Being John Malkovich

Being John Malkovich
Propaganda Films
December 3, 1999
Fantasy, Dramedy, Romance
DVD
B

Let me tell you a little story that has nothing to do with your viewing experience but a lot to do with mine.  It was almost twenty years ago, and less than a year after this movie came out.  I was watching it with my then-boyfriend, possibly on DVD but I think on VHS.  We were attracted to each other without having much in common, which we were fully aware of.  We were still in the giddy early, hormonal stage and we started making out during the scene when Maxine (Catherine Keener) is mounting Malkovich while Lotte (Cameron Diaz) is in his mind.  We kept making out until shocked out of it by the scene where Lotte's husband, Craig (John Cusack), forces her at gunpoint to make a call to Maxine.

Watching the movie now wasn't that much of an emotional whiplash, but it remains a twisted, disturbing and yet somehow fun and funny ride.  It's one of those rare movies where I don't like any of the characters and yet I want to see what happens to them, and of course the situation is fascinating and it's cool to see it play out in all its ramifications.  At one point, Craig wonders what will happen to John M. if he goes into the portal, and Maxine says, "Let's find out," like she's just another viewer.  (Interestingly, she's the one significant character who doesn't try to "be" John Malkovich, although she does control him through sex and love.)

Charlie Kaufman wrote the script and Spike Jonze directed, and I assume the quirkiness comes from both.  I want to particularly single out my two favorite parts, one of which is a play on the title and the concept, and the other of which seems to have little to do with the main part of the movie but is actually a capsule of it.  What the viewers (but maybe not Maxine or Craig) find out is that Malkovich enters an alternate world where everyone is Malkovich and speaks only in Malkovich, e.g. "Malkovich? Malkovich!"

When Craig is first hired to work at LesterCorp, he has to watch a training film, which is unlike any training film you've ever seen.  The visuals suggest it was made about 20 years earlier, but then it goes into a "dramatic recreation" of something allegedly from the late 1800s, except that the two characters we now see are dressed as if it's colonial times, more like 250 years ago than 100.  We get the feeling that LesterCorp is keeping down its overhead in more ways than low ceilings.  And then later in the outer movie, the story turns out to be true!  (Well, they probably got colonial costumes cheap in 1979, but still.)

I didn't love that boyfriend and I don't love this movie, then or now, but some things have to be experienced, no matter how "wrong" they are.

I'm omitting all the people, including Dustin Hoffman, that appear in archive footage, but I am including Sean Penn and Octavia Spencer because they make memorable cameos.