It’s always a bit dangerous to revisit a movie you saw and enjoyed 12+ years ago. Until you’ve done it, you’ll never know whether the film, the times, or you (or all three) have changed in ways that make the film no longer enjoyable.
I first saw Being John Malkovich in the basement of an apartment building in downtown Baltimore in 2000. My sister-in-law was living there at the time and told me they had “sort of a “movie theater” in the basement, so I went. Neither the print nor the sound were very good, but I watched the film and enjoyed its inventiveness, weirdness and craziness. I’d never seen another film quite like it.
Having had such good memories of the film, I bought the Criterion Collection Blu-ray release a few months ago (at a Barnes & Noble half-price sale) and kept it on the shelf, waiting for just the right time to revisit it. Cindy and I watched it a couple of nights ago (she for the first time) and I realized that while the film hadn’t changed, both the times and myself had.
(SOME SPOILERS AHEAD)
I won’t go into the plot of the film. If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably already seen the movie and don’t need it summarized for you. I will talk about a few spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it, read no further.
Times have changed. While maybe we can’t really get inside someone’s head - at least not in the way the characters in the film do - we can pretend we’re someone else for 15 minutes or longer. (We may not necessarily end up beside the New Jersey Turnpike afterwards, but it might feel like it.) Millions of people via various Internet, gaming and other tech methods can easily pretend they’re someone else, living out parts of their lives with a new identity. For limited periods of time, that can be fun. We basically do that when we’re watching a movie, playing a video game, etc. Then we go on with life.
Puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), however, isn’t content with just a few minutes. Craig wants to manipulate/enter the body of John Malkovich for his own selfish purposes. In fact, Craig’s wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) and would-be girlfriend Maxine (Catherine Keener) are also in this venture for selfish reasons. That would be bad enough, but then there’s the whole houseful of senior citizens led by Dr. Lester (Orson Bean) who also want to inhabit the body of Malkovich.
Don’t get me wrong: I greatly admire the enormous talents of director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman for making all of this work and the film’s utter brilliance. We could talk for hours about the significance of Craig’s career as a puppeteer, issues of control (over puppets and people), connecting with other people in relationships, searches for love and understanding leading to erratic behavior, the significance of Floor 7 1/2, and much more. Yet, for all its humor and insane creativity, I’m left with a feeling of incredible sadness.
By the end of the film, Lotte and Maxine have manipulated people for selfish reasons and (seemingly) suffer no consequences for it. Craig certainly deserves consequences for his selfishness and receives them. The person you feel the most sorry for is Malkovich (the character), the ultimate victim who has been violated beyond belief, but since it’s Malkovich (the actual person), a fine actor we’ve come to laugh at as much as admire, we tend to overlook his victimhood.
Maybe that’s Jonze’s point. Maybe Jonze and Kaufman are telling us that this is a world without justice, at least at this point, that people do “get away” with selfish behavior while the victim(s) get no justice. Maybe the times we’re in now, with our inability to be ourselves without adopting (or obsessing over) the identity of someone else, damn the consequences, are the logical conclusion of this film. If so, we’ve reached a sad, sad point.
Don’t misunderstand: I’m not against video games, the Internet, fiction, or imagination. But I see in many of the characters in Being John Malkovich a sense of pride, entitlement and utter selfishness, all without conscience, all without consequences, and that makes me incredibly sad. Sure, I laughed in many places while watching this film, just like I did 12+ years ago, but as the credits rolled, I was left with a feeling of emptiness, a sense that our fallenness has reached a new place.
Being John Malkovich is a brilliant film, but it's not one I plan on watching again.
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