Viking Night: Being John Malkovich
By Bruce Hall
November 23, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com

It's really tight in Malkovich, isn't it?
Most consumers have no problem loving a huge budget blockbuster. Movies that are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience usually do just that. But some films have a narrower vision, or simply contain more complex meaning than meets the eye. They aren't always art, and they aren't always even very successful. But for a devoted and eccentric few, they're the best entertainment money can buy. Once, beginning with Erik the Viking, a group of dedicated irregulars gathered weekly in a dingy dorm room to watch these films and discuss how what pleases the few might also appeal to the many. Time has separated the others in those discussions so that I alone remain to ponder the wider significance of cult cinema. But while the room is cleaner and I no longer have to skip class to do it, I still think of my far off friends whenever I hold Viking Night.

Trying to understand a movie like Being John Malkovich is a little like trying to understand calculus. You’re either going to get it or you’re not, and if you have to break a sweat in order to grasp the fundamentals, there’s a good chance that you never will. I don’t say that to belittle anyone because I can assure you that yours truly does not understand calculus. But while the sorts of movies we discuss here at Viking Night already have narrow appeal, along comes the occasional film that really should have a warning label on it.

Being John Malkovich isn’t violent, or obscene or even particularly offensive in any way. But if brainy, existential movies make you uncomfortable, then I am warning you now that Being John Malkovich is going to make you uncomfortable, and most of what I say next probably will too. This is because while there isn’t a person among us who hasn’t at one point wanted to be someone else, rarely do we stop to consider what that really says about us. If you could really step into someone else’s life, you’d find yourself dealing with the highs and the lows, the good and the bad – just like the life you already have. Chances are what you’d discover is that you didn’t want to be someone else so much as you just wanted to stop being yourself.

But this isn’t exactly Craig Schwarz’s (John Cusack) problem. Craig is an accomplished puppeteer whose street performances are both curious and moving, but never profitable. Each night he returns to his grungy apartment and his frumpy wife, convinced that the world is cheating him out of the fame and fortune he deserves. His wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) is a lovable basket case who works as an animal conservationist and has populated their home with a menagerie of damaged creatures who effectively serve as a prism for her own neurosis. But she’s a devoted spouse, and while she encourages her husband to pursue his dream, she isn’t too myopic to realize that dreams don’t pay the bills.



So, Craig swallows his pride and answers a newspaper ad (remember those?) for a mysterious job on floor 7 1/2 of an office building in Manhattan. Here, he finds himself employed by an eccentric nonagenarian with a rock star social life, and sharing an office with a backbiting shrew named Maxine (Catherine Keener) to whom he develops an immediate, unrequited attraction. Soon, we see that despite having a devoted wife and an inflated sense of his own intellect, Craig is actually nothing more than a simpering tool, unable to count his blessings and desperate to possess only that which he can never have.

Maxine gleefully rebukes Craig’s advances with all the predatory mercy of a pack of hyenas, utterly emasculating him at every opportunity. Now with his marriage in a rut, his dreams of puppet-glory dashed and his manhood in question, Craig’s life seems more like a nightmare than ever. And then, he discovers a mysterious door behind a filing cabinet in his office. When he enters, he discovers a portal into the mind of actor John Malkovich – he is literally able to become Malkovich, seeing and experiencing the world through the eyes of the world famous thespian. Desperate to impress Maxine with this discovery, Craig regales her with all manner of rambling philosophical theories about it. Maxine, soulless hellcat that she is, declares that her primary interest in this phenomenon is to exploit it for money. This they do, eventually offering patrons 15 minutes inside the mind of Malkovich for $200. It’s bad enough that Maxine sees him simply as a tool for her own ambition; and then Craig’s wife discovers their scheme.

Lotte becomes obsessed with the portal, uncovering things about herself and her marriage that leave Craig backpedaling on the whole enterprise as his life suddenly spins out of control. In the middle of this is poor Malkovich, who has begun to sense each time someone enters his head. Frightened and confused about what’s happening, he begins to lean on his celebrity status to cope, prompting some of the film’s more wickedly funny sequences. Craig, Maxine and Lotte waste little time in deciding to use this portal for their own selfish ends, and since Malkovich doesn’t seem to be using his brain anyway, so much the better. But it isn’t long before being John Malkovich starts to make everyone’s life a living hell.

Philosophically, Being John Malkovich poses a lot of questions, reminding me of the old parable of the genie and the three wishes. Be careful what you desire, what you resent, and what you ask for. Because if you somehow were given an opportunity to obtain everything you’ve always wanted without earning it, there’s a good chance this would screw up your life in ways you hadn’t anticipated. We experience failure and rejection for a reason, and that is to make us better, stronger people – the only type of people who are truly wired to handle success. At least, I think that’s what the movie is trying to tell us.

Things unravel a bit in the final act, when the story hobbles itself by trying to explain the origin and purpose of the mysterious Malkovich head-hole. It reminds me of the scene in the Star Wars prequels where we discover that the Force is nothing more than a biological disorder, rather than the broad metaphor for spiritual faith some of us suspected. In that case, half of what made Star Wars interesting in the first place was obliterated in an instant. In this case, there’s a dramatic reasoning behind the Big Reveal, and I suppose it worked well enough in the end. But attempts to ground a work of such extreme fantasy in reality only serve to take the wind out of the story and dull the ultimate emotional impact.

Fortunately, the film’s strengths far outweigh its shortcomings. Spike Jonze (director) and Charlie Kaufman (screenwriter) have crafted an ingenious tale that defies convention and breaks new ground in ways that few movies ever have and fewer ever will, given what many perceive as the decreasing premium on originality in Hollywood. Here, Cusack turns his usual role of amiable everyman on its head. What is initially a sympathetic character is quickly revealed to be a jealous, vindictive ass, allowing Cusack to utilize range that even many of his fans might not have seen before. In a rare change of pace, Cameron Diaz is allowed not to be a vapid sex toy – Lotte is as mousy and endearing as that girl in your ninth grade physics class who might have been as pretty as the cheerleading captain if only she’d brushed her hair and discovered the wonders of Benzoyl Peroxide. Indie darling Catherine Keener owns each scene she’s in (even opposite Malkovich), slinking across the screen like a spoiled Persian cat who’s used to getting whatever it wants. But icy women are almost always hiding something, and Maxine is no different. All of these characters are emotionally vapid train wrecks, and the mysterious gateway only serves to magnify the soul crushing issues that they otherwise might have just grimly carried to their graves.

But perhaps the most extraordinary portrayal is that of Malkovich as Malkovich – this had to be one of the most daunting and rewarding roles he’s ever taken; he’s playing what you’d charitably call a less than flattering version of himself. But that’s the point; Being John Malkovich takes its fair share of shots at the cult of celebrity and just when you’re about to wonder why it’s about Malkovich instead of someone like Charlie Sheen, we actually see Charlie Sheen.

From there, the answer becomes obvious. Sheen, cast as a vainglorious twit might not surprise many people but Malkovich – that guy we’ve seen in such hoity-toity fare like Dangerous Liaisons – seems like he has to be smarter than this; it’s the casting against type that makes it work. Most audiences probably already assume that rich, successful Academy Award nominees really do spend their free time strutting around, preening and thinking about their genitals! In that way, as viewers, the film tests our own perceptions far more than it does those of its characters. Despite the uneven final act, the film leaves us wondering where we might draw the line, how far might be going too far in order to get what we want, and whether our own problems are so insurmountable in comparison to others as we’re tempted to think.

This movie, that many of you will might feel sure could never interest you, will affect you more than you expect it to during its run time, and will haunt you longer than you want it to after it’s over. As I suggested before, brainy and existential films often make people uncomfortable because most of us don’t really like to think about life. It’s easier just to sit back, let it happen, and then complain about the results. But getting the things you want out of the world means compromise, and learning to not just accept but embrace the difficult decisions along with the simple ones. As the inhabitants of this twisted tale eventually learn, happiness is as much about the actions you don’t take as it is about the ones you do. That’s something everyone should take a little time to consider, and if you can do it on your couch, in front of the television with Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener, how bad could it be?