Being John Malkovich (1999)

From the ever-so-slightly twisted mind of Charlie Kaufman comes an incredibly inventive and innovative film which was also the feature debut of director Spike Jonze, previously a director of music videos and commercials. The result is a film that still feels incredibly fresh twenty years after its initial release.

Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is a puppeteer who performs on a street corner in New York City. He is married to Lotte (Cameron Diaz) who works in a pet store, due to her incredible love of all animals. In fact, her love of animals is so strong, they have a veritable menagerie of animals living with them, including a chimpanzee, a parrot, a dog, a cat, an iguana, and many, many more.

As you can probably imagine, there isn’t a lot of money in puppetry, particularly in the incredibly lifelike - and at times a little risqué - marionettes Craig builds and performs with. Lotte suggests to him he find some more stable, paid work.

Craig (John Cusack), working on one of his puppet creations.

He answers a mysterious ad in the newspaper, calling for a short-statured filing clerk. Arriving at the building, he learns the company is on floor 7 ½ (which is reached by pressing the emergency stop button in the elevator between levels 7 and 8). The ceilings are low - low overheads, as everyone says - and the staff are all a little strange.

From receptionist Floris (Mary Kay Place), who can’t seem to understand what anyone is ever saying to her, to boss Dr. Lester (Orson Bean), who speaks and acts in an incredibly cryptic way at all times.

Craig also meets co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener), with whom he becomes instantly smitten.

While trying to retrieve a file that has fallen behind a filing cabinet in his office, Craig discovers a small door that leads to a dark tunnel. Crawling through the tunnel, he discovers it is actually a portal that transports the ‘crawler’ into the mind of actor John Malkovich for fifteen minutes at a time, before spitting them back out beside the New Jersey Turnpike.

Lotte (Cameron Diaz).

Craig and Maxine quickly see the money-making potential from such a tunnel, and it isn’t long before they are selling tickets into Malkovich’s head to people who are unsatisfied with their own lives.

Everything seems to be going fine, until John Malkovich gets wind of what is going on, and shows up at their office, demanding they let him have a go. The results, of course, are at once fascinating and incredibly disturbing.

Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay is incredibly clever, with plenty of twists and turns throughout. All the characters are filled to the brim with both internal and external conflicts. I even find that each time I watch this film, I seem to notice new and different things every time, and it becomes even more incredible with each viewing, too.

Maxine (Catherine Keener).

The original score, by Carter Burwell, doesn’t have a lot to it. Music isn’t used much at all in this film, but when it is, it is near-perfect. The instrumentation is reasonably traditional throughout, but the music never overpowers the action, seeking only to support it, which it does well.

What really makes this film great, however, is the performances. Cusack and Diaz in particular are fantastic, as is Orson Bean as the eccentric Dr. Lester. All of the puppetry in the film is done by Phillip Huber who, as those who have seen the film can attest, is a genius in the truest sense of the word.

Director Spike Jonze, who has gone on to make several other equally-great films, has made a true gem here. I would definitely recommend this film if you haven’t seen it yet, and even if you have, check it out again; you never know what you might discover this time around.

8 out of 10.