Craig Schwartz (Cusack) is a puppeteer, living in the shadow of his idol, another
puppeteer. His wife (Diaz) is an animal nut, keeping everything from monkeys to birds to
dogs to cats in the house. He decides to get a job as a file clerk because he has unusually
fast hands. He begins work on the 7 1/2 floor of a large building in the center of New
York City. He begins to lust after a beautiful, but relentlessly cold co-worker named
Maxine (Keener). When he finds a little door behind a filing cabinet, quite by accident,
he enters into a long tunnel that takes him inside actor John Malkovich’s brain and
allows him to see the world as if he were Malkovich for a period of fifteen minutes.
Seeing the seemingly limitless opportunities and philosophical merit in it, he is
dumbstruck by the idea, carrying on as if he has discovered the light bulb. But then his
hormones get in the way and Maxine talks him into exploiting it. Then the trouble starts.

 What’s really fascinating about this film is the way it moves so quickly, talking
such nonsense, yet managing to keep our attention so effortlessly. We aren’t simply
drawn into the question of what it would be like to be someone else, we are aroused by
how it would effect everyone involved, especially Malkovich himself. It’s difficult to do
justice to just how backwards the film’s logic is and how ingenious it’s structure is. And
yet, I found myself really disliking the film’s conclusion and the way it wrapped itself up.
It builds with an amazing amount of gusto and then fizzles once it begins to unravel
exactly what’s going on.

 Two things could account for such a droppage of the ball. First, it could be that
the film has such an amazing premise and such a wonderful first two acts, there’s no
possible way it’s conclusion could live up to the audience’s expectations. Second, it
could simply be that the film starts to make sense as it concludes, which changes the
gears to such an opposing type of narrative that it spits us out, ending our trek through the
eyes of another world, as those who travel into Malkovich’s head are spit out onto the
New Jersey Turnpike when their fifteen minutes are up.

 The really bothersome thing about a film that lets us down at it’s ending is that
we take this down note with us from the theater. It’s a shame because there really is a
nice twist to behold in the closing moments, but we’re already too angry to really savor
it. The film is successful in leaving us feeling like we’re in another body, though. I found
my surroundings to be strange and my actions to be magnified when I was finding my
way back into reality after the screening.

 The movie is a writer’s vision. Charlie Kaufman has created a world that is
terribly askew, beyond the limits of what our imaginations had thought to decide when
grilling over existence. It’s a morality play about staying with who you are, against all
odds, even if given the chance to start from scratch as a new person. It also probably
looks perfect on paper. Translated to film, the idea of “director’s vision versus audience
interpretation” clashes too violently. As a piece of literature, something we could create
completely in our own minds, bringing our own experiences into it, Being John
Malkovich may have been an utterly perfect concept.

 I don’t blame Jonze for taking on this task and, for the most part, he’s up to it.
Jonze (who recently played the fourth king in Three Kings) once created music videos,
among them, the amazing “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys, in which he used Starsky &
Hutch-era costumes, settings and screen titles to fill out the band’s persona as anti-trend
punk rock badasses. So, based on what I’ve seen of his talent, Spike Jonze has an eye for
what looks good on a screen.

 The unfortunate thing is that this story simply does not beg visual interpretation.
It doesn’t beg an interpretation other than the one  in a viewer’s mind. Sure Jonze means
well, and fine, the movie looks extraordinary for the most part, but in this type of
scenario, where we’re meant to capture a completely off-kilter world that’s mimicking
our own, it’s simply not a necessity that I see how Spike Jonze views Charlie Kaufman’s
story. To me, it would be more fitting to see how Ben Trout viewed Charlie Kaufman’s
story - read on paper. I questioning the necessity of even making this film.

 Finally, not to discredit the performers that essentially make this film what it is, I
was awestruck to see John Cusack playing such an unlikable role. He hasn’t a single
redeeming quality (save perhaps his spunky puppeteering talent) and watching the most
revered and sought after good-guy idol of our time play this sleazy, amoral character, I
was impressed. It’s always good to see people cast against type - it means they’re earning
those obscene amounts of money. The real winner here isn’t Cusack though and it’s not
Keener (playing the bitch she plays in half a dozen other movies). It’s not Diaz, who’s
tolerable, but still doesn’t make my list of actresses that deserve to be involved in such an
important profession. No, the man who gives this film what success it retains and holds
it’s threads together is Malkovich himself, who plays along with this farce wonderfully.
When he’s mocking himself, he’s terrific. When he’s playing John Cusack (who inhabits
his body for quite awhile), he’s a grand comedian : doing an impression of someone we
all know (since we’ve watching him throughout the first part of the film) in the presence
of the story we’ve all watching him in. After being in such a string of throwaways (The
Man in the Iron Mask, Rounders, The Messenger), it was kind of neat to see him building
into a character that was sympathetic. This is a demanding role physically as well as
emotionally for Malkovich and he sluffs it off, making it look easy. He’s truly one of our
most polished actors.

 On the whole, as much as I was disappointed with many aspects of this film, it
was entertaining. It’s always exciting to see something fresh. Jonze will no doubt go on
to make more films and hopefully, will choose scripts that will make good movies and
not scripts that would make better books. It looked fun to be John Malkovich for awhile
and an escape from reality is always worth looking into. Movies are an escape from
reality, a diversion. Books are a transcendence of ourselves, an escape back into our own
brain. Being John Malkovich is ambitious fun, a diversion, but it never manages to let us
explore ourselves in it’s midst. We are left out of the equation as if we were Malkovich,
unaware that someone else has entered our brain and is seeing things the way they want.