One of the Most Wildly Inventive American Movies Shows Film-making Brio and Genuine Heart

Rating: 10/10 (11 September 2006)

If anything, I enjoy the audacity and manic creativity of this 1999 black comedy more now than when it was first released. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who sends up the creative block he experienced after writing the film's script in 2002's "Adaptation", plainly refuses to use any accepted cinematic convention to tell the wildly eccentric story of Craig Schwartz, a downtrodden puppeteer who has a must-be-seen-to-be-believed adventure. An uncompromising artiste who cannot find work within his craft, he decides to accept a job as a file clerk to please his frumpy, animal-loving wife, Lotte. Things immediately go awry when he sees his place of employment is on the dwarf-sized 7 1/2th floor of a Manhattan office building. He becomes drawn to an ice-cold co-worker, an apparent femme fatale named Maxine, but the story really escalates into high gear when he discovers a secret passageway that turns out to be the consciousness of actor John Malkovich.
The plot convolutions only get weirder yet strangely more resonant as Craig and others get to experience "being John Malkovich", including the actor himself. What subsequently happens is constantly off-kilter, but Kaufman brings perceptive insight into all the major characters in ways that are completely unpredictable. The beauty is that repeated viewings only bring out plot nuances that were not as apparent the previous times. Director (and sometime actor) Spike Jonze is an inspired choice to lead the proceedings since he lends an almost verité-style to the film making the lunacy seem human-sized. Casting is pure gold with a bedraggled-looking John Cusack appropriately awestruck as Craig, a cast-against-type Cameron Diaz energized by her curiosity as Lotte and Catherine Keener sharply feline as Maxine. Orson Bean brings out all the eccentricities of Craig's oddly deranged boss, and no one is better cast than Malkovich as a wildly narcissistic version of himself, especially as the plot spins further into a Freudian fantasy of monstrous proportions.
This is wildly inventive film-making that may alienate several viewers, but it really should be embraced as the kind of bold experimentation that mainstream Hollywood rarely attempts. The 2002 DVD extras are also pure gold, including an interview with Jones conducted under mock-stress; a brief featurette, "An Intimate Portrait of the Art of Puppeteering," that spotlights the behind-the-scenes work performed by puppet master Phil Huber; and a short called "Intimate Portrait of the Art of Background Driving", which purportedly documents the experiences of extras driving cars in the New Jersey Turnpike scenes where all of the Malkovich travelers end up. Along with the original theatrical trailer and several TV promotional spots, there are also two played-straight videos, excerpts of which are shown in the film - one the "7 ½ Floor Orientation" and the other the vaunted pseudo-documentary, "American Arts and Culture Presents: John Horatio Malkovich, Dance of Despair and Disillusionment". A genuinely entertaining package overall.