That crazy old Charlie

Rating: 8/10 (13 March 2009)

It is very possible that cinema will never be able to find a writer like Charlie Kaufman again, and if it does, it will be someone too similar to him. Kaufman knows no limits, knows no endings (believe me, his scripts would never end if he could take that decision) and thinks, as a screenwriter, in creating material that at the end of the day is purely cinematographic. Luckily, he's always found apt directors to bring his words to life: Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze (sorry, George Clooney doesn't count because Kaufman's script for the actor/director's first film is adapted).
In "Being John Malkovich", Kaufman's imagination takes flight and images go right along flying with it. It's not the writer's intention to arouse questions of philosophical, even metaphysical nature. There's a scene in which Craig (John Cusack), the film's main character, explains Maxine (Catherine Keener) about a portal he found that leads him to John Malkovich's head. He tells her he went into the portal with a piece of wood and came back without it and, because he's strangely in love with her, he tries to impress her by making a speech about how this may change his life.
It is in that speech that Craig asks, one after another, philosophical questions that are a clear joke; fact that's evidently seen because Maxine is laughing at him. The poor guy, a puppeteer, hasn't been able to impress her and goes back home to make a puppet of himself and Maxine; only to recreate an impossible sexual encounter. At home Craig's awaited by his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz), some kind of veterinarian or pet lover who keeps a dog, a parrot, a chimp and who knows what else inside the house.
Character development is perfect. Maxine is cold, disinterested, unimpressed and at the same time mysterious; an office femme fatale that Keener portrays perfectly. Craig is an insecure, depraved, depressive, almost sick artist; and his wife is very much like him (each Cusack and Diaz probably deliver their best performances). What Kaufman does is develop a classic, tragic love triangle an puts John Malkovich in the middle, as a the connection between the three players, a vehicle for the realization of their passions.
It could have been any other person, but the fact that the actor is famous works as a plot device for something crucial, and that is people paying to be John Malkovich for fifteen minutes. So there's no philosophical meditation in "Being John Malkovich", just a gifted screenwriter messing with himself and automatically messing with our minds too. This means, of course, that there's a moment where everything kind of goes to hell; but we're able to accept it.
If you would care to look for a subject though, it would be more 'psychological'. There's a lot in the film that Kaufman later took to each one of his scripts, things that mentioned separately are scarier than the amusing visual rides directors make us experience: sexual obsession, childhood memories and some other things that are hidden in the subconscious. It's delirious, but in one scene we even see a close up of a chimp that a second later is remembering the most tragic experience of his childhood.