Being John Malkovich

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Happy New Year! There’s no getting around it, whether you consider its plot or characters, this 1999 movie from writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze is strange. But, there is a great deal of humor in it, and it addresses serious themes involving individual identity.

The first shot is of unsuccessful puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) manipulating a puppet that looks like him, feeling that he can’t control his own destiny, which is ironic since he manipulates the strings of his miniature replica. Puppet Craig looks at a mirror of himself and breaks it because it is unhappy with itself. The wooden duplicate points to Craig’s narcissism, since his art is about himself. Craig is envious of another puppeteer's success who sells out commercially by making his skill into special effects shows. One act of this rival consists of a stories-tall Emily Dickinson puppet he controls in an outside area of the city. This grandstanding performance is another irony, since Dickinson was a recluse who didn’t want public exposure. The implication is that the true artist focuses on the art, not its creator. Here we can sympathize with Craig’s view of how his competitor’s actions are a perversion of art.

Craig is in an unhappy relationship with his wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz, almost unrecognizable with frizzy hair and no cosmetic enhancement). She wants children, but Craig is so self-centered that he denies her offspring, and she has numerous animal pets as child surrogates, including a chimpanzee. He wants control over Lotte’s life, to pull her strings, so that she will direct herself toward fulfilling his dreams. Craig, however, is not providing any income. He also works in public, but as a begging street performer. After getting punched out by an irate father whose young girl witnesses a sexually inappropriate puppet act, Craig interviews for a clerical job involving filing, since the ad says the position requires someone who has manual dexterity.

Craig gets the job at LesterCorp, which is run by Dr. Lester (Orson Bean) who is hysterically graphic and blunt about any topic. The office is on floor 7 ½, which Craig first enters with the help of a woman (Octavia Spencer in an early bit part) who jams the elevator so he can gain access to the floor. It is a funny sight gag, as the people walk around hunched over. (Craig already walks bent forward somewhat, showing how defeated his life has been). But, the visual suggests that people working in boring, mundane jobs become worn down by tedious employment. It is here that Craig meets the attractive and sexually charismatic Maxine (Catherine Keener). One wonders why such a strong character lowers herself to work in such a confining (literally and figuratively) job. We later learn that she doesn’t quite fit in with the mainstream herself, and is looking for her own self-fulfillment. Craig awkwardly hits on her, but he is so wrapped up in himself, so out of touch with what it is to be human, that he can’t really relate to others, and has more interaction with his puppets who are surrogates for real people. He instead creates a puppet version of Maxine, and has his avatar romance the Maxine miniature, showing his desire to control others for his own purposes. But isn’t the puppeteer sort of like the filmmaker, who wants to control all the aspects of his or her craft so as to manipulate the audience? Craig has some insight about artistic expression when he says, “There is truth, and there are lies, and art always tells the truth. Even when it’s lying.” Shakespeare does not present the actual history of famous people, such as Julius Caesar of Richard III. But, what he and other creative people do is to find the truth about the human condition within the imaginative construct.

Here’s where the real crazy comes in. Craig drops a file behind some cabinets and discovers a small tunnel. When he enters it he gets sucked into the mind of the actor John Malkovich. The camera looks out at the world as if through Malkovich’s eyes. Craig is there for fifteen minutes, and then is ejected, falling from the sky into a ditch by the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Be careful when driving on that road because you never know what can hit you. The tunnel to become Malkovich seems like an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole that leads to another reality, a mutated version of the one the traveler has left, but where other things can be realized. Craig first says he likes being a puppeteer so he can, like an actor, step outside himself. With his literally entering another person’s mind, he questions the nature of identity. He says, “It raises all sorts of philosophical-type questions, you know, about the nature of self, about the existence of a soul. You know, am I me? Is Malkovich Malkovich?” But even though he does gain a new perspective by literally stepping away from himself, he just wants to exploit the situation, as does Maxine at first. Craig shares this amazing discovery first with Maxine, not his wife, because he wants to offer her something intriguing so that she will be interested in being with him. They go into business together, looking to profit from this miraculous finding, as is the capitalist American way, by charging $200 per person to go through the portal. There is a long line of people who want this escape from their dreary lives. But, the film also shows the desire to be famous by narrowing the degrees of separation between common folk and the famous to zero. The portal also turns Malkovich into a common person when he is later controlled by others.

Craig does tell Lotte about his business venture with Maxine, and she is quickly excited, since she harbors transgender, or fluid, sexual feelings, thus showing that she is seeking her identity outside of what would be a typical female role. She says, “It’s kinda sexy that John Malkovich has a portal … it’s sorta vaginal, y’know, like he has a, he has a penis and a vagina.” When Craig says he doesn’t like the idea of Lotte going into the portal, she flatly states her transgender agenda by telling him, “Don’t stand in the way of my actualization as a man.” Craig and Lotte visit Dr. Lester’s home, and Lotte discovers a room  dedicated to Malkovich. We now suspect that Lester knows about the tunnel. Lotte goes through the opening and is inside Malkovich when Maxine, who wants to know more about Malkovich, dates him. Lotte loves the experience, and eventually she is inside of the actor when he and Maxine make love. Maxine falls in love with Malkovich, but only when Lotte is inside of him. Maxine, thus, although participating in heterosexual lovemaking, identifies with the lesbian component of her personality, again showing the malleable nature of identity.

Craig, feeling left out as the two women explore their feelings for each other, brutally restrains Lotte and forces her into a cage housed by the chimp. Since he has restricted her existence before, he now literally imprisons her. He enters Malkovich and vicariously makes love with Maxine. Since he is a puppeteer, Craig discovers that he can control Malkovich like one of his puppets. Malkovich senses this appropriation of his body, and follows Maxine to LesterCorps. He demands that he be allowed to enter the portal. In a surreal scene, Malkovich sees a world that is populated by people that look like him, and can only say, “Malkovich.” It is a narcissistic experience, and it frightens Malkovich, since, although an actor may have a large ego about his performing skills, he wants to inhabit other persons in the pursuit of his craft. In essence, he wants to assume many identities, and not be tied to one version of himself.

Despite Malkovich’s demands, Craig will not shut down access to the portal. We see a flashback experienced by the chimp (a first in filmmaking) which shows the animal was traumatized by seeing his parents captured. The chimp, perceiving Lotte as an adoptive mother, unties Lotte, freeing her. So even what defines the nature of being an animal is called into question.

Lotte seeks out Dr. Lester for help, since she saw his Malkovich room, and concludes that he may have some answers. Dr. Lester tells her that he has lived for many years jumping into bodies when they are “ripe” for the taking. The portal moves from one individual to the next, from a child who ages to the next baby, and when the subject reaches the forty-fourth birthday, Lester takes it over, and can live on inside that person until the next body is “ripe” for possession. This time, he has friends who will join him in this version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dr. Lester shows how people want to defy death, that they seek not to be defined by their old age, and desire immortality even if in another form. Is there a definitive Dr. Lester since he, like an actor, has taken on many roles?

Craig inhabits Malkovich, and is able to control him without being ejected. He reveals his dominance over Malkovich to Maxine, making Malkovich move the way the puppet version of himself did in the opening scene. Craig from the very beginning wants control over others to actualize himself. Through Malkovich’s fame, he is able to show off his puppeteer skills to the world, so he makes Malkovich quit acting and become a famous puppeteer. Maxine is thrilled by the prospect, showing how Craig’s manipulative skills resonate with hers. Malkovich, inhabited by Craig, and Maxine get married. Maxine learns that she is pregnant. The two, however, are not made for each other, and they become estranged. Lester and his friends capture Maxine and threaten her with harm if Craig will not exit Malkovich’s body, since the “ripe” time is approaching. Selfish Craig refuses. Lotte seeks out Maxine and they go together into the portal, accessing Malkovich’s subconscious mind, since Craig has control of the conscious one. They wind up near the turnpike. Maxine says that she became pregnant when Lotte inhabited Malkovich, so, in a way, it is her child. Lotte has fulfilled her transgender goal, fathering a child, and has satisfied her wish to be a parent. Maxine admits her love for Lotte, giving into her lesbian side.

Craig does not have Maxine or Lotte now, and voluntarily exits Malkovich after a bar fight. Lester and his friends then occupy Malkovich (who started to have the same hair as Craig when he had control over him, and later sports Dr. Lester’s hairstyle). When Craig realizes that Lotte and Maxine are in love, he tries to jump back into Malkovich, but it is too late. He enters the portal’s next person, which turns out to be Maxine’s child with Lotte (as Malkovich), Emily.

The end is ominous, because Craig is in the child’s mind, not able to control anything, but still there, in a somewhat vicarious relationship with Maxine and Lotte, but forced to watch their bliss passively. Perhaps he must start from scratch, implied by the youth of the child, as Dr. Lester had said, because he needs to have a fresh beginning to mend his ways. But Dr. Lester, having taken over Malkovich’s body, plans to eventually possess Emily, thus leaving the film with a dire future for the child, and suggesting that identity is a tricky business.

The next film is The Big Sleep.