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'Being John Malkovich' |
Stanley takes a fresh look
at a likely Oscar contender
of TheColumnists.com
"ALICE in Wonderland" took you into a rabbit hole, and you plunged downward into a bizarre subterranean world. "Being John Malkovich" takes you into a tunnel where you crawl straight ahead on all fours toward a light, and you think maybe Lewis Carroll is waiting at the other end, because it's all very surreal and as mad as a hatter. Suddenly a violent wind lifts you up by the seat of your pants and now you think Franz Kafka might be waiting as the gust hurtles you forward into darkness and you start to feel like a human turned into a cockroach.
Not
"Carrollesque," because Alice doesn't live here, that's
for sure. Not "Kafkaesque," because there's no jury
waiting to condemn you. The right word is "Kaufmanesque,"
as in "screenwriter Charles Kaufman." On the other
hand, the proper word could also be "Malkovichian,"
as in John Malkovich. John who?
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to have a movie filmed inside his head |
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Never mind that for the moment. Just open your eyes. Because now you're inside the brain of this Malkovich guy, looking out through two round holes that are his eyes. You are seeing the world, not as you've always seen it, but as John Malkovich sees it.
Now ask: John who? You know: Malkovich. The real-life actor who portrays fictional characters. Like in "Rounders" or "The Messenger" or "Dangerous Liaisons" or "The Killing Fields" or "In the Line of Duty." He has the grimace-face and crazed eyes and pursed evil lips to play villains, but he also has the talent to play almost anybody and make that anybody seem real, though darkly real and almost always threateningly real. The very fact that Malkovich has no one solid movie identity, but seems a chameleon who can work in all genres, makes him a perfect subject for this satiric glimpse into blurred identities and our devotion to celebrityhood, even when we know the face but can't quite remember what movies we saw it in.
Only in "Being John Malkovich" we have the real John Malkovich playing the real John Malkovich. Or maybe he's a fictional John Malkovich walking around in the body of the real John Malkovich. Sometimes, in this movie of metaphysical metaphors and monstrous manipulation, it's a little hard to distinguish the truth. And if this is a fictional John Malkovich, how does he differ from the real-life John Malkovich?
Don't ask. Rather, enjoy your wild experience as you are whizzed through the tunnel and into the brain of Malkovich because "Being John Malkovich" is one of the oddest movies to come out of Hollywood since . . . ?
It's an American original. Unique doesn't apply to many lotusland offerings, but it does here. Yes, it's tricky to follow but if you like your movies challenging and multi-layered and full of meaning, even when that meaning is illogical and meaningless or pseudo-meaningless, then this madcap movie is plenty and then some.
Okay, here are the rules: Crawl through the tunnel and you're in John Malkovich, yes, but now you've got only 15 minutes to spend there. You see, after that you get dropped out of the sky -- don't ask how you got out of John Malkovich's brain to be up there in the sky -- onto a hillock next to the New Jersey turnpike, missing concrete and speeding cars by only a few feet. What's it all mean?
Better you should ask that screenwriter, Kaufman, although he probably wouldn't tell you anyway. That's because he started out playing it on the keys as a typical love triangle story and then suddenly realized that was pretty dull and mundane for a movie, so he allowed his brain to speed along its own oddball tunnels and drop down into rabbit holes and go streaking off into every direction (along the New Jersey Turnpike maybe?) until he started coming up with the twisted John Malkovich twist.
The rest is becoming an important piece of movie history since the film's release late last year. First, Kaufman got nominated in the recent Golden Globe Awards for best screenplay. Although he didn't win (nor did the film's nomination as best comedy of the year win), he's now holding his breath, waiting to see if maybe the Academy voters will hold the film in as high an esteem when Oscar nominations are announced Feb. 15.
One reason for high hopes is that the film's director, Spike Jonze, the wunderkind of music videos and television commercials (and one of the stars of the George Clooney war movie "Three Kings"), has been nominated by the Directors Guild of America for his helming of "Being John Malkovich."
A DGA nomination in this important category always means that the film could be a likely contender in this year's Oscar run. And that pops the question: Are there enough Academy members who dig this kind of non-mainstream movie? Because let's face it: It wasn't produced for the popcorn crowd at multiplexes. It didn't come out of a committee of expensive-suited executives at Columbia TriStar or MGM. Kaufman concocted it, Jonze shot it loyally and to hell with all the usual considerations or box-office consequences. Let's face it: Either audiences dig "Being John Malkovich" or they'll stay away by the millions. There's no middle ground when you're crawling around in the mind of a Hollywood actor.
The key question remains: Why should anyone end up in the head of John Malkovich? The key answer is: Why not? If you've been living with yourself for all these years, the same boring existence over and over again, on and on and on, year in and year out, then go figure that being inside Malkovich, a movie actor if not a star of great magnitude, even for just a quarter of an hour, has got to be damned exciting. A novel perspective on existence. Even just going to the toilet as Malkovich has got to knock the hell out of your humdrum ways.
"Being John Malkovich" begins with a down-and-out puppeteer, so maybe this is a movie about how invisible forces pull our strings. How God high above makes us dance to His tune. All we can do in life is dangle there. Hanging by a thread. By our thumbs. And here comes the shit down the chute.
John Cusack plays Craig Schwartz, but Schwartz is hardly the puppetmaster of his own destiny. He's a sad lost soul, a misfit with a talent the world refuses to recognize. He stages slightly pornographic puppet shows on sleazy street corners, but the world just keeps on going. He's married to glamorous Cameron Diaz, only for this movie they've made her up to be as dowdy as possible. Maybe the word is frowzy. Try frumpy. Whatever, Diaz has so submerged herself into this role that the word glamorous will never even cross your mind. (She got Golden Globe-nominated, too, as best supporting actress, but, like Kaufman, didn't win. Three strikes--but is the movie out?)
Diaz, as sad a soul as hubby Cusack, works in a pet shop. One day she brings home a chimp named Elijah, who also seems to be having psychological problems, like maybe he was forced to watch too many old Jungle Jim movies back at the vet's office. (There's even a flashback to Elijah's jungle days, where his parents address him as "Elijah.")
After getting punched out by an irate father for his street corner graphics, Cusack decides to take a job and ends up in the Mertin-Flemmer Building, on the 7 ½ floor, which has a ceiling height of only five feet. The bent-over boss (Orson Bean) is a crazed Dr. Lester, who makes no sense. His hunched-over secretary (Mary Kay Place), with a speech impediment. doesn't make any sense. This is definitely looking at things through a glass cockeyedly. You have to slump over just to get a cup of coffee out of a vending machine in the office, and everyone looks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame moving from room to room.
Cusack falls for office co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener), and fantasizes making love to her by creating a puppet lookalike and enmeshing the lookalike with his own lookalike. Then one fateful day, in the memorable 71/2 floor of the Mertin-Flemmer Building, he finds the hole in the wall, behind a filing cabinet, that leads to the tunnel that leads to the brain of John Malkovich. And you know the rest after that. Well, you really know nothing yet because there are all kinds of surprises that screenwriter Kaufman still has in store.
See if you can follow this: You've got Keener getting involved by seducing Malkovich (the real actor playing himself) while Diaz is in his brain, passionately in love with Keener. After this bizarre sexual experience, Diaz wants to be a lesbian or a transsexual, whatever it takes to be with Keener. Pretty upsetting for straight man Cusack, who's beginning to realize this Malkovich channeling isn't quite working out like he had schemed. Maybe transcendental meditation or yoga would have been a better way to go.
Eventually Cusack finds a way of taking over Malkovich completely (no more 15-minute limitation) and uses Malkovich's notoriety to become a world-famous puppeteer. Other bizarre aspects keep popping in and out: Charlie Sheen plays himself (a friend of Malkovich's) who has some choice scenes; Sean Penn appears briefly in a pseudo-documentary about how puppeteering is dominating the entertainment world thanks to Malkovich; Orson Bean's Dr. Lester blabs on with a science-fiction subplot that satirizes mad-doctor and cloning movies; and in one ultimate "scene of madness" the real Malkovich sees a world filled with nothing but John Malkoviches. The sight of multiple hims forces the single him to scream in abject terror. (I know how I'd act if I found myself confined in a room with 300 John Stanleys.)
Despite all of the above, there are plot twists and O. Henry-style surprises still not mentioned.
Despite all of the above, this movie cannot be adequately described and defined with words.
Obviously, rather than go on with this review, there is only one answer: You have to see it.
You may still not grasp it all, but the journey getting to the end of the line is the wildest ride you'll find at the movies. It's even wilder than a Disney E ride. Does life get any better than that?
© 2000 by John Stanley
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