Being John Malkovich (1999)
Spike Jonze
Mondo Bizarro
It surely isn't the greatest movie of 1999 (``The Matrix'' is) but it is the most off-the wall parade of weirdness. Malkovich is superb (somewhat flabby, but otherwise good), and Keener is the ultimate femme fatale, except she is also a lesbian. I will not pretend to know whether the film had any layered meaning beyond the obvious oddity (it certainly did not open a can of metaphysical worms for me) but it was entertaining without being stupid, which is saying a great deal.
Cusack plays Craig Schwartz, a good but unemployable puppeteer who is married to Lotte (Diaz), an owner of a pet store. Their marriage is uneventful and plain boring until one day Craig finally decides to get a job instead of waiting for the proverbial artistic break. He finds one as a filing clerk on the 7½ floor of a corporate building. That's right, the 7½ floor, the one between 7 and 8, which is about 4 feet high. Naturally, everyone has to walk around stooping and looking like a dog ready to smell the colleague's behind. Craig wastes no time in doing just that when he meets beautiful Maxine (Keener) who, however, is as interested in him as she is in the local news report about the cat being rescued from a tree.
Craig falls head over heels for her but unfortunately his love is unrequited. His pathetic advances get him nothing but sarcastic sneer until he finds a hidden doorway in the deep storage room, which turns out to be a portal to John Malkovich's body. He shares the discovery with Maxine who, contrary to his hopes, fails to jump in the sack with him, at least not knowingly, not yet. Instead, they set up a business where they let a bunch of losers pay $200 for the privilege of being JM for 15 minutes. Lotte tries the gig and becomes addicted, even convincing herself that she is really a transsexual, who longs for getting the male body back. Whew, nice marriage (that's even worse than turning them to lesbianism)!
Maxine sleeps with Malkovich while Lotte is in his body and they decide they are in love (that is, Maxine loves JM with Lotte inside but not Lotte in her body, and Lotte just loves Maxine, and Craig loves Maxine...) So, one day Craig finds out about the happy duo, puts his wife in the chimp cage, and gets into JM to fuck Maxine, who loves it, so she naturally falls in love with Craig, but only in JM's body. Being a puppeteer, Craig learns to control JM and stays in his body indefinitely. He, JM, that is, leaves Lotte, marries Maxine, quits the acting career and becomes the greatest puppeteer.
Wait, this is not the end. Turns out, Craig's employer is a dirty old bastard who has been using people as vessels to prolong his life and JM was to be his next body. There are, of course, some technicalities, which force him to wait until the 44th birthday of the vessel, but then he and about a dozen of his friends are supposed to go in. Anyway, this they do by kidnapping the now pregnant Maxine and blackmailing Craig into leaving the body. He does and they go, except Maxine has just realized she really loves Lotte after all. So they leave Craig and go on to live happily ever after with their (yes, that's right -- Maxine conceived when Lotte was inside JM) daughter. Naturally, the crushed Craig, who only longs for being close to Maxine, goes in the portal and into their daughter, where he stays. Weird. Really weird.
It should be obvious by know---this is a confusing movie (not the storyline, this was pretty straightforward once you buy into the whole portal thing). The makers were careful to answer some of the obvious questions, e.g. what would happen if JM went into his own portal, but not others, e.g. does everyone have a portal? But, if everyone had a portal, then maybe all lesbians are really female vessels with men stuck in the wrong portals. And sice many men are attracted to lesbians, does this mean they are latent homosexuals? Who knows. The problem with the story was Maxine---why did she suddenly decide she really loved Lotte? There's no evidence she ever thought of her during JM's rise to fame as a puppeteer. There's no reason why she should prefer Craig in JM's body to Lotte. And it is not clear why she decided to go with Lotte (as her normal unattractive self) after all. The only thing that was clear was that Craig realistically had no chances with her... although JM really plays a great puppet!
This reviewer only has a couple of remaining complaints: Cusack's puppeteer was way too whiny, he was pitiful but instead of arousing compassion, he made me sick. The hairdo made Diaz look uglier than she normally is and her acting was abominable -- Elija emoted more and was much more believable (Elija, by the way, was their pet chimp). She was a major spoilage for the movie and I regret they did not cast someone (anyone) else. Also, the movie was way too long for what the idea could hold; it loses its pace at several places, and is boring at others. All in all, 7 out of 10, with 10 of the points going to JM, 10 -- to Maxine, and Craig/Lotte share a -13.
January 10, 2000. BLS