"Being John Malkovich" (1999) - Movie Review

Ok. I need to be honest. I need to go to www.wikipedia.org to completely understand certain happenings in this movie. But as my friend Mathi has made me realize that art needs hard work to understand with respect to its true content and obscure meanings, it is worth it. I felt enthralled after reading and understanding some of the facts about it. It is not that the substance got lost in not understanding but some of the holes which I thought were in the movie got cleared. It is kind of relieving and fulfilled when we associate the realized factor with the sequences in the movie.

Craig (John Cusack) is puppeteer finding it hard to live with his wife Lotte (Cameroon Diaz). Their marriage is uninteresting. Still bound by the commitment, Craig finds a job in a strange office which is situated in 7 ½ floor in a building. It has very low ceiling. There he meets Maxine (Catherine Keener) and he is instantly attracted. She becomes a strange weird obsession for him. He comes out of his marriage bound mind and asks her out. She is not attracted to him. When this is happening, Craig discovers a portal in his strange floor. Curiously he gets into it and gets suck in to some one’s mind. From the people talking to him or the person inside who he is in that it is the actor John Malkovich. In exactly fifteen minutes he is thrown out of the mind and lands some where outside the city. So when he tells something like this strange phenomenon to Maxine, she should freak out right? No. Instead, she proposes a business offer of charging people to be John Malkovich. This is the world of writer Charlie Kaufman.

The movie does not try to dwell in to this weird fantasy or super natural force. Instead it uses it as an opportunity to narrate a love story inter twined unimaginably. Being some one else is human instinct right from the child hood. When I was a kid in my school, I wanted to be a high school boy. When I was a high school boy, I wanted to be a college guy. But there comes a point wherein there is a confusion of who any one really wants to be. For Craig he wants to be a puppeteer but does not know the means of achieving it successfully. This frustration and confusion is amplified by the experience of being Malkovich. At that moment he is in love with Maxine for no apparent reason. And the experience kind of gets him hypnotized for her. The obsession is powered up enormously. And the jealousy creeps up when he learns that his wife is having a strange affair with Maxine through being Malkovich. For Maxine it is impulsive and controlling. Opportunity is everything and she is experimental. She feels an amazing unusual experience of making love with Malkovich knowing Lotte is inside. But she is also put into confusion when without realization learns Craig took over of Malkovich. Now she does not know what to opt for. These three characters are disassociated and connected through the world of Malkovich.

Kaufman’s imagination is impetus. It is overwhelming to see the originality in the screen. And his imagination is filled with obsession over the mechanics of human mind. While analyzing it so scientifically and methodically, emotions and senses are the catalyst for this strange experiment. What would it be to be some one else? Well, it is common in Hollywood about that. But how about being yourself in some one else’s body when they are being themselves? I guess it is tough to explain. The movie does give an idea of it. It is definitely a unique experience. The appeal is more out here since the mind dealt out here is a celebrity. It would not have been enough to handle a screenplay with a person who is a clerk. But it cannot be said for sure on how interesting it would have been. Whatever it is, the idea of projecting the identity into a different mould with a life for itself is an experience.

It is often referred human body as a “vessel” for soul. The movie is based on that. It elevates the immorality purely on the level of one’s own thought process. It enlightens on the issue of how physical the nature has been in to the life of humans under the skin. The representation of the 7 ½ floor is an indication of how small we are and how compressed in between the ground below by the nature and the above by our self. There are clues of existentialism and presence of metaphysical attractions. Craig is obsessed with Maxine purely on her physical aspects. There is no solid evidence in their connectivity. Yet Craig cannot stop thinking about her. He becomes a person so cruel and monstrous with minuscule sense of being human. Even after achieving what he wants in life, he is begging for the sole attention from her. The experience into John Malkovich got him stuck in that. His instance attraction towards her becomes this permanently disguised form of love.

But oddly enough Maxine appears to be the “witch” character. She controls Craig as he does with his puppets. It appears that she is controlling Lotte but we witness her transformation of falling for her. She is not ready accepting her sexuality. She considers it to be experimental but later in her life comes to realize it. Realizing and not deciding on it. She understands the stature of body and soul. I mean as “body” and as “soul”. She opts for the soul. It is multifaceted character depiction of her. For example the film delivers the irony in her not entering the portal that a character who is open for experimenting. May be it is her fear of knowing the truth.

Lotte is another funny little character of distraught. In a calculated way she is not sure on where her life leads or at least on where it is being taken by Craig. She is definitely sure of something terribly wrong with their marriage but does not confess it. As Craig, she is caught into the experience. And her experience is unique of all. Her deepest denial becomes her. And readily accepts it as opposed to Maxine. One character ready to be herself.

If it is noticed that I missed the main character in the movie, John Malkovich. I guess this is exactly the movie delivers. While we are shown on every one being him, his identity is lost in it. He knows he is being controlled and it turns him nuts. While every one experience being him, he never does it with himself. And when he does that by externally inserting him in to his mind, it is chaos. May be he is upset by the fact of being with himself. It is creativity at its best on depicting that sequence. This is a movie about imagination as it poses. But it has so much more to offer than that. It offers humanity. It offers the truth of being you. It offers John Malkovich.