Charming Craziness Runs Rampant In Spike Jonze's Debut Directorial Effort Being John Malkovich

I'll be right upfront and proclaim myself as a total Spike Jonze fanboy. When I saw Where The Wild Things Are as a thirteen-year-old, I had no prior experience with his filmmaking but the movie itself was so captivating and incredible that I knew I would never forget Spike Jonze's name. Just a few yeas later, Jonze managed to surpass his 2009 achievement with the masterpiece Her, one of the best movies made in the 21st century. Since seeing those two in their theatrical runs, I've also gone back and watched the superb Adaptation and have no finally rounded out Spike Jonze's feature film directorial catalog by finally viewing his debut effort Being John Malkovich, which paired him up with writer Charlie Kaufman, the writer of Adaptation.

Even in the nascent stage of being a filmmaker, Jonze laid the groundwork for what was to come from future efforts of his and the same can very much be said for Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich was also his first feature film debut). Like many of their films, Being John Malkovich details an extraordinary set of high-concept science fiction circumstances incurring itself on the lives of mundane individuals. While a broad description for sure, Being John Malkovich does feel like a precursor to Jonze's efforts like Where The Wild Things Are and Her while Kaufman would explore the intimate consequences of existing in stylized circumstances in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Synecdoche, New York and Anomalisa.

For Being John Malkovich, the specific plot details concern Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), a puppeteer by trade, working on the 7 1/2 floor of a building complex where he does routine filing and carries a pretty obvious crush for co-worker Maxine Lund (Catherine Keener). While going about his everyday business, he discovers a portal behind a filing cabinet that allows you to spend 15 minutes in the mind of John Malkovich (played by John Malkovich). It's an exciting discovery that he partners up with Maxine Lund to exploit for profit while Craig's wife, Lotte Schwartz (Cameron Diaz), also utilizes the portal to discover new parts of her identity she never could have previously imagined existed.

Now that I've touched upon how Being John Malkovich is similar to then future efforts by its writer and director, it's interesting to note how it also differs compared to other Jonze and Kaufman features. Being John Malkovich is a more overtly quirky and humorous movie compared to, say, Her or Where The Wild Things Are or Synecdoche, New York. Not that those movies are entirely devoid of humor, far from it (remember the foul-mouthed virtual character Theodore Twombly encounters in his video game in Her?), but Being John Malkovich approaches being an outright farce in certain scenes. If the previously mentioned movies from Jonze and Kaufman are all about normal protagonists discovering realms or certain objects (like a land of Wild Things or a machine that allows you to erase memories) that disrupt their normal existences, Being John Malkovich is a tale where everything is pretty much off the wall even before the portal that transports you into the mind of John Malkovich comes into play.

Well before that crucial plot element comes into play, a place of employment situated in between floors of a building, an elderly male boss who talks about his sexual desires and a co-worker who mishears everyone around her as speaking with a speech impediment all get extended screentime. To boot, Craig basically lives in a zoo as a number of animals, including a talkative bird and a chimp, live with him and his wife. It's zaniness piled on top of more zaniness as if Charlie Kaufman is trying to see how much craziness he can get away with even in a high-concept plot like this one. While it's different from their other works, the heightened tendencies of the story are, by and large, lots of fun and  a flashback where the chimp reminisces about trying to rescue his parents from poachers ("ELIJAH!! COME HELP YOUR FATHER AND ME!!!") is a particularly hilarious example of just how unabashedly nutty and enjoyable the movie can be.

Really, my biggest gripe with Kaufman's script is that Lotte Schwartz desperately needed more screentime in the first act. After her first trip into the mind of Malkovich, she becomes a lead character in the story, and a fascinating individual at that, but up to that point, she's been hovering in the background seemingly filling the role of "the main character's wife" with not much personality to her name. Exchanging one of the numerous scenes hammering home Craig's creepy tendencies for even just a scene establishing Lotte earlier on in the plot feels like it could have helped things out for herself as a character, though, as said before, Kaufman's script does give Lotte plenty to do when she enters the proceedings as a protagonist.

Given how little she factored into the feature prior to her trip into Malkovich's mind, I was utterly shocked Lotte ended up being the main character of the entire story. There's plenty of twists and turns like that to be found in Being John Malkovich, as the off-the-wall atmosphere that makes it such an eccentric movie also lends it this sense of unpredictability on a storytelling level. There's really no telling where Kaufman's take on this unique plot will take the characters or the audience and that's loads of fun to experience. Director Spike Jonze, who would be no stranger to the peculiar in his future directorial efforts, turns out to be the perfect filmmaker to execute such an outlandish plot, especially since he gets some seriously tremendous performances out of the actors he's assembled here.

John Cusack, playing the guy responsible for finding this incredible portal, creates this realistic depiction of an offbeat individual whose far more perturbing than endearing while Catherine Keener is lots of fun playing off both him and Diaz in the role of Maxine. Speaking of Diaz, this movie's kind of a revelation for me regarding her as an actor since I've never found her to be particularly noteworthy in her other movies. Here though, Diaz is incredible, she handles the characters growing sense of independence especially well and now I'm wondering why she's spent precious hours of her life starring in The Other Woman instead of being in more dramatic films for directors like Sofia Coppola or even Spike Jonze again, she's clearly got the chops for such parts.

I'd be remiss, when discussing actors in this film, if I passed up on the chance to talk about John Malkovich himself, who gets the chance to play a stylized version of himself. His character is basically the sun all of the other plot point planets of stylized chaos revolve around and Malkovich, himself being a wonderful actor who's always throwing himself into parts with 110% conviction, turns out to be a perfect choice to center a film this crazy around. Being John Malkovich gets a lot of mileage around him and a more outlandish story than even guys who are well-versed in the bizarre like Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze have handled in the rest of their careers.