Me? Nah, because I am contented in what I am or so, but if it's for fun... Why not?
This film well, it caught my attention from the title itself. I mean, you can be Being Tom Cruise, or Being Julia Roberts or Being whatever celebrity they can think of, but they ended up with John Malkovich. I want to know as well at that time, does John Malkovich really show in this film?
Story goes that Craig a puppeteer, well trying to make ends meet buy doing puppeteering in the streets but ran out of luck. He decided to work with a legal company to sort files thanks to his fast hands. As he doing the job one day, he accidentally discovered a secret room and he went in. He was surprised that it's a portal going to the body of John Malkovich, one of the great character actors in film, then seeing what he's doing or even thinking. He informed this discovery first to one of Craig's acquaintances Maxine, a seductive office worker near at Craig's office. They thought of making this discovery a money making business. After some occassions, Craig said this to Lotte, his wife, and became addicted in going to the portal. One of her visits to the portal, she became in love with Maxine then Maxine also felt the same way with Lotte. As much I want to say the plot, after this, all bizarre, confusion broke lose between Craig, Maxine, Lotte and yes, don't forget John Malkovich.
The only flaw, but it's a minor flaw that easily can look over with is the relationship between Lotte and Maxine. A casual moviegoer may get confused or turned off with that relationship in the movie but for me, it was well written and really helped how the movie going until the end. Of course, in the end they really end up together, suprisingly with a child.
First I commend the actors who played in this film. Starting with Cameron Diaz, that I hope if she wants a growth in her career, she needs to do a lot of this kind of indie films. I haven't seen a film that she done this kind of roles recently so I hope she can do more. In this film, you can sense that she has a knack for weird or deep roles so I hope she does more. John Cusack, damn... He's previous roles were good but I don't know why in his recent films were kinda lost already. He's great in this film, not only because of his weird puppeteer role but also his feeling towards on what's happening around him. I just hope he can back on track on doing this films. He really took a back seat in his recent films.
Catherine Keener, wow.. I discovered her in 40 year old virgin as that hot mom dating Steve Carell's character.. Here, damn hot. =) She's one of the 2 main culprits or reasons that made this film memorable to me. I mean, she got an Oscar nomination for this role of seductive, vulnerable and lovely lady who doesn't care what others say. I love the scenes where she was able to seduce John and she was thinking that Lotte is in John's being, so that is quite hard to act. Damn, at the end she got what she wanted. At that film, she doesn't look 40.
John Malkovich! Of course, why if you love him as an actor these times, then you gotta love him in this flick. He's well, 80% percent of the time he's real John Malkovich, then the remaining 20% was how he reacted in the flow in the story. You can say he's quite submissive in this film because 90% of the time, he doesn't know the portal inside of his body. I love his first scenes where he is a casual guy, very calm and thankful what he is. This is the best film for him. Sad to say, yeah, he did not win any award for his role. Geez.
Give kudos to the supporting cast, the old boss, even some interesting cameos as well, it's a gem that those supporting characters done their parts in an effective way.
Direction by Spike Jonze should have a credit here, despite the bizarre, crazy idea of the film, he was able to pull it off because of his demand maybe to make the film simple to digest. Even with a lot of things happening, he did not like go into deeper for each character of situation in the film. I loved how he arrange the sequence of the events, well give that credit to editing too, that the viewer is not lost after one thing to another. For instance, how Craig dominated John Malkovich for sometime then shifted until the end.
Writer Charlie Kaufman made this film a great one. Well, I just watched Adapation, althought it's also a great one, but this one is better. It is also way better than Confessions of a Dangerous mind, he even dissed it because George Clooney made changes of the script. But yeah, this one I don't think any other film tried to really copy or at least imitate what he did in this film. I love the script he done for this film, deep yet simplified. You can hear in his films, he loves poetry and he always put that poetry fit for a film. The only difference of this film to Eternal Sunshine is why Eternal Sunshine is the best film written by him, that film focuses to love, unlike this one, there is love but it shows more of the consequences of being somebody else. But anything else, I can't take away anything what he done for this film, but it's more how he was able to pull off a beautiful bizarre idea into something interesting to watch.
It's worth for keeps in this film, I wondered if I have that discovery, I wish I could be someone like me with better attributes.
I'm not into dreaming of somebody else famous. Geez, I don't really like that. =)
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