Being John Malkovich

Being John Malkovich (1999), the Spike Jonze's directorial debut, is an amazing film - hip, inventive, delightfully weird, incredibly funny and disturbingly serious with the gleefully absurd plot twists. Let's face it, that was a stroke of genius - to throw together the tragic medieval lovers, Abelard and Heloise in the street show created by a talented puppeteer Craig Scwartzh (John Cusack) with the nimble fingers but out of work in "today's wintry economic climate", Elijah the Chimp with the mental problems that go back to his childhood, the surreal office that is located on the 7 1/2 store of a New York City office building and a floor is four feet high. Add Cameron Diaz (Craig's animals loving wife Lotte), completely unrecognizable, aging and balding Charlie Sheen, cynical and practical Maxine (Catherine Keener), who had an unique experience of having two people looked at her "with complete lust and devotion, through the same pair of eyes", and send them all to the wild ride inside the famous and respectable actor John Malkovich's brain to see what he sees and to feel what he feels, to the trip that would last 15 minutes and end up in a ditch on the side of New Jersey Turnpike.

This is just the beginning...Oh, and what John Horatio Malkovich feels with all the travelers in his head and what he sees when he enters the portal to his own brain, you have to find out for yourself! What drug were Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze on?! Not even two hours long, the movie never ceases to surprise and entertain. "Being John Malkovich" is a fascinating and truly original film which I love and always enjoy watching even if there were never a connection with any of its characters (with the exception of Abelard and Heloise and Elijah the Chimp).

This film was absolutely incredible. Attempting to explain the plot in any way that would do it justice would be an excercise in futility, but let it be said that I see many, many movies, and in my lifetime, I have never seen a movie such as Being John Malkovitch.

The acting is completely brilliant .. Cameron Diaz is nearly unrecognizable, both in behavior and appearance, as is John Cusack. John Malkovich was presented with an interesting opportunity in playing himself, and he seems to have seized the opportunity with relish. He is most definitely not being himself in front of the camera, but instead creates this wonderful character of John Malkovich the vessel.

I've admired Spike Jonez's work for a good long time, and I'm pleased to say that in his first full length feature as a director, he succeeds with flying colors in creating an original, beautiful, humorous, and good natured picture.

See Being John Malkovich, because come Oscar time, you're going to want to know why its winning!

I give my nine points for originality and the quality of production though, not the likeability of the characters. John Cusack and Cameron Diaz play Craig and Lotte Schwartz, a married couple that are going through the motions and don't seem to realize it. Cameron Diaz is made up to be so dowdy looking that she is initially not even recognizable. They live in a basement apartment crowded with animals (Lotte is an animal lover who works at a pet shop). Craig is a puppeteer who cannot find work in his chosen field and even gets beat up on the street for staging what one beefy dad thinks is a sacrilegious puppet show.

At the suggestion of his wife, Craig goes looking for a regular job, and due to his fast hands he gets a job as a file clerk at LesterCorp. There he meets Maxine, a pretty but sociopathic young woman who, fortunately for society, seems to have no violent impulses, because if she did believe me she would follow them. Craig falls for her. Lotte falls for her. And they both make a play for her simultaneously when she comes over for dinner one night. She rejects them both.

Maxine made it clear from the beginning she considered Craig a pathetic loser, but she needs him to exploit something that Craig discovered - a door that leads to a portal in which anybody who enters gets to "become" John Malkovich for fifteen minutes. At the end of the fifteen minutes the person is spit out on the side of the road at the entry to the New Jersey Turnpike. As a team they reopen Lestercorp at night and charge people 200 dollars apiece to "become John Malkovich". Neither of them knows what this portal is doing there behind a file cabinet and why it leads to Malkovich, but they initially don't care past its monetary value.

It is part drama, part comedy, and even part horror and completely weird. And what the portal is doing there is all wrapped up in Dr. Lester, owner of Lestercorp, who is the only likeable character in the film, and even he has more than a bit of a Dr. Frankenstein/God complex.

Also featuring Mary Kay Place as the object of Dr. Lester's lust who has convinced him he has a terrible speech impediment - he does not, John Malkovich as himself, and Charlie Sheen as himself and Malkovich's friend. It is great seeing Charlie Sheen when he was still healthy.

Very highly recommended. But the plot is so weird you just have to let go of your reason and go with it.

Originality is one thing that I very much admire in cinema, and it's also the reason I rate Being John Malkovich so highly. Charlie Kaufman has taken an amazingly weird premise and twisted round a suitably offbeat story to create a movie that is as bizarre as it is as it is compelling, and it's definitely a major highlight of American cinema in the 1990's. Charlie Kaufman may have scripted his most acclaimed film in 2004 with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but if you want to see his best work - you need look no further than his first feature. Quite how anyone could have thought of this premise remains a mystery, but I'm certainly glad that Kaufman did. The story revolves around a portal that leads directly into the head of the actor, John Malkovich. After discovering this portal, puppeteer Craig Schwartz shares it with his colleague and crush, the beautiful Maxine Lund. Things start to get complicated when Craig's wife, Lottie, becomes involved and it turns out that Craig's not the only one with a crush on Maxine.

The usually presentable John Cusack and Cameron Diaz are completely unrecognisable as this film's leading couple and both give career highlight performances. Catherine Keener fleshes out a threesome of leads. She is seductively sexy, and delivers a performance that reflects the quality of this film on the whole. And, of course, John Malkovich stars also. The fact that it's John Malkovich who is the title actor is what really makes this film. Had the film have been, say, 'Being Tom Cruise'; it wouldn't have had nearly the same impact. Malkovich is a big actor, but he's not THAT big and the fact that it's him takes the film away from the mainstream and allows it's offbeat indie roots to stay intact. Kaufman ensures that the story works by constantly adding new and weird events into the plot, and this in turn ensures that we never know what's coming next. Of course, this is exactly what you want from any film. The elements of the story aren't bound tightly enough to really make a lasting impression where substance is concerned; but it hardly matters, as there's enough offbeat invention in this film to more than adequately mask that fact It's easy to call this movie pretentious or silly; but it's also pointless. Being John Malkovich is a modern classic.

Unemployed puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) and animal lover Lotte Schwartz (Cameron Diaz) are in a loveless marriage. Craig gets a job on the low ceiling 7½ floor of a Manhattan office building. He falls for alluring fellow worker Maxine Lund (Catherine Keener) who doesn't return the feelings. He finds a doorway in his office that leads into the mind of John Malkovich. After 15 minutes, the person is ejected into a ditch on the New Jersey Turnpike. Maxine decides to sell tickets at $200 a pop. Lotte is completely changed by the experience and thinks she's a transsexual. Craig's boss Dr. Lester is obsessed with Malkovich.

This is one of the strangest and most compelling ideas ever put on the screen written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It is exciting that everything and everyone is a little off in this movie. Cameron Diaz is ugly. John Cusack is disheveled. Catherine Keener is a sex goddess. The whole movie is off its axis and so much the better for it. It's so weird that it's a lot of fun.