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Being John Malkovich
***1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Cornerhouse (Manchester Oxford Street)
Released in the UK by UIP on March 17, 2000; certificate 15; 112 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Spike Jonze; written by
Charlie Kaufman.
Produced by Steve Golin, Vincent Landay, Sandy Stern,
Michael Stipe.
Photographed by Lance Acord; edited by Eric
Zumbrunnen.
CAST.....
John Cusack..... Craig Schwartz
Cameron Diaz..... Lotte Schwartz
Catherine Keener..... Maxine
John Malkovich..... John Horatio Malkovich
Charlie Sheen..... Charlie
Orson Bean..... Dr Lester
Mary Kay Place..... Floris
When I first heard the premise of "Being
John Malkovich", it was hard to accept the reality that one day such
a film would be made, and I would be able to sit and watch it. Now I've seen
it twice -- once last November, at the Stella Screen Film Festival, and again
this week, at the dawn of its general release. But I still haven't quite
got my head round it. If I'm not giving it four stars, perhaps one of the
reasons is that I need to see it a few more times before its full force really
sinks in.
The movie is like a walk through a long maze of
rooms, where each new door provides a hilariously bizarre payoff to the last.
Consider these opening scenes. We meet Craig Schwarz (John Cusack), a scruffy
street puppeteer who doesn't make much money because his shows are too
blasphemous and carnal. His wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) encourages him to get
an office job until marionette work starts to pay; she's raising a chimp,
and needs some serious cash. Craig becomes employed as a file clerk on floor
seven-and-a-half of a New York City skyscraper. (The ceilings are very low.)
The boss (Orson Bean) is a 105-year old pervert obsessed with carrot juice,
and his secretary (Mary Kay Place) is a paranoid deaf flirt. Even more odd
is a hole in the wall of Craig's office, which turns out to be a portal into
the mind of world-renowned actor John Malkovich. It can suck people into
the man's brain for fifteen minutes and then spit them out onto a ditch on
the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Craig's co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener) is
determined to exploit the discovery. She takes out a classified ad and sells
tickets. The next stages of the plot involve the other ways she uses the
situation, and Malkovich's discovery of what's going on. I don't want to
reveal too much; this is just the set-up, and the movie keeps unfolding with
eccentric developments and devices, which are so delightful because they
seem to emerge out of a perfectly logical progression. Every event leads
to the next quite reasonably, and the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, gives
each one a different flavour. In one scene near the beginning of the movie,
for example, we're laughing at the outrageousness of Craig's puppet show.
After that enterprise fails, and he gets his job on floor seven-and-a-half,
the awkward visuals inspire giggles. Later there will be clever celebrity
satire, when Craig figures out how to control Malkovich's body and turns
him into a famed puppeteer, and we see a TV documentary featuring stars gushing
over his talents with ludicrous hyperbole.
Spike Jonze, who directed, brings the twisted
turns of his picture to life by shooting them in dark, dramatic tones with
a subtle hand-held camera. It's close enough to documentary style to make
things somehow plausible, a feeling that is encouraged by the actors, who
take things seriously and play their roles with sincerity. That attitude,
as I'm always saying, is necessary for comedy to work properly; it's the
audacity of the film's situations that creates laughter. "Being John Malkovich"
has an exciting enough gimmick, in that it has its title figure playing a
supernatural version of himself. It's even more extraordinary to show people
entering his mind (including himself), developing and acting on sexual
attractions within it, and using it as a vessel for re-writing history and
enjoying everlasting life.
The profound skill of Malkovich's performance
doesn't hit our conscious mind until after we leave the cinema. As most reviews
have pointed out, he creates a distinctive character out of his own pompous
image, but his more complicated scenes are those in which he's been inhabited
by other people. His adoption of their mannerisms is so committed that we
forget he's acting. We just believe it. Malkovich is the man onscreen, but
we think we're watching Cusack, or whoever, walking around in his
body.
I am rambling. Exciting films will make me do
that. Take it as a strong recommendation, and not a sign that I need to take
writing classes. And when you see "Being John Malkovich", remember to concentrate
hard, as paying attention to its small details turns out to be very rewarding.
Listen carefully for names of companies, a mention of a plank of wood, and
Orson Bean's explanation of why a certain journey cannot be taken after a
certain deadline. Intriguing? Good.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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