Talk show host Larry King often asks his actor guests if they derive their professional enjoyment from being other people for a while, and they usually answer yes. Actors can do it regularly, but ordinary people seldom get the chance – a chance I suspect many of us would take, just for the thrill of it, were it offered. Sometimes the bounds of identity can seem limitingly dull, which is the idea that Being John Malkovich takes to a most amusing extreme.
We’ve waited a while for this off-beat comedy that caused a stir overseas for its bizarre premise and its ability to deliver sophisticated laughs. At last it’s here, and it has been worth the wait.
Craig Schwartz (the versatile John Cusack) is a puppeteer by trade, but he’s not making much of a career for himself performing his adaptation of the letters of Abelard and Héloïse on street corners. His wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) is a petshop attendant who brings her work home with her – in the form of needy creatures such as a chimp. When the disspirited Craig finally gets a job as a filing clerk (“Looking for a man with fast hands”), he is understandably amazed to discover that a secret doorway in the office leads directly into the brain of actor John Malkovich, from which vantage point one can experience life as if one were, indeed, John Malkovich.
What flows from that notion is hilariously strange, whether it is the rabid commercialisation of this magical portal by Craig’s ruthless colleague Maxine (Catherine Keener) or the reactions of Malkovich himself. A love-tangle, too, is consequent upon this psyche-hopping – certainly the funniest triangular relationship I’ve seen on film for some time.
Co-produced by REM singer Michael Stipe, a man not given to taking the well-travelled path, and directed by Spike Jonze from Charlie Kaufman’s brilliant screenplay, Being John Malkovich is a treat – a clever comedy that conjures wit from a “metaphysical can of worms”. They should all be on Larry King.