Review Of The Movie Being John Malkovich

Being John Malkovich’s most unique quality that differentiates it from the vast majority of mainstream Hollywood cinema is the way it treats its characters. While watching movies that follow the overused “Hollywood formula”, audiences always find themselves rooting for one character or another. With that kind of movies, it’s always easy to do that, to side with a character, because their characters would lack depth and complexity. Those films themselves clearly state who is the “bad guy” and who is the “good guy”, saving the audience from the “difficulty” of figuring out the characters.

Being John Malkovich explores different shades of human psyche, while the average Hollywood film finds it unnecessary or perhaps too tedious to dive deeper into complex human emotions. A striking example of the unpredictableness of Being John Malkovich’s characters is Maxine’s change throughout the movie: She literally starts off the film asking Craig if he’s a “fag” when she perceived his mostly romantic interest in her as something to mock, to being in a lesbian relationship herself, at the end. Lotti, the meek women who mildly took no for an answer when she asked Craig for a baby at the beginning was wanting a sex reassignment surgery at the end. The fierce, controlling, bossy women Maxime who built all her relationships based on self interest was seen as a loving mother to a little girl at the end. These are only the changes that occurred on the surface level, but they are still more than enough to see the drastic change they went through. If this movie was made according to the “Hollywood formula” all these characters would realize a “great truth” at the end, something like “they should all understand and be themselves instead of wanting to be other people”. But no, not in this version. Charlie Kaufman chooses to portray all of these characters as flawed individuals who are not done yet with figuring out neither themselves nor the life itself. This flawed, unpredictable characters are the reason why it’s not possible to completely dislike or like one character. They is no good or bad, they all do things that are extremely wrong in a moral sense (using other people as portals to live forever, cheating, invasion of privacy, identity theft, cheating, kidnap…) but they all had their reasons, like us humans all do.

I personally love this aspect of Being John Malkovich the most. None of them are perfect, the characters we thought might be the good ones also change along the story. The movie treats the audience with respect, it doesn’t tell all the personal conflict and motivation behind a character’s actions to us directly unlike the conventional Hollywood movie, it rather thinks of us as creatures that would like to actually “think” instead of being filled in, and therefore leaves lots of blanks to be answered by the audience (or not) about the characters.

Another aspect of Being John Malkovich that makes it such an innovative film is the way it deals with it themes: it’s almost too literal, but that’s what makes the story unique. When I think in a very simple fashion, one of the most important themes of the movie (if not the most important one) is the reality of people wanting to be others (especially others that live a “better” life) in order to experience joy because of their lack of fulfillment and motivation in their own identities. Craig mentions that he can stay in Malkovich because he thinks of his body as “a fine suit” (like a better identity), the secretary can’t understand Craig and says to him that he has a speech impediment, Doctor Lester thinks that he has a speech impediment and therefore nobody can understand him even though he speaks completely normal. All these things are lovely details that connect to the same theme about identity problems and alienation from society.

To put somebody inside another person’s mind is dealing with the theme of wanting to be someone else extremely literally that it’s almost absurd. This idea is something that an average Hollywood producer might throw to the trash on the spot, with the fear of being stupid, but fearlessly exploring this idea lead to one of the most original and interesting films ever. The reactions of the character’s to their absurd reality makes it an incredible movie and convinces the audience of accepting the truths of this movie rather than fighting them. The characters all react to this impossible, shocking discovery as if it’s a usual encounter that they might have any other day, and the way they deal with it creates a whole new system of logic within the film which is too absurd compared to our reality but it totally works. But why does it work so well?

It functions smoothly because these characters’ mindsets heavily affect ours, and the audience involuntarily allows the characters’ mindsets to affect themselves because of how real they are portrayed, we simply trust them without realizing. This absurd logic of the film is appropriate also because a film that’s asking such deep philosophical questions benefits greatly of a unique tone of humor.