Being John Malkovich is science fiction, romance, and arthouse drama all wrapped into one. It’s the first major film written by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, and it explores themes that would come to dominate his oeuvre in the years to come.
But if you’ve arrived here, you’re probably wondering first and foremost about this film’s convoluted plot. What to make of this strange tale about a puppeteer, a portal, a B-list actor, and a lesbian romance?
I’ll go on to show that Being John Malkovich comments on various psychological aspects of making movies. More specifically, the main conflict in the film represents an ideological battle between outdated, conventional cinematic aesthetics and newer, more personal screenwriting techniques.
How on Earth did I get all that from this weird film? Read on to find out.
1. Puppeteer
Kaufman’s protagonist is Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), an unemployed puppeteer. Craig typifies the “starving artist.” He stays true to his artistic visions despite being met with indifference at best and hostility at worst. For instance, on the city sidewalk he puts on a lewd puppet show that offends passersby and leads one father to bloody him up. Disdainful of all commercialism, however, Craig takes pride in his unpopularity: when his wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), sees his battered face, he explains, defiantly: “I’m a puppeteer.”
This artistic idealism, though, doesn’t impress Lotte. In fact, she’s so uninterested in the depths of the human soul that she keeps company almost exclusively with animals. Perhaps because of this, Craig soon seeks out an extramarital affair with new coworker Maxine (Catherine Keener).
Craig has just started a job at a strange filing company that, in a parody of corporate penny-pinching, has literally “low overhead.” Stifled by a loveless marriage and the crushing dullness of office work, he sees Maxine as a potential reprieve. But Maxine repeatedly professes her lack of attraction for Craig, most notably after he reveals his trade as a puppeteer, which she mocks as “playing with dolls.”
At around this point, Craig discovers a “portal” into the mind of actor John Malkovich. This portal enables any person to experience Malkovich’s life for about fifteen minutes at a time. And many clamor to partake in this experience: Craig and Maxine soon set up a lucrative side-business selling tickets to the portal.
The key to understanding the portal’s symbolic meaning—which will be crucial to understanding the meaning of the film overall—is that the portal represents the experience of cinema. Consider that “being John Malkovich,” is what movies allow us to do: feel like, or be, an actor like Malkovich, via visual experience. The portal recreates the compelling cinematic feeling of seeing life through someone else’s eyes.
So it’s not surprising that the portal attracts high demand: movies are big business. And, as with the cinema, the appeal of the portal appears to lie partially in connecting viewers with unexplored aspects of themselves. Lotte, for example, connects so strongly with Malkovich while in the portal that she begins to identify as transgender and falls in love with Maxine.
Further evidence for the symbolic link between the portal and the movie screen comes when Malkovich himself enters the portal. Once inside, he experiences a bizarre world in which every person is a copy of himself and says only, “Malkovich.” Even the restaurant menu consists only of his own name in repetition. Upon being expelled from the portal, Malkovich summarizes his horror: “I have seen a world that no man should see.”
What is the meaning of this unsettling scene? Recall that, as per our analysis so far, the portal doesn’t actually make someone become another person. If this were the case, Malkovich in the portal would merely become himself, and he would experience life normally. Instead, as we’ve established, the portal, like the movie screen, allows one to view life through another’s eyes. Thus, by entering the portal—by symbolically watching his own movie—Malkovich ceases living his life and begins watching his life. In other words, he becomes self-conscious.
Such a condition seems to be highly debilitating. Judging by Malkovich’s experience in the portal, it removes one’s ability to empathize with or even recognize other people. Of course, we can all relate to the idea that self-consciousness hinders interpersonal connections: it refocuses our minds from other people to our own selves. But with the scene of Malkovich entering the portal, Kaufman indicates that an even more severe version of this problem may await screen artists. After all, as a part of their profession, they must constantly watch and consider themselves onscreen. Because of this, they may become so self-conscious that they become totally solipsistic and inward-focused.
It could easily be argued, however, that since 1999, when Being John Malkovich was released, this distinction between actors and non-actors has largely collapsed. Due to changes in media and social media, most of us now face anxieties that, previously, were the exclusive domain of actors. Kaufman’s commentaries about actors, therefore, could now reasonably be applied more broadly.
2. Screenwriter
In summary, we’ve established that the portal symbolizes the cinematic experience. It presents the benefits of film as an art form—exemplified by Lotte’s experience—while also presenting the dangers of film as a potential cause of debilitating self-consciousness—exemplified by Malkovich’s experience.
But even amidst these characters’ intense encounters with the portal, Craig develops a particularly strong relationship with it. He alone learns to use it to control Malkovich’s body rather than simply go along for the ride. Given that we have symbolically connected the portal to cinema, we can in turn interpret Craig’s special ability. Specifically, Craig learning to control Malkovich represents him learning the art of screenwriting.
After all, Craig has learned to control an actor, just as a screenwriter controls an actor through written dialogue and stage directions. The other characters merely enjoy a brief period of projective identification before finding themselves back in the real world: they correspond to filmgoers. But Craig alone exerts authority over the cinematic experience, corresponding with a writer of movie screenplays.
If this meta interpretation seems like a stretch, then you likely haven’t watched many of Charlie Kaufman’s films. Most of his major protagonists are indeed struggling screenwriters or playwrights. He often explores the difficulty of writing authentic screenplays and the madness that may result from such an effort. Thus, Being John Malkovich—his first major work—merely introduces his preference to write screenplays about…writing screenplays.
Back to Craig. His symbolic transition to screenwriting brings several benefits, especially a reversal of fortune with Maxine. While she had earlier chided him for “playing with dolls,” she finds his manipulation of Malkovich impressive and enthralling. Thus, the two begin a relationship.
This change of heart from Maxine exemplifies the perks of being a screenwriter compared to being a puppeteer. Attention is much more likely to accompany one than the other. Plus, screenwriting, unlike puppetry, allows Maxine to fall in love with a character created by Craig, rather than Craig himself. This is rather convenient for Craig, given his disheveled appearance and mopey demeanor. By hiding inside a character, he can project a more appealing version of himself.
But amidst Craig’s newfound romantic and financial success, his shift to symbolic screenwriting also has a negative component. Namely, it appears linked with a decline in his artistic ideals. Recall that as a puppeteer, Craig had upheld strict artistic morals and high-mindedness. But upon learning to control Malkovich, he largely discards those ideals and uses his talents for selfish reasons—especially to attract Maxine.
In addition, by using his abilities for these ends, Craig has put himself in a precarious position. To remain with Maxine, he must be Malkovich. Since Maxine has no attraction to Craig outside of his Malkovich character, he must now maintain that character forever if he wants to sustain her interest.
Predictably, he increasingly struggles to do so. Malkovich under Craig’s control begins to suspiciously resemble…Craig. For example, the new Malkovich begins a career in arthouse puppetry and starts to physically look like Craig. Accordingly, Maxine gradually loses interest and dumps him. (This occurs after about eight months of being together, a decent approximation of the “honeymoon phase,” after which relationships stereotypically become more difficult as facades wear thin.)
We can infer that Craig’s inability to maintain distance between himself and his character reflects Kaufman’s own philosophy regarding character invention. After all, as we’ve described, Kaufman tends to write characters based heavily on himself (including in this movie, which explores the psychology of screenwriting). It seems that he has little faith in one’s ability—or at least in his own ability—to create authentic characters that aren’t, at heart, mere copies of oneself. This thinking will be important as we move to the next section.
3. Captain
So far, our analysis has covered how the characters’ experiences with the portal symbolize either moviegoing or, in Craig’s special case, screenwriting. But one character uses the portal for entirely different ends.
That would be Dr. Lester (Orson Bean), otherwise known as Captain Mertin. In the late 1800’s, Mertin discovered the portal, and he realized that if he inhabited it on the 44th birthday of the individual to whose mind it led, then he would become that person permanently—enabling himself, essentially, to live forever.
How does this fit with our interpretation of the portal as a representation of cinema? Well, Mertin discovered the portal in the late 1800’s, precisely when film was invented. So the framework seems to hold up.
Continuing to adhere to that framework, then, we can infer that Mertin’s jumping from one “vessel body” to another represents how certain filmic ideas and characters can become essentially immortal through repeated artistic imitation.
Don’t worry, I’ll explain.
Captain Mertin, a rich, white industrialist, is exactly the kind of person who would have been the subject of fledgling films upon their early invention. And when a new generation of filmmakers inevitably imitated these early reels, his essence would have been channeled into the newer films. And so forth with the next generation of filmmakers, et cetera. Thus, by being the subject of the first ever films in the late 1800’s, Mertin has found a way to live forever. The spirit of those films lives on through its enduring influence on our artistic tradition. From this perspective, Mertin never “dies.”
This is represented in the movie by Mertin literally trying to transfer himself into the mind of a practicing actor. Film actors like John Malkovich indeed provide a “vessel” for those like Mertin to live on. Actors play roles based on older roles, which are in turn based on even older roles. Therefore, they unwittingly conduct the likes of Captain Mertin infinitely into the future.
This sets up a symbolic confrontation between Mertin and Craig. Both want control of Malkovich, but for opposing artistic aims. Mertin, as described, sees Malkovich as a potential imitator of himself—a “vessel” to carry his essence forward. He wants film, in other words, to recreate old archetypes.
This aesthetic, though, carries significant limitations. Highlighting these limitations is a short video that Craig watches for employee training. It idolizes the wealthy Captain Mertin and frames his construction of the Mertin-Flemmer building as a selfless gift to a little person. Of course, this framing is an outright lie: in reality, Mertin constructed the building to conceal the portal. Thus, the training video epitomizes some of the major flaws of early films: they unthinkingly celebrate rich, white people, often promoting false narratives to do so. Think The Birth of a Nation (1914).
Craig, meanwhile, has a different vision for filmmaking. He wants to create personal, relevant art. As a puppeteer, he puts on a show entitled, “Dance of Despair and Disillusionment,” dramatizing his own self-loathing. In addition, as a (symbolic) screenwriter, as previously described, he allows his character of Malkovich to drift closer and closer to his own previous identity. As mentioned, this reflects Kaufman’s own tendency to write characters very similar to himself.
And basing characters closely on oneself actually serves as an excellent means of excluding the kind of pernicious archetypes that Mertin represents. After all, inserting oneself as a character in a story forces personal screenwriting. It leaves little room for that character to take on traits subconsciously pulled from older cinematic influences.
Thus, if Craig were able to popularize this approach to making films, Mertin would lack a symbolic “vessel” to perpetuate his aesthetic. His “life” would come to an end. Therefore, the battle between the two characters for control of John Malkovich represents a battle for the future of movies. Will they continue to channel outdated conventions, as Captain Mertin wants? Or will they leap into the future, allowing Mertin to finally die?
Craig has the upper hand. Unfortunately, as we’ve described, he has become distracted from his idealistic goals. His art has become primarily a means of wooing Maxine, rather than of authentic creation. And this inconstancy proves to be his undoing. He becomes convinced that leaving Malkovich to rescue Maxine will come across as a heroic, romantic gesture. Of course, this gesture fails miserably. As we’ve said, Maxine’s attraction is only to Craig’s character, as played by Malkovich. She therefore rejects him and leaves with Lotte.
The clear message: pursuing art for selfish gain leads to inevitable failure. Craig, once a strict idealist, has become more interested in the secondary benefits of artistic fame. He has lost his way as a screenwriter.
The villainous Captain Mertin therefore triumphs, inhabiting Malkovich in Craig’s place. And indeed, our movies and shows continue to exhibit regressive aesthetics. Mertin’s likeness lives on.
Plus, Mertin brings with him several friends, all of whom appear, of course, rich and white like himself. Thus, wealthy people in general, not just Mertin, appear to use film to avoid oblivion. After they’re gone, they influence characters that dominate the cinema. (Being John Malkovich surely serves as the precursor to Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2013), which also examines elites’ use of popular culture to extend themselves.)
Having symbolically failed as a screenwriter, Craig no longer controls what he sees in the portal. Instead, having re-entered it too late, he finds himself trapped in the next vessel: Maxine’s daughter, Emily. This ending symbolizes that, no longer influencing the direction of moviemaking, Craig must live out his days at the mercy of movies. He’ll continue to watch them, but they’ll only remind him, as art tends to do, of his lived experiences. In this case, that means his painful failure to win Maxine’s love.
Meanwhile, Captain Mertin and his friends, now inside Malkovich, ready themselves for another jump. Once they control Emily, Craig will be doomed to watch the type of movie—outdated and dishonest—that he symbolically failed to phase out. He’ll receive poetic justice for diverting from his artistic aims.
What a crazy film. There’s so much going on in Being John Malkovich that synthesizing it into one coherent essay is challenging. But I hope that I’ve helped to delineate its hidden meanings and messages.
In sum, it’s a tragicomedy about the thrills and dangers of making movies. If such subject matter appeals to you, then you’re in luck. Because Charlie Kaufman has written plenty of other films—and, in accordance with the artistic manifesto introduced in this one, they tend to be primarily concerned with…the screenwriting life of Charlie Kaufman.
–Jim Andersen
For more movies explained, check out my essay on Everything Everywhere All At Once.
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