A bit about the stupendously clever, outrageously weird and funny film of 1999. It starts with the idea of not wanting to be yourself, of being envious of others. The hard part describing it is, there has never been a film like it before.
THE LOSING TEAM OF CRAIG AND LOTTE
Craig (John Cusack) is a loser, a puppeteer by vocation. Head of a subnormal family, of his equally new-age flaky wife (Cameron Diaz), and her menagerie of pets (monkeys, parrots, lizards, half a zoo). Hemmed in by conventionality, theirs is an existential despair of a dulled intensity, not sharply felt, not the acute agony that propels people to overhaul their lives midcourse. Instead, a general sense of suppressed dissatisfaction, a waiting for something to explode and life to turn inside out.
You only need to hear about 3 lines of wonky dialogue to spot that this is a Charlie Kaufman script- The stage is set for the clever and immense madness to follow.
Elijah the monkey has a ulcer – and Lotte and her psychiatrist are getting to the root of it, while jobless Craig ponders on the lack of options for puppeteers in a wintry economic climate. A comic montage follows of Craig trying to get a job masquerading as a woman puppeteer, as a black Lesbian Separatist, and other increasingly hard-to-impersonate people, and failing.
THE 7 ½ FLOOR
Craig finds a job as a filing clerk at LesterCorp. Its located on floor 71/2. You press the emergency button between the floors 7 and 8, and then using a crowbar to pry open the doors, you step out into a a floor that is only about 4 feet high, so everyone walks permanently stooped. Some scripts use flashbacks, Kaufman’s way is to introduce all backstory by means of nutty office documentaries that Craig is made to watch., by Lester ( the juice-addict 105 year old owner of LesterCorp, who else)
Craig meets Maxine, a beautiful coworker, and becomes obsessed with her. And meanwhile discovers that an empty office on his office floor has a small barred door, that is actually a portal into the mind of the actor John Malkovich. Entering it, Craig discovers he gets to see, hear and feel what Malkovich feels, for 15 mins, and then he’s spit out near the New Jersey Turnpike.
Maxine and he start a commercial venture of renting out Malkovich’s mind to the cash-paying public, 15 mins at a time.
MAXINE
Maxine (Catherine Keener) is a delight. Playful, provocative, yet somehow bored, jaded, detached and unreachable - this actress is great at being there, part of the scene, yet you get the feeling that somewhere in her mind, she’s sitting back and laughing at Craig, at his wife, at herself, at everything. , yet being present in another spectatorial role. What DOES Maxine want? Not Craig, for sure.
INSIDE MALKOVICH
Once the portal is discovered, and open for business, there’s a whole bunch of people who want to try being Malkovich. Why Malkovich? Why a thin lanky balding actor? This is Kaufman’s homage to Malkovich, a noted stage and film actor. Considered one of the more intellectual performers, he does appear in the commercial films, but is also known for his penchant for unusual roles. He’s also a member of the Steppenwolf Theater group of Chicago. (There’s a brief cameo by Kevin Bacon as himself in this film, Bacon also being a Steppenwolf member).
Craig’s wife Lotte tries out the Malkovich portal, and seeing Maxine through Malkovich’s eyes, falls in love with her. Maxine tries to seduce Malkovich, and also Lotte, who is inside him.
Things get going pretty quickly. Craig gets jealous, wants to be Malkovich so he can be with Maxine. He imprisons his wife, and tries to take over Malkovich’s mind, using his puppetry skills to move Malkovich’s body against his will.
When Malkovich realizes he’s being controlled, he tries to resist. There is one scene when Malkovich finds out about the portal to his mind, and insists on trying it out himself.
What happens when Malkovich enters his own mind? I cant tell you, there are so many layers of meaning to it – must see it for yourself.
What exactly do they mean when they say talk about going into someone’s mind? Being truly someone else is not just seeing, hearing and feeling (i.e the senses), but understanding what you experience sensually, in the other’s way, with their history, their prejudices, their patterns of thinking, which is truly impossible to do while also being yourself. Call it the Uncertainty principle.
This movie is not about such complexities. The portal simply allows a person to experience what Malkovich does, while processing the whole thing with their own minds.
PUPPETMASTER
The puppeteer theme has many instances in the film – it is Craig’s profession. He plays with them to console himself, making them perform his fantasies. John Malkovich is a puppet -The people who are technically ’inside’ John Malkovich are the puppeteers, controlling his mind and body.
Craig himself is a puppet. He has not much to offer the fascinating Maxine, and he knows she knows it and she knows he knows. She’s just toying with him. In a sense, she’s his puppetmaster, making Craig jump through the hoops for her amusement.
In the first draft of the filmscript, even the puppeteers were themselves puppets – in the hands of Satan, making them pawns in his planned takeover of the world.
And finally, you too, are a puppet, if we count director Spike Jonze making you laugh and groan at his will - manipulator of the audience.
The performances are superlative, one and all. The humor is not just original, but one-of-a-kind. I’ve left out about 2/3 of the story and half the characters so you still have lots of fresh stuff if you haven’t seen it at all. There’s tons of little things you may miss when you’re watching. So if you are a completist about getting all the jokes, the script and much more is available at https://beingcharliekaufman.com.