I sat down to watch Being John Malkovich for the first time on a pitch black summer night with my mom. Quarantine is, in essence, spending time with people you haven’t seen in a while, but spending time with them for most of the year on an endless loop of days. I watch movies, either alone or with my mom, and we normally don’t share the same opinions. Watching Malkovich, tears swelled in my eyes for nearly the entire runtime; I was overcome with melancholy. More than anything, watching a film in which everyone was longing for human connection as well as a fully formed sense of self felt eerily relevant.
An opening of a one-man puppet show sets the stage for the entire film: it’s about controlling another person, that desperate desire for recognition and the pain of isolation. The puppet, controlled by Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), thrashes about in a tiny room, swaying through a dance of destruction. Craig is an unemployed puppeteer who lives with his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz), an eccentric veterinarian who fills the house with non-domesticated animals. She begs Craig to get a job, though his final motivator is as a father beats him after Craig’s raunchy puppet show is seen by the man’s child. His job search leads him to a filing position on the 7½ floor, along with the attractive and cynical Maxine Lund (Catherine Keener) and a secret doorway to a portal into the mind of John Malkovich.
All of Craig’s puppetry comes from his desire to be recognized by others and to be seen and felt by his objects of desire: first, his wife, and then his coworker as he makes an eerie puppet of Maxine after a “date” with her. With the portal into Malkovich, which only grants the user 15 minutes of seeing through Malkovich’s eyes before being dropped on the side of the New Jersey turnpike, Craig finds another puppet and Maxine finds a way to capitalize on the phenomena. People come from all over the city to jump on the opportunity to become someone they’re not, even if just for a few moments. One of the first customers is brought to tears at the thought of being someone else: “I’m a fat man. I am sad and I am fat.” It’s depressing to hear, sure, but it resonates with me — when I picture my perfect self, my idealized version of me, I am much skinnier, taller, and wealthier. I would kill to be John Malkovich.
When Lotte enters the mind of Malkovich, it awakens something in her. She questions her entire identity as a woman, as she realizes just how natural it feels to be Malkovich, to be a man. Being in quarantine for so long now, I’ve seen countless people coming out as gay or bi or trans or nonbinary. Watching the arc of Lotte, who falls in love with Maxine and questions her gender and sexuality, feels so relevant to the current situation, especially as I understand aspects of myself. There’s been plenty of discourse, all of which has felt like its intended purpose is to invalidate me and my own journey and feelings, but this film felt so different. I couldn’t help but think of my own questions: if Maxine (at first) only wants Lotte when she’s Malkovich, how might my own crushes see me? Would they want me only if I was another person in appearance? Maxine says that once she enters a romantic relationship with Malkovich that she can see Lotte in Malkovich’s eyes and can feel her presence; would I be better in the shell of another person?
When I say “discourse that has made me feel invalid,” I don’t want to get too specific. Anyone online can see just how much hostility there’s been since quarantine began, people all over attacking marginalized people to an absurd degree. It sometimes feels like the communities I consider myself a part of reject my presence, something I haven’t felt so strongly in years. Being John Malkovich understands this isolation, this alienation, with every character at some point or another being denied from the community and connection they need. Maxine rejects everyone in the principal cast that shows interest in her until she can no longer take the isolation she’s created for herself, realizing that she’s given up human connection for the sake of capital and influence. We all feel a profound loneliness, whether by being denied space in a community, or by denying others a space with us. Craig, Lotte, and Maxine all desire connection, with the former two using Malkovich to be their idealized self, convinced this puppet will allow them entry into human connection with Maxine. I understand the idea that constant reinvention of yourself is what you believe to be the answer to becoming more popular, sociable, lovable. But Craig’s obsession with connection and fame quickly turns toxic and infected by patriarchy.
Craig goes through the same conundrum with Maxine, but chooses to approach it in the patriarchal way: he, in a fit of rage that Maxine is smitten with Lotte rather than him, locks Lotte in a cage and takes over Malkovich. Craig rejects the idea of using Malkovich to find yourself and to start to understand yourself in ways we can only ever dream of, and instead uses him to exert his dominance and accrue wealth and power. Though he and Lotte, as well as anyone else that enters the mind of Malkovich, see this phenomena as a way to gain real human connection, Craig abuses it in the name of the capitalist patriarchy. It’s unnerving to see the very real need for community become so twisted all in the name of profit and control.
Malkovich as a vessel exists, in this quarantine, as two roads that diverge but lead to the same endpoint. On one road, Malkovich represents the screens through which we live now — always avoyeur of the world we used to inhabit and people we used to touch, feel, and share space with. On the other, he is also the confrontation with our inner selves, the questioning of everything we know about ourselves in thought and in appearance. When Malkovich enters his own mind to see a restaurant filled with a sea of Malkoviches, he is confronting himself in a way no human ever has before — he sees every iteration of himself to ever exist, the changed person he is every second of every day of his entire life. We can only see that some of these Malkoviches are different genders from him, but what else is different? What can’t be seen? Sexuality? Politics? Philosophies? Mental illnesses? Even focusing on it for too long horrifies him; it’s the worst experience of his life, far different from the regular pleasant experience Craig states everyone else has.
The endpoint of these two roads is the urge for human connection, empathy, and love. Through my camera for Zoom class, I long to be in the presence of real people. Though Craig eventually learns how to control Malkovich, I feel like my cameras and screens lack the same control — I’m simply viewing the outside world with zero free will. At the same time, I rarely have my camera on when talking to others, afraid to show them the person I’ve become. Despite living in isolation, I have never been more insecure of myself: my weight on the scale, my increasingly long hair, my new adult acne, and my clothes. Everything makes me cry. I don’t want to be perceived, and yet I long for attention. It’s a vicious cycle that frightens me; as I try to live out my dreams of writing and directing films, I get terrified of every new follower I get. I refuse to show my face on Twitter, a place that can find fault with everything from your weight to your teeth. I imagine my idealized self, my own Malkovich vessel, as what people might see one day despite the fact that I know I may never be this version of myself.
When Craig takes over Malkovich, his life is only improved in superficial ways: he becomes a famous puppeteer, marries Maxine, and is ready to have a baby with her. That baby, however, is technically Lotte’s, and Maxine confesses her love and runs away with her to live together. Malkovich is only awarded a moment’s peace after Craig leaves his body, as he is soon taken over again by the group that made the portal to begin with. But Malkovich is only a temporary vessel, as the next one, in the form of Maxine and Lotte’s daughter, has already been chosen. Malkovich is temporary, but love is eternal — the love between Lotte and Maxine is genuine and real, the human connection that everyone has been longing for the entire time. The credits rolling as we realize Craig has entered the vessel of Maxine and Lotte’s daughter is horrifying, but there’s a strange comfort in the love between the two women. I felt valid in that very moment: I’m sure their love is still filled with questions of identity, particularly Lotte’s gender, but now they have each other, free from the torment of judgement.
The film’s ultimate conclusion is that being Malkovich won’t solve your problems. The act of seeking connection through screens or different presentations cannot ever be enough. Those that love us will love us regardless of what we look like, and they will want to be in our lives past the phone screens and Zoom calls. I know that wanting to be a straight male with wealth and talent like Malkovich is probably the dream of so many, and yet I know it’s wrong to want to be someone else just for the chance at attention and love. That’s why I sat there with tears in my eyes, filled with overwhelming emotion at the thought of discovery and acceptance of yourself leading to love from others. It’s good to not be Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich.
