Being John Malkovich is a film from 1999 directed by Spike Jonze and written by the always original, if not slightly neurotic Charlie Kaufman. The duo would later go on and make the movie Adaptation starring Nicolas Cage twice.
Being John Malkovich is a strange movie, and I don’t mean it in the sense that the film itself is strange even though it is. The movie is strange because it feels strange, yet it isn’t as surreal as other Kaufman films and it is not as focused as other Joneze films.
Putting into words what makes Being John Malkovich good is difficult. So, I will start with a summary and see where we end up.
Summary
The movie stars John Cusack as Greg, a struggling puppeteer. Yes, he is a puppeteer meaning he makes dolls and performs with them. Greg is struggling with finding a job because as he puts it no one is looking for a puppeteer in today’s economy. Now, this movie was made in 1999 yet I sense the need for puppeteers hasn’t grown since then, but I could be wrong.
The film could in theory be viewed as a critique of modern culture, where pencil pushers are valued more than artists. The film’s themes go way deeper than that though.
Greg is in a relationship with Lotte, a veterinarian played by Cameron Diaz. They live in an apartment full of animals. Lotte convinces Greg to find a placeholder job he can hold while he finds a job as a puppeteer.
Greg gets a job for Lester Cop, a strange entity that is located on the seventh and a half floor. The siling is incredibly low since the department is located between two floors. Everyone is walking around hunched over. This is a very funny visual and the people almost look like puppets….. Thematic isn’t it.
Greg meets a woman named Maxine played by Catherine Keener who Greg instantly is drawn to. He lusts after her like a horny schoolboy. Now, if I made the movie
and I wanted to show Greg lust after another woman, I would properly have cast another actress than Cameron Diaz for his Girlfriend.
Greg Later discovers a portal that leads “inside” the head of famous Actor Brad Pit…..
I mean John Malkovich. They decided to charge people for “entering” his head and from that point on hilarity ensues.
Greg and Maxine make the portal into a business where they charge money for someone to be John Malkovich for 15 minutes.
Summarizing the film is easy enough, but it’s hard to convey exactly how weird it is. Watching all these people walk around with their heads down in the smallest office space ever is super strange.
The characters don’t think it’s that odd and thus a contrast is being made between something absurd and the characters’ reaction to it.
It’s more effective to have something weird and then having the characters think it’s the most normal thing in the world.
Where the mind at?
The movie delves into an accent philosophical discussion called the Mind-body problem. The problem is about the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and the brain as part of the physical body.
To oversimplify it to an absurd degree: The problem is that everyone has a subjective experience of what it is to be them. This is called consciousness and we have no idea where it is located in the brain (if it’s located there) or even what it really is. Is the part that makes you, you located in the brain? or somewhere else?
Famous French philosopher Rene Descartes is credited with inventing the problem, even though discussions similar to the mind-body problem can be traced all the way back to ancient Greece. Descartes believed in what is known as substance dualism, which means there are two kinds of categories:
Physical stuff and mental stuff.
Physical stuff has things like height, mass, color, and so on, whereas mental stuff doesn’t have all these properties. The mental stuff is not located in time and space.
Humans are the only animal to combine the two states in what is known as interactionism. Which means the mental and the physical state interact with each other. Stress, anxiety, and anger can all manifest in the body. Thus one interacts with the other.
But how can a purely physical phenomenon interact with a purely mental phenomenon?
This my dear reader is called the Mind-Body problem.
Descartes said that the mind was located within the Pineal gland in the mind and that it filters mental experience through some kind of portal….. I know, it’s not that convincing, wouldn’t the Pineal gland be part of the physical body too, since it is in the brain?
Why do you spend so much time on this problem? Because the movie deals with exactly that problem.
At the beginning of the film, Gregs explains to a monkey that he is suffering because he has consciousness and that the monkey doesn’t have that problem. Yet, the monkey becomes clinically depressed throughout the film. Greg is also saying in this scene that having consciousness is a bad thing.
When people go through the portal and enter John’s head they perceive the world through him, but as themselves. Furthermore, their body disappears when they enter. It is not clear where the body goes. The important part is that they do not need it to perceive the world through Malkovich.
Maxine and Greg sell the experience as “you get to be John Malkovich for 15 minutes”, but this is not true. They get to be themselves, inside John’s head. They still have their own thoughts and Malkovich still has his own thoughts. The visitors are not in control of John, so in a sense, they are merely passengers.
At some point, Maxine starts a relationship with John Malkovich. Whenever Maxines is having sex with John, Lotte is a passenger in his mind. Maxine can sense Lotte inside him and is turned on by this. Maxine is not attracted to Lotte in the real world. Maxine is not attracted to John, she wants John’s body with Lotte as a passenger. Maxine is attracted to her soul and not her body.
At some point, Greg takes over Malkovich for good, and he learns to control him fully. Maxine and Greg get married and Greg is becoming famous as a puppeteer.
It is clear that Greg is only getting famous because he occupies John’s body. People don’t care about Greg’s art, they care only for Malkovich’s art. If the art was important Greg would be famous before he took over Malkovich.
At one point Greg performs his puppet dance as Malkovich. The metaphor is clear as day, he is using Malkovich as a puppet. Greg is the one pulling the strings, he is not the puppet. Greg is still Greg even when he is acting as John.
The movie contains some trippy imagery and sequins. We have already talked about the low ceiling and how that looks, but there is plenty more weird stuff.
At one point John goes through his own portal, which leads him to an existence where everybody has his head and the only thing they can say is “Malkovich”
Lotte chases Maxine through John’s subconscious and that sequence feels like it’s straight out of “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”, another Kaufman movie.
The movie is a well-written, thematically deep experience that is both thought-provoking in its themes yet funny in its absurdity.