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Director: Spike Jonze
Producer: Steve Golin, Vincent Landay, Sandy Stern, Michael Stipe
Writer: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich
Year: 1999
Duration: 1h 52m
Country: USA
Language: English
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What would it be like being in John Malkovich’s mind?
I bet many of you, at some point in your lives, have wondered what it would be like to step in someone else’s shoes and live his/her glamorous and (why not) debauchery life.
With the media constantly bombarding us with excerpts of the lavish lives of famous personalities, we often wonder how awesome it would be if we could live their lives even for a moment. Great car, great boyfriend/girlfriend, great house, great abs…
Hollywood has certainly worked hard to exploit this idea as many of its flicks will attest: Vice Versa (1988), The Hot Chick (2002), Scooby Doo (2002), Freaky Friday (2003), It’s a Boy Girl Thing (2006), The Change-Up (2011), The Swap (2016), Freaky (2020) and Family Switch (2023) just to name a few.
Unfortunately, most of these films reuse pretty much the same formulaic ideas and predictable jokes. But if one can say something about Being John Malkovich is that it is certainly unconventional.
Being John Malkovich tells the story of Craig Schwartz, an unemployed street puppeteer, who lives with his pet-obsessed wife Lotte Schwartz.
Craig lands a job as a file clerk at a bizarre firm located between the 7th and 8th floor of the Mertin-Flemmer building, ran by eccentric Dr. Lester. Craig meets Maxine Lund, an attractive but ruthless and manipulative co-worker with whom he becomes infatuated, but who doesn’t return Craig’s affections.
One day, Craig finds a hidden passage on a wall and decides to explore, only to realise the hole is actually a portal into John Malkovich’s mind. Yes, into the actual John Malkovich, who is playing a version of himself.
Maxine sees an opportunity to make quick cash and together with Craig start out a “business” that quickly gets out of hand. And much to the chagrin of Malkovich.
Being John Malkovich is definitely original, and I did appreciate the writer’s decision to stay away from corny swapping-body narratives. The story is unpredictable, it doesn’t fall prey to clichés, and it mixes sporadic light humour with some bizarre events.
However, I just had a really hard time figuring out where the heck the film was going. I mean what was really the point of the movie (if there was ever one), its message, so to speak? The impression I had was that the narrative consisted of loose bits and pieces put together, without really fitting each other.
Take the character Maxine, for example. First, when Craig first told her about his initial experience with the portal, she showed (reasonably) complete skepticism. Then, a few hours later she suddenly wanted to profit from Craig’s discovery, even though we have no idea what convinced her about Craig’s sketchy-sounded story. Moreover, for a character that was shown from the beginning to have a complete disregard for other people, who was manipulative, opportunistic and plain mean, her character has a sudden change of heart, in a way that I found too artificial and rushed.
In addition, there is an abundance of interesting themes (e.g., consciousness, self, gender identity, love obsession), but all of them are dealt in a very superficial way.
Setting aside Dr. Lester’s clear explanation regarding the mechanism behind the possession of new vessels, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of dissatisfaction for the lack of proper treatment of some other crucial aspects of the story. For example, Craig brings up interesting and relevant points about the philosophical implications of the portal into Malkovich’s mind, but ends his monologue in a very shallow and trivial manner: “I don’t see how I could go on living my life the way I’ve lived before”. After that, there is no attempt, by any of the characters, to explore the significance of this portal.
Of course, the writers probably did not wish to reveal too much and to leave some mystery in the story, but I felt that mystery was misplaced. It was simply too frustrating for me that no one questioned why on Earth the hole exists, and why are you dumped on New Jersey Turnpike and not on Central Park, for example? What’s so special about that place? Aren’t Craig, Maxine and Lotte worried that they may have themselves a portal? Likely, the writers did not wish to get bogged down in these kinds of detail, but simply ignoring these questions lowered the quality of the film, in my opinion.
On a more positive note, I did feel the casting was just right. Catherine Keener was fearless in her portrayal of Maxine, and it was interesting to see John Cusack playing a nerdy, dependable and troubled Craig. Cameron Diaz was perhaps the least surprising of the lot, since Lotte’s labile nature is something we can observe in some characters that Diaz played in previous films.
However, most of the credit really must go to John Malkovich. It’s amazing how they managed to convince Malkovich to play a version of himself in a script that doesn’t really portray him in a good light. Not only is his character regularly mocked and ridiculed (e.g., “Who the f**k is John Malkovich?“, “The one where you played a jewel thief“; “Shut up, you overrated sack of s**t!“; “Little Johny Malk-o-pee“, etc.), manipulated by Maxine, but also, and without wishing to reveal too much, meets a very disturbing end.
Brave, very brave!
Being John Malkovich might be worth watching for the entertaining aspect of it. However, ultimately, the movie might leave many viewers underwhelmed, mostly by a vacillating story progression, but also by a poor treatment of crucial elements that would make the story more sound (e.g., why does the hole exist? Why John Malkovich? Where does the body go? Are there other holes?).
Not a big fan I’m afraid, so here, at Mindlybiz, Being John Malkovich gets a rating of 2.
Being John Malkovich is slightly bizarre. Actually, absurd would be a more adequate adjective, if I’m allowed to be semantically pedantic.
The movie often gets the label of surrealistic, but I’m not sure that’s an accurate label. The reason is that the narrative in itself is not strange at all. There isn’t covert symbolism that I could recognise, there aren’t events in the story that will leave you utterly perplexed, like those in what I consider truly surrealistic movies (e.g., Jodorowsky’s “The Holy Mountain”).
The bizarre scenes, such as the tiny ceilings, are far and between, and the voyage into John Malkovich’s head could be categorized more as science fiction/fantasy rather than surrealism.
Being John Malkovich gets a Bizarrometer score of 1.
Craig’s accidental discovery of the portal inside the Mertin-Flemmer building, leads him inside the mind of actor John Malkovich. For 15 minutes he sees the world through Malkovich’s eyes as the latter goes about his usual life, before being dumped on a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Craig lets his wife, Lotte, in the secret, who becomes obsessed about getting into Malkovich’s mind; her experience later becoming the vehicle for the voyeuristic relationship with her lover Maxine.
The question is, of course, are Craig and Lotte being John Malkovich, in the sense that they are experiencing what it is like being Malkovich, feeling his subjective sensations? The answer is a resounding no.
As we will see shortly, subjective experiences (also called qualia) are unique to each individual. Somehow, Craig and Lotte retain their own consciousness and memories when inside Malkovich’s mind, suggesting that the mind is separate from the body (at least, in the movie). Thus, their minds are but external observers, seeing through the eyes of Malkovich, but never feeling what Malkovich is actually feeling.
Leveraging on his puppeteering skills, Craig manages to gain full control of Malkovich’s body, relegating Malkovich’s mind to the subconscious. Where is Craig’s body when he takes over Malkovich’s? It’s not clear, but given the movie’s strong dualist undertones, Craig’s body may have simply separated from his mind, being stuck somewhere inside the portal, the inside of which likely resides in some hyperdimension.
Dr. Lester, who is in fact Captain Mertin, has found a way to live eternally by jumping from vessel to vessel using the portal. John Malkovich is to be his next vessel body when Malkovich turns 44 years old, but Craig’s total possession of Malkovich’s body meant that Craig had become too dominant to be forcefully expelled.
After Dr. Lester kidnaps Maxine and blackmails Craig, the latter willingly leaves Malkovich’s body, just in time to allow Dr. Lester and friends to replace Malkovich’s consciousness with their own consciousness. Malkovich’s mind is relegated to the subconscious forever.
Maxine and Malkovich’s daughter, Emily, became the next vessel, possibly because once the mind of the current vessel is taken over on its 44th birthday (in this case, Malkovich), then the portal is reassigned to the mind of the previous vessel’s offspring (i.e., Emily). Had Dr. Lester failed to enter by Malkovich’s 44th birthday, or had Malkovich had no children, then the portal would simply be reassigned to the next baby that just happened to be born at that time.
Consciousness is a big theme in the film, so let’s get started with a very brief discussion of what consciousness is.
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