Dans la peau de John Malkovich

Originality is one thing that I very much admire in cinema, and it's also the reason I rate Being John Malkovich so highly. Charlie Kaufman has taken an amazingly weird premise and twisted round a suitably offbeat story to create a movie that is as bizarre as it is as it is compelling, and it's definitely a major highlight of American cinema in the 1990's. Charlie Kaufman may have scripted his most acclaimed film in 2004 with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but if you want to see his best work - you need look no further than his first feature. Quite how anyone could have thought of this premise remains a mystery, but I'm certainly glad that Kaufman did. The story revolves around a portal that leads directly into the head of the actor, John Malkovich. After discovering this portal, puppeteer Craig Schwartz shares it with his colleague and crush, the beautiful Maxine Lund. Things start to get complicated when Craig's wife, Lottie, becomes involved and it turns out that Craig's not the only one with a crush on Maxine.

The usually presentable John Cusack and Cameron Diaz are completely unrecognisable as this film's leading couple and both give career highlight performances. Catherine Keener fleshes out a threesome of leads. She is seductively sexy, and delivers a performance that reflects the quality of this film on the whole. And, of course, John Malkovich stars also. The fact that it's John Malkovich who is the title actor is what really makes this film. Had the film have been, say, 'Being Tom Cruise'; it wouldn't have had nearly the same impact. Malkovich is a big actor, but he's not THAT big and the fact that it's him takes the film away from the mainstream and allows it's offbeat indie roots to stay intact. Kaufman ensures that the story works by constantly adding new and weird events into the plot, and this in turn ensures that we never know what's coming next. Of course, this is exactly what you want from any film. The elements of the story aren't bound tightly enough to really make a lasting impression where substance is concerned; but it hardly matters, as there's enough offbeat invention in this film to more than adequately mask that fact It's easy to call this movie pretentious or silly; but it's also pointless. Being John Malkovich is a modern classic.

Unemployed puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) and animal lover Lotte Schwartz (Cameron Diaz) are in a loveless marriage. Craig gets a job on the low ceiling 7½ floor of a Manhattan office building. He falls for alluring fellow worker Maxine Lund (Catherine Keener) who doesn't return the feelings. He finds a doorway in his office that leads into the mind of John Malkovich. After 15 minutes, the person is ejected into a ditch on the New Jersey Turnpike. Maxine decides to sell tickets at $200 a pop. Lotte is completely changed by the experience and thinks she's a transsexual. Craig's boss Dr. Lester is obsessed with Malkovich.

This is one of the strangest and most compelling ideas ever put on the screen written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It is exciting that everything and everyone is a little off in this movie. Cameron Diaz is ugly. John Cusack is disheveled. Catherine Keener is a sex goddess. The whole movie is off its axis and so much the better for it. It's so weird that it's a lot of fun.

... but without it you'd be unconscious or you wouldn't be you, or are you, you? Exploring identity, appearance, choice and fame in the most original and entertaining of ways, this esoterically amusing vision of what makes us who we are manages to keep you engaged and amused while encouraging a little self reflection upon completion - that is if it is you doing the reflecting, pulling your own strings, grinding your own organ, dancing to your own tune.

This film is excellently made and based on an imaginative, intelligent and wacky script: a depressive puppeteer discovers by chance a mysterious portal in his five-foot tall office located on the 7,5th floor of a Manhattan office building, leading within the head of the movie star John Malkovich. The cast is excellent and the actors co-exist in perfect symbiosis, literally as well as figuratively. The quintet John Cusack + Cameron Diaz + Orson Bean + Catherine Keener + John Malkovich is awesome.

A not exhaustive list of my favorite quotes: Meet you in Malkovich in one hour. The truth is for suckers, Johnny boy. Let's have sex on his table and then make him eat an omelette off of it. I comes before U. You don't know how lucky you are being a monkey, because consciousness is a terrible curse. There is truth, and there are lies, and art always tells the truth, even when it's lying. She's got her doctorate in speech impedimentology from Case Western. It's the idea of being inside someone else's skin and seeing what they see and feeling what they feel.

This has been a great year for alternate realities at the movies. Films like The Matrix, Sixth Sense, Blair Witch Project, Thirteenth Floor, and Run, Lola, Run have all, in different ways, played with the line that separates past from present, reality from simulation, and truth from fiction. Being John Malkovich can be added to this list of innovative films that a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly described as the first films of the 21st century.

There is little in this film that is formula. John Cusack plays a gifted puppeteer who aspires to be one of the world's great puppeteers. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of job openings for puppeteers so he is reduced to street theater where he is clearly underappreciated. An almost unrecognizable Cameron Diaz plays Cusack's wife, a pet lover who is just a little quirky. When Cusack decides to take a job as a file clerk on floor 7.5 of an office building, life becomes even weirder. Cusack discovers an opening behind a file cabinet, a little door that leads into a tunnel. Like the characters in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, (or Alice Through the Looking Glass), Cusack jumps in and finds himself in an alternative universe. Instead of Narnia or Wonderland, Cusack finds himself on a 15-minute ride inside actor John Malkovich (played quite capably by . . . John Malkovich).

Cusack joins forces with a co-worker to create a business. For $200 people can spend 15 minutes inside of John Malkovich's head, seeing the world through his eyes. Since this is even better than Real World or a WebCam show, people come in droves. Eventually, Malkovich himself discovers what's going on and jumps the line to go inside of his own mind. This leads to what has to be one of the more unique scenes in the history of film. The story takes on an even more interesting twist when Cusack finds a unique way to fulfill his lifelong dream of being the world's greatest puppeteer.

This is one weird film--and I've left out some of the weird. This is also one of the most creative films I have seen, and the film raises interesting questions about consciousness, identity, love and meaning. There are great performances here by Cusack, Diaz, Malkovich, and Catherine Keener (Cusack's co-worker and eventual love interest). The real star of the show, however, is the story itself. First-time screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has crafted an interesting and innovative story. First-time director Spike Jonze handles the material extremely well. This is clearly not a film for all tastes, and the language and sexual scenes may well offend. This is, however, something that is very rare, in Hollywood--innovative, creative, and thought provoking. Watch for this film during the Oscar nominations. If this doesn't get nominated for screenplay--at least--I will hang up my trophy.