have enough brilliant glimpses at celebrity and how some crave that sort of identity, to make it both hilarious and somewhat intellectually appealing, and leave off with an ending that is unnerving. What makes this insane premise work out so surprisingly well, is that the actors get the joke and run with it, even flushing out seemingly irrelevant things about one's inner being along the way that are fun to scrutinize. And if anything more can be said about John Malkovich than that he is a grand actor, it is that he comes across as a good person, someone with a good sense of humor and someone who is able to heartily have a laugh at himself even if it is supposedly at his own expense. This is the kind of strange film that one would expect to be released as an art-house indie, yet here it is playing as a mainstream big production.
REVIEWED ON 12/5/99 GRADE: A
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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