Jiya Kohar Week 11: Fifteen Minutes of Fame
(Movie Spoilers for Being John Malkovich)
This past weekend, I finally got around to watching Being John Malkovich. This is a bizarre movie, and I definitely recommend it. However, if you’ve read this far, I guess you don’t mind me spoiling it:
Craig Schwartz is a loser, unemployed puppeteer living with his animal fanatic wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), and their pets in a cramped apartment. He has an unfulfilling life until he takes a temp job on the 7½ floor of a Manhattan office building. There, he becomes obsessed with cheating on his wife with a coworker, Maxine (who has no interest in him), and discovers a tiny hidden door behind a filing cabinet. Crawling through it, he ends up in the mind of actor John Malkovich and experiences everything Malkovich does for 15 minutes before being ejected to the side of a New Jersey highway.
Craig tells Maxine, and they start charging people $200 per 15 minute trip. Soon, they have a booming business! Craig’s wife, Lotte, also tries the portal and becomes obsessive over the experience. Inside Malkovich’s body, she discovers her deep feelings for Maxine. The two end up becoming romantically involved, and Craig becomes jealous. (Side note, just in case you missed that: Craig tried his absolute best to cheat on his wife with Maxine, though the love was unrequited. Now that his wife has done what he couldn’t, he becomes insane and locks her inside a chimpanzee cage). Craig is now able to permanently puppeteer Malkovich as he did with puppets, which gives him power and fame. He discards Lotte and ends up marrying Maxine, who becomes pregnant.
Meanwhile, Dr. Lester (Craig’s boss) is revealed to be the man who built the Manhattan building in order to hide the portal. Lotte confides in him, and Lester explains how he uses the portal as a vessel to achieve immortality.
Blah, blah, blah, Maxine gets kidnapped by Dr. Lester to convince Craig to leave Malkovich’s body. Craig does so, but gets abandoned by Maxine and Lotte. Plot twist: Maxine and Lotte reconcile. Craig, obviously upset, tries to reenter the portal but does so at the wrong time and ends up trapped in the mind of the child of Maxine and Lotte. There, he is sentenced to watch the two women he loved live happily ever after, without him. The End.
This is clearly a very surreal movie and, even if it’s mostly spoiled, I missed many key details and I’m sure you would still enjoy it.
Language and power are so deeply intertwined in this movie. Though Craig is clearly pathetic, he is able to improve his career and life so deeply after Being John Malkovich. He lives so vicariously through Malkovich, but can never truly discard his chud persona. Though he gained power by controlling Malkovich, his language and way of being never changed, and it’s exactly what led him to a fate (arguably?) worse than death. Moral of the story (movie): be a good person.
The beginning of your blog indicates that you have been meaning to watch the movie for a while, so I was curious about how you learned about this show? Did a friend recommend it to you or was it just a coincidental find?
ReplyDeleteAbout the movie, it has a very interesting premise, since it seems to center around the idea of being someone else. The main character seems to be focused on the idea of having what others have. He chases after a woman that his wife has, and he pursues the idea of becoming Malkovich since he is unhappy with being himself. Also, from how you describe the experience of being Malkovich is less like truly becoming Malkovich, and more of observing his life, so when the MC seemingly possesses him (?), it's not really the MC being Malkovich, just controlling him.
Besides the main character, the detail you added about how the main character’s wife and his coworker ended up together surprised me a lot since I didn’t expect this kind of film to include queer relationships.
Wow Jiya, that was an intensive and interesting read. This sounds like a movie that I will definitely enjoy so I will be watching this lol. By the way that you have described Craig I think you said it best, he is pathetic. I think, based on your summary, he never had any real power in his life over anyone or anything (even though he somehow married Cameron Diaz?). You would think to pull someone like Cameron Diaz regardless of her role you’d have to have some special skills or talents lmao. Power over people is such an interesting concept because I feel that people are the easiest to manipulate, but hardest to control. The fact that at first he wasn’t able to get Maxine to fall in love with him, but his wife was really hit hard and when people are hurt due to jealously, it makes them do crazy things, they become possessed in a way, driven by a madness that is the worst form of human nature. Also, based on your description of the movie I think the power that is shown in the movie also extends to the fact that language in itself is a powerful tool, but it is also important who is speaking or communicating. Clearly Malkovich is someone whose control of language is much more powerful than Craig’s and while I don’t know if that is reputation or just way of life it’s interesting to see how it’s not just about what you are saying or how you say it, but who is saying it is just as important.
ReplyDeleteHello, Jiya! It’s funny how it just so happens that this week, I’ve read two blogs about movies. What a coincidence! The premise for Being John Malkovich sounds funny and interesting. It seems like it’s some psychological movie, but the premise just seems so absurd that it sounds like it could easily be a comedy movie. Everything from the premise to that clip of the movie you have just makes the movie seem absurd.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that’s part of its charm. Without such an absurd premise, I don’t think it could have effectively conveyed the themes you were discussing in your blog. The body-swapping absurdity of the movie makes Craig’s personality stand out more, and I think if it were just another movie, the moral of the story would be overlooked. I’m just going off your brief summary of the movie, but it seems that the director/screenwriter planned it out very thoroughly. On another note, it must have been a masterclass in acting from Malkovich. From your synopsis of the plot, it seems like Malkovich had to play multiple different people, each with different personalities and backgrounds. Sounds interesting! I might watch Being John Malkovich in the future!