No directors in the world can control actors better than puppeteers do. Puppeteers have full power of manipulation. They can decide how the theme of the puppet show should be presented, they can work things out in the show as the way they like it. Thus, they can dictate every single moment of the actors and create happy endings without a slight problem. However, every show has an end. The puppeteer needs to get down from stage and be instantly drawn back to reality no matter how cruel it is. In “Being John Malkovich”, the characters become puppeteers in their real life. They try to obtain happiness by different levels of manipulation but such happiness is short and illusory.
Craig seems happy that he has attained a success in his puppeteer career by manipulating Malkovich but he never knows that his success is illusory. After eight months of being John Malkovich, Craig makes himself a famous and respected puppeteer. He easily obtains the popularity and recognition he has always dreamt of, but those are all in the name of John Malkovich instead of Craig Schwartz. Therefore, it is very obvious that those achievements do not really belong to him and will forsake him as soon as he leaves the portal connected to Malkovich’s mind. In the scene where Malkovich is getting ready to go out for a show, there is a shot that Malkovich is changing his clothes and telling Maxine that he is leaving. In that shot, although Malkovich’s red underpants catch the eye of the audience, there is a blurry sight of the nearer Craig puppet inside a glass cylinder occupying half of the frame. The puppet is at the left side of the screen while Malkovich is at the right side. This shot is like demonstrating a reflection of the real John Malkovich as the glass cylinder looks like the surface of a mirror. Underneath his skin he is still the daunted, failed puppeteer Craig with dirty clothes and messy hair. In addition, after Malkovich’s puppet show performance, the whole audience stand up and clap their hands. With the sounds of the applause, the camera then focuses on the Craig puppet in the dark, with a lowered head. Then the camera moves up to the puppeteer Malkovich when he bows. This camera pan illustrates the big contrast and represents that the admiration and recognition from the audience are not for Craig who really has the talent, but for Malkovich. The sounds of applause easily reminds us of the first scene in the film when non-diegetic applause represent Craig’s desire and desperation to be a successful puppeteer. Does Craig get what he wants from the start? The answer is a definite no since even the applause in this scene is not for him. The facts that Malkovich only watches the documentary about him on the TV screen and the birthday cake he receives is written “Happy 44th Birthday, Malkovich” give further evidence to Craig’s unreal happiness in his career.
Maxine’s manipulation aims at wealth, which she thought was her real happiness but it turns out quite the opposite. In the first scene, after the dance of the Craig puppet, the camera zooms out to show a lonely Craig controlling the puppet. We can imagine if this zoom out continues, there will probably be someone controlling Craig. In the later part of the film, the audience will notice that the person manipulating Craig at a higher level is Maxine. At last Craig in Malkovich becomes successful and well-known, but Maxine is not satisfied. At the scene where Malkovich is watching a documentary about himself, the setting is in a large beautiful house. If wealth was what makes Maxine happy, she would be happy. However, she looks apparently upset and uninterested by what her husband says when she is making the baby bed. Afterwards, it is observed that she touches the Lotte puppet and apologizes to it. This action reveals that the guilt of leaving her lover Lotte has been haunting her. Maxine is far away from genuine happiness since she has realised that only being with her lover Lotte can bring her joy.
Through controlling Malkovich, Craig and Lotte compete extremely hard for another fragile and illusory form of happiness- the love of Maxine. However, both of them eventually discover that they are not able to get Maxine’s love by simply being another person. For Craig, his manipulation is of no help to his plan of gaining happiness in his love life. The competition with Lotte drives him insane and crushes his personality. When he finds out that Lotte and Maxine are in love with each other and Lotte enters Malkovich’s mind to have sex with Maxine, his original good-natured ego falls apart. There is a close-up of Craig’s face when he is running home from his office. His face is rather distorted with tilted glasses and messy hair and a strange look which is hard to distinguish whether he is laughing or crying. It is a metaphor of the world in his mind – abnormal, chaotic, and upside-down. Craig thinks he can get Maxine’s affection by being Malkovich but he is wrong. Although he does everything Maxine asks him to do, including staying in Malkovich’s mind forever, he fails to make Maxine love him. She does not like him even after they are married. Maxine treats him like a puppet instead of a lover. She frequently asks him to aid in her money-making conspiracy, she only ties the knot with him because of her desire for wealth. When Malkovich goes back home and finds Maxine missing, there is a shot when the Craig puppet, which originally stands inside a glass cylinder, is lying on the floor. It is clear that Maxine has exerted some sort of violence on the puppet before. This violence is the proof of Maxine’s hatred towards Craig.
As for Lotte, though she does win Maxine’s affection, she is convinced that she is attractive only when she is in Malkovich’s mind. In fact, what she gets from being Malkovich is merely vicarious sexual stimulations with Maxine but not real happiness that can last long. Every time she enters Malkovich’s mind, she only has fifteen minutes of pleasure before falling out from the portal. There is a dark frame surrounding the view of Maxine in front of Malkovich indicating that Lotte is having the experience through Malkovich’s eyes. When they are having sex, three voices are heard – Maxine’s, Lotte’s and Malkovich’s. And Malkovich’s hands are seen touching Maxine here and there. Staying in Malkovich’s mind actually creates a barrier between Maxine and Lotte that they have to be separated by a body. In this way, their experience together is disturbed and shared by a third person. Another example is the scene in which Lotte is chasing Maxine in Malkovich’s portal and wants to kill her. Inside Malkovich’s portal are his sub-consciousnesses, the scene changes one after another. There are too many things going on. Such a world makes Lotte unable to clam down and listen to Maxine. Thus, Maxine has no choice but to run for her live. She cannot explain or talk to Lotte about her feelings until they are both expelled. After they are back to reality, Maxine gets the chance to tell Lotte her feelings. The true happiness they share afterwards is gained by being themselves, not by being Malkovich.
Some characters, such as Doctor Lester, seek happiness by attempts to achieve immortality. But they have no idea that their so-called immortality is unreal. In order to live forever, they enter the minds of other people and treat their body as vessels. When middle-aged John Malkovich is standing in front of a mirror, he thinks he has regained his self-consciousness. But in a few seconds, the elderly who enter his portal take control of him. “One of the important values of life is personal existence” (Bube). Thus during the process of obtaining immortality, these characters are killing other people by taking away their self-consciousnesses, which is ironic. Also, Lester urges Lotte not to kill Maxine as her baby will be their next vessel. These characters are already very worried about their next vessel before they enter the current one. Immortality is a curse rather than a blessing here because these people can never lead a carefree life. When the old people get into the portal one by one, they are crawling from bright light into total darkness. This change indicates that these characters are giving up their individual identities. Since so many of them are staying in one body together, it is highly probable that they will merge as a whole and gradually lose their own identities, which almost equals to death. These characters’ hopes are too high and their happiness will fade as soon as they lose their individuality.
In “Being John Malkovich”, the main characters become puppeteers and try to create their ideal world by different levels of manipulation. “The characters are not aware that they’re in some kind of distorted reality, gazing through the looking glass darkly”(Berardinelli). They are so absorbed in the perfect world that they forget the curtains for their puppet shows have to fall. The happiness is illusory and like every puppet show, it has to end. The characters try to escape from their own identities because they underestimate their own powers and abilities. Their attempts to control others in order to fulfil their own dreams end in vain. On one side, the controllers are hit by disappointment once they discover that their happiness does not last. At the same time, the people being controlled lose their self-consciousness and their souls. This is undoubtedly a lose-lose situation that none of them have anticipated. If the characters in the film knew that the happiness gained by doing so is short and unreal and could try to fathom themselves better, they would achieve their goals and be happy for much longer. The grass is always greener on the other side. “Being John Malkovich” reminds us that owning the grass on the other side may not really bring us real joy.
WORK CITED
Berardinelli, James. “Being John Malkovich”. James Berardinelli’s Reviews. http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/b/being_john.html
Bube, Richard. “Notes on “Science and the Whole Person “-
A Personal Integration of Scientific and Biblical Perspectives”. The America Scientific Affliation. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1982/JASA3-82Bube.html
The Puppeteers’ Illusions
No directors in the world can control actors better than puppeteers do. Puppeteers have full power of manipulation. They can decide how the theme of the puppet show should be presented, they can work things out in the show as the way they like it. Thus, they can dictate every single moment of the actors and create happy endings without a slight problem. However, every show has an end. The puppeteer needs to get down from stage and be instantly drawn back to reality no matter how cruel it is. In “Being John Malkovich”, the characters become puppeteers in their real life. They try to obtain happiness by different levels of manipulation but such happiness is short and illusory.
Craig seems happy that he has attained a success in his puppeteer career by manipulating Malkovich but he never knows that his success is illusory. After eight months of being John Malkovich, Craig makes himself a famous and respected puppeteer. He easily obtains the popularity and recognition he has always dreamt of, but those are all in the name of John Malkovich instead of Craig Schwartz. Therefore, it is very obvious that those achievements do not really belong to him and will forsake him as soon as he leaves the portal connected to Malkovich’s mind. In the scene where Malkovich is getting ready to go out for a show, there is a shot that Malkovich is changing his clothes and telling Maxine that he is leaving. In that shot, although Malkovich’s red underpants catch the eye of the audience, there is a blurry sight of the nearer Craig puppet inside a glass cylinder occupying half of the frame. The puppet is at the left side of the screen while Malkovich is at the right side. This shot is like demonstrating a reflection of the real John Malkovich as the glass cylinder looks like the surface of a mirror. Underneath his skin he is still the daunted, failed puppeteer Craig with dirty clothes and messy hair. In addition, after Malkovich’s puppet show performance, the whole audience stand up and clap their hands. With the sounds of the applause, the camera then focuses on the Craig puppet in the dark, with a lowered head. Then the camera moves up to the puppeteer Malkovich when he bows. This camera pan illustrates the big contrast and represents that the admiration and recognition from the audience are not for Craig who really has the talent, but for Malkovich. The sounds of applause easily reminds us of the first scene in the film when non-diegetic applause represent Craig’s desire and desperation to be a successful puppeteer. Does Craig get what he wants from the start? The answer is a definite no since even the applause in this scene is not for him. The facts that Malkovich only watches the documentary about him on the TV screen and the birthday cake he receives is written “Happy 44th Birthday, Malkovich” give further evidence to Craig’s unreal happiness in his career.
Maxine’s manipulation aims at wealth, which she thought was her real happiness but it turns out quite the opposite. In the first scene, after the dance of the Craig puppet, the camera zooms out to show a lonely Craig controlling the puppet. We can imagine if this zoom out continues, there will probably be someone controlling Craig. In the later part of the film, the audience will notice that the person manipulating Craig at a higher level is Maxine. At last Craig in Malkovich becomes successful and well-known, but Maxine is not satisfied. At the scene where Malkovich is watching a documentary about himself, the setting is in a large beautiful house. If wealth was what makes Maxine happy, she would be happy. However, she looks apparently upset and uninterested by what her husband says when she is making the baby bed. Afterwards, it is observed that she touches the Lotte puppet and apologizes to it. This action reveals that the guilt of leaving her lover Lotte has been haunting her. Maxine is far away from genuine happiness since she has realised that only being with her lover Lotte can bring her joy.
Through controlling Malkovich, Craig and Lotte compete extremely hard for another fragile and illusory form of happiness- the love of Maxine. However, both of them eventually discover that they are not able to get Maxine’s love by simply being another person. For Craig, his manipulation is of no help to his plan of gaining happiness in his love life. The competition with Lotte drives him insane and crushes his personality. When he finds out that Lotte and Maxine are in love with each other and Lotte enters Malkovich’s mind to have sex with Maxine, his original good-natured ego falls apart. There is a close-up of Craig’s face when he is running home from his office. His face is rather distorted with tilted glasses and messy hair and a strange look which is hard to distinguish whether he is laughing or crying. It is a metaphor of the world in his mind – abnormal, chaotic, and upside-down. Craig thinks he can get Maxine’s affection by being Malkovich but he is wrong. Although he does everything Maxine asks him to do, including staying in Malkovich’s mind forever, he fails to make Maxine love him. She does not like him even after they are married. Maxine treats him like a puppet instead of a lover. She frequently asks him to aid in her money-making conspiracy, she only ties the knot with him because of her desire for wealth. When Malkovich goes back home and finds Maxine missing, there is a shot when the Craig puppet, which originally stands inside a glass cylinder, is lying on the floor. It is clear that Maxine has exerted some sort of violence on the puppet before. This violence is the proof of Maxine’s hatred towards Craig.
As for Lotte, though she does win Maxine’s affection, she is convinced that she is attractive only when she is in Malkovich’s mind. In fact, what she gets from being Malkovich is merely vicarious sexual stimulations with Maxine but not real happiness that can last long. Every time she enters Malkovich’s mind, she only has fifteen minutes of pleasure before falling out from the portal. There is a dark frame surrounding the view of Maxine in front of Malkovich indicating that Lotte is having the experience through Malkovich’s eyes. When they are having sex, three voices are heard – Maxine’s, Lotte’s and Malkovich’s. And Malkovich’s hands are seen touching Maxine here and there. Staying in Malkovich’s mind actually creates a barrier between Maxine and Lotte that they have to be separated by a body. In this way, their experience together is disturbed and shared by a third person. Another example is the scene in which Lotte is chasing Maxine in Malkovich’s portal and wants to kill her. Inside Malkovich’s portal are his sub-consciousnesses, the scene changes one after another. There are too many things going on. Such a world makes Lotte unable to clam down and listen to Maxine. Thus, Maxine has no choice but to run for her live. She cannot explain or talk to Lotte about her feelings until they are both expelled. After they are back to reality, Maxine gets the chance to tell Lotte her feelings. The true happiness they share afterwards is gained by being themselves, not by being Malkovich.
Some characters, such as Doctor Lester, seek happiness by attempts to achieve immortality. But they have no idea that their so-called immortality is unreal. In order to live forever, they enter the minds of other people and treat their body as vessels. When middle-aged John Malkovich is standing in front of a mirror, he thinks he has regained his self-consciousness. But in a few seconds, the elderly who enter his portal take control of him. “One of the important values of life is personal existence” (Bube). Thus during the process of obtaining immortality, these characters are killing other people by taking away their self-consciousnesses, which is ironic. Also, Lester urges Lotte not to kill Maxine as her baby will be their next vessel. These characters are already very worried about their next vessel before they enter the current one. Immortality is a curse rather than a blessing here because these people can never lead a carefree life. When the old people get into the portal one by one, they are crawling from bright light into total darkness. This change indicates that these characters are giving up their individual identities. Since so many of them are staying in one body together, it is highly probable that they will merge as a whole and gradually lose their own identities, which almost equals to death. These characters’ hopes are too high and their happiness will fade as soon as they lose their individuality.
In “Being John Malkovich”, the main characters become puppeteers and try to create their ideal world by different levels of manipulation. “The characters are not aware that they’re in some kind of distorted reality, gazing through the looking glass darkly”(Berardinelli). They are so absorbed in the perfect world that they forget the curtains for their puppet shows have to fall. The happiness is illusory and like every puppet show, it has to end. The characters try to escape from their own identities because they underestimate their own powers and abilities. Their attempts to control others in order to fulfil their own dreams end in vain. On one side, the controllers are hit by disappointment once they discover that their happiness does not last. At the same time, the people being controlled lose their self-consciousness and their souls. This is undoubtedly a lose-lose situation that none of them have anticipated. If the characters in the film knew that the happiness gained by doing so is short and unreal and could try to fathom themselves better, they would achieve their goals and be happy for much longer. The grass is always greener on the other side. “Being John Malkovich” reminds us that owning the grass on the other side may not really bring us real joy.
WORK CITED
Berardinelli, James. “Being John Malkovich”. James Berardinelli’s Reviews. http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/b/being_john.html
Bube, Richard. “Notes on “Science and the Whole Person “-
A Personal Integration of Scientific and Biblical Perspectives”. The America Scientific Affliation. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1982/JASA3-82Bube.html