Everyone is Searching for Who They Are and Who They Want to Be

Rating: 9/10 (18 April 2008)

What makes Being John Malkovich provoke so deeply is that it is not simply an oddball flight of fancy but an exploration of Charlie Kaufman's deeply realized questions and thoughts explored through the story. However, the film is certainly pathological in its exploration of themes and modus operandi in ways that are not done in American movies. Its romantic plot strands, its ending, the subplot of revitalizing the art of puppeteering, and the nonchalance of the characters' workplace having low ceilings because of being placed between two normal floors are all either far-reachingly hilarious eccentric ideas much like ones one may conjure when half asleep yet still conscious and visions and even scenarios bleed into your actual environments, or they are aggressively resentful of pat plot tunes.
Cusack very comfortably plays a character created by forces not afraid of a hero who's blunderingly unsuccessful with women or not very socially popular. A dark territory where ego has to reach a little bit to get a hold, Cusack, Kaufman, and director Jonze knew that more people would identify with him much more intensely and honestly than a confident, clever, attractive man. He's the id of the creators of the traditional leading man and consequently the men who've grown up latently emulating them. Cameron Diaz has the same attitude towards her role, the personification of the basic drives, feelings, and impulses of the most head-turning social women. Kaufman's characters are amoral and egocentric, ruled just by pleasure and pain.
Like all films, there is the love interest, and subsequently the love triangle, but it's not there to fill in any blanks. The female characters are not decoration but very invigorating and thought-provoking characters. Catherine Keener, owner of the most beautiful smile ever captured on film, eats up the screen, just as I would like her to do with me, as a cruelly unattainable object of desire, rejecting not as a reaction but as a first move.
Jonze was wise not to employ the safety net of the inventive and meticulously coordinated style of the fascinating music videos he has directed, and instead trusts the effect of Kaufman's inspiring script to stand alone without disaffecting visual technique lathered on top. This film is a highly admirable and important onslaught that hopefully by now has hemorrhaged its influence into the much expressed overcommercialization and underused creativity and exploration of American cinema.