In 1999, we were besieged with movies about folks who yearned for something better (or more) than the seemingly imponderable "this": life begins for American Beauty's Lester Burnham the day he ditches the grind for classic rock and recreational drug use; the narrator of Fight Club vents office frustrations by forming an underground boxing league; paramedic Frank Pierce tries his damnedest to get fired over the course of an endless shift in Bringing Out the Dead; and so on.

The explosion of these kinds of cinematic fairytales would seem indicative of a national mid-life crisis, but for purposes of this review, I'm going to chalk it up to coincidence. If you'll accept eXistenZ, then I'd rate it and Being John Malkovich as the most adventurous, fertile examples of this recently established sub-genre. A common criticism of both films is that they eventually run out of steam, which is less accurate than to say they are exasperating in their inventiveness--complacent moviegoers have trouble keeping up with them.

Being John Malkovich exploits every conceivable opportunity presented by its central conceit: that premier thespian John Malkovich is a vessel through which any of us can live his life fifteen minutes at a time (a sledgehammer-subtle reference to Andy Warhol's philosophy on fame). In a subtly profound way, this becomes, in addition to an act of escapism, one of isolationism. A repeat participant pleads, "I don't want to leave Malkovich, because then I'll be [me] again."

Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), a filing clerk and defeated puppeteer, discovers a portal in his office that leads directly into the head of Malkovich. He shares this secret with the two women in his life, wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) and forthright co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener, whose Oscar loss to Angelina Jolie the Academy will surely come to see as a mistake); a jaunt through Malkovich unearths deeply-rooted lesbian feelings in the former, while Craig and Maxine start "J.M. Inc.", a business that extorts strangers for the privilege of entering the portal.

The sexually voracious and utterly contemptible Maxine, whom Craig desires, develops her own unique fetish: she enjoys bedding Malkovich with the knowledge that someone besides him is seeing what he sees. This is how she becomes the target of Lotte's libido, too, and husband and wife are soon battling over Maxine like lions near a zebra. Meanwhile, Malkovich himself gets wise to their shenanigans, and, sending up that very American image of celebrity, barks at Craig, "It's my head, Schwartz! You'll be hearing from my lawyer!"

Being John Malkovich is no novelty act, no deliberately quirky one-off (you know, the sort of stuff a writer initiates after first discovering "Twin Peaks"). The film is dreamy comedy in the stylistic vain of Luis Buñuel, although it's not the anti-bourgeois tract as one might anticipate from a story about fringe New Yorkers desperate to inhabit a sophisticated movie star.

Spike Jonze, the gifted eye behind rock videos for the likes of Beastie Boys and Weezer (as in "Buddy Holly", the famous clip that brilliantly incorporates footage from episodes of "Happy Days"), gets out of the way of the material, which is not what we expect of an MTV brat. He avoids advertising, nay, overselling the weirdness of Charlie Kaufman's screenplay; dim, flat visuals ground the narrative on reality, rendering it palatable, even realistic. I shudder to imagine the three-ring circus Terry Gilliam might've made of it.

In an interview for the online periodical indieWIRE, Kaufman said, "It's not like it's about anything. Like it's about the dangers of being... I would hate to think that something can be reduced to that." So I'll shut my pseudo-intellectual trap now, lest I further paint a shallow picture of the alternately hilarious (a "monkey flashback"--you'll know it when you see it--is the most gut-busting sequence from last year), biting, and melancholy Being John Malkovich as appetizing as homework.

USA Home Entertainment presents Being John Malkovich on a Special Edition DVD that is adequately supplemented. The 1.85:1, 16x9-enhanced video transfer faithfully captures the gloomy, muted look of Lance Acord's cinematography (key lighting is rarely employed); that said, the luminance of a projector is stronger than any television on the market, and only a theatrical presentation can truly do justice to this film. The DD 5.1 audio is top-notch, with the surround channels becoming integral to the on-screen action (they're used to anchor voices when we're seeing Malkovich's point-of-view). Carter Burwell's despondent score haunts from all four corners, and dialogue is always audible. Note that a Dolby Surround mix is the default track, but audio can be switched on-the-fly.

Extras are abundant yet largely unsatisfying. The cheeky 7 1/2 floor orientation video has been made available in full, as has the exquisitely faked documentary "American Arts & Culture Presents: John Horatio Malkovich - Dance Of Despair and Disillusionment" (which includes a cameos by Fight Club partners-in-crime David Fincher and Brad Pitt as well as a self-effacing Sean Penn). "An Intimate Portrait On the Art Of Puppeteering" is reminiscent in tone to Jonze's mini-mockumentary for the Fatboy Slim song "Praise You," but it is my understanding that this 'portrait''s subject, Phil Huber, did indeed design and operate the marionettes that Craig manipulates in Being John Malkovich.

Three of the snarkiest bonuses are a brief interview with Spike Jonze in which he vomits, another doc on the art of background driving, and a "page with nothing on it." Finishing off the set are Spike Jonze's fantastic album of on-set photos (saving us the chore of downloading all of them from the web), cast and crew bios, and a case insert of faux-anatomy charts.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
103 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
English Dolby Surround
CC
Yes
Subtitles
French, Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
USA

the critic

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Published: May, 2000