John_Malkovich

Chiara Turchetta Mr. Astudillo Period 2, film studies November 30, 2012 Being John Malkovich "Being John Malkovich" is a 1999 American comedy-fantasy film that bring sup a lot of philosophical controversies that we are faced with in our everyday life. The plot becomes extremely peculiar when a puppeteer, Craig Wright(Cusack), finds a job on the 7 1/2 floor, and his life is altered when he meets a woman named Maxine(Keener). While employed on the 7 1/2 floor, Craig discovers a mysterious portal that can transport people inside of John Malkovich's head. For those people who encountered the portal became infatuated with the idea of viewing the world in John Malkovich's eyes, Craig's wife especially, Lotty(Diaz), who starts to question both her sexuality and her feelings for Maxine. Human Isolation was one of the underlying issues in the film. Every character was out of touch with each other and seemed to be consumed by their own selfishness. Craig's puppets symbolize this, each one of his puppet shows always isolated the puppets from each other. Additionally, each one of the characters were all separated from each other in their own way. Take Lottie and Craig, for instance, it was evident that their marriage was crumbling due to isolation from each other. It appeared that there was no real connection between them, and this was exemplified when Maxine came into Craig and Lottie's life. In the end, Lottie and Maxine ended up together because they truly loved each other, and I think that is the solution to human isolation. Forcing yourself to be around someone you've fallen out of love with, or became disillusioned by, offers a great deal of human isolation in itself. Probably in Craig and Lottie's case, they did not want to come to terms with reality; that there never was a connection between them. Another situation in the movie was the relationship between Maxine and John Malkovich. Obviously, Maxine is using John Malkovich, not for fame or money, but to be romantic with Lottie and Craig when they were inside of John's mind. Maxine and John then soon became isolated people because they weren't actually interested in each other at all. The solution to human isolation for the characters was a challenge but a necessity: to spend time with someone that you genuinely care about as oppose to using them for selfish seeking purposes. Surprisingly, the film was based off of a lot of philosophical questions, and I wasn't expecting that. Instead of being an average comedy film, Being John Malkovich actually raised perplexing controversial topics. The existence of the portal in itself questions what we as human beings are, whether we are made up of only our minds or much more than that. It seems to me that the movie was insinuating that we are only our minds. By traveling through the portal, our mind would be able to travel into someone else's body, and we would no longer be ourselves, we would be a completely different person. Although this is what the film is suggesting, I don't think there is a solution to the existence of a soul, and the nature of oneself. I think those questions are pretty subjective to one's opinion, and I think there are a variety of opinions on this topic, and just because this movie offers its own solution, it doesn't mean we can rule out all of the other possibilities. The scene where John Malkovich goes through his own portal was absurdity. If I hadn't watched the scene and guessed what would have happened, I probably would have guessed the sequence of events that happened in the movie. John Malkovich going through John Malkovich's portal could only lead to one thing really: and that is for John Malkovich to live inside the realms of his own mind, since John already sees life daily in his own skin. Aside from that, I guess it would be hard to predict what would happen in this scene, but this was one of my favorite scenes in the movie and I liked the writer's idea of bringing this element into the film. One of the more peculiar things throughout the film is the significance of the floor that Craig's new job is located: 7 1/2. The title of the floor, the people who work on the floor, and the actual architecture of the floor is all very odd, as the ceilings hang very low, causing everyone to be hunched over in their work environment. I think the 7 1/2 represents more than an element of humor in the film, but rather symbolizes something much greater. The 7 1/2 is not only defining the peculiar employees who work there, but it also represents a peculiar world. It's almost like instead of stopping on the 7th or 8th(normal floors), Craig and all of his co-workers were put in a unique setting unlike any other. With the knowledge that Craig would be working on the 7 1/2 floor indicates that something extremely odd will be intertwined in the movie, and the portal to John Malkovich's body was just the icing on the cake. The movie " Being John Malkovich" had various underlying messages and philosophies intertwined in the plot, and made the story that much more captivating. I think more questions than answers are provoked by the end of the movie. With light humor and a heavy plot, the movie was, what I would define as trippy, and yet at the same time, quite enjoyable.