This movie takes the most absurd premise : What would happen if there was a tunnel that lead to John Malkovitch's brain. The film's quality resides in its confidence. The confidence to stick to whatever weird premise it itself has set up and to run it. And when you think the film could not get any more absurd, well the movie does it again and doubles down on the weirdness. It does it twice.
John Cusack is Craig: a pathetic talented puppeteer that is down his luck. Oh and he is a pervert. Everybody in this film is a sexual deviant (in an ironic twist the only character who did not surprise me was Charlie Sheen playing restrained Charlie Sheen). His wife Lotte is an employee at a pet-store. They are both unhappy and locked in their miserable lives. Cusack and Diaz steal the show in the first act, and like the weirdness, I thought the acting could not be topped.
Craig finds a new job and meets the stunning Maxine, who is as evil and cunning as she is beautiful. Craig is obsessed by Maxine, who rejects him. The film itself suggest that Maxine might be a witch but that might be the case, I found her to be the most unpleasant woman ever. Which is on purpose because that is exactly the kind of nihilism that the film engages with.
At his new job, which already abounds of weirdness and absurdity, Craig finds one day, behind a filing cabinet, a tunnel that lead to "inside" John Malkovitch, the actor.
Craig is enticed by Maxine to profit from the situation and they start selling tickets to the mind of John Malkovitch. However, Craig lets his wife try the tunnel one night. Lotte is in Malkovitch's head, at the same time that Maxine goes out on a date with him.
Lotte falls for Maxine, and declares she wants a sex-change. Maxine falls for Lotte and manipulates Malkovitch in order to have sex with her. Craig is left out and excluded so he locks-up is wife and takes control of Malkovitch with the help of his puppeteering skills.
At that point, I thought the movie was the weirdest, but it became weirder. Craig becomes Malkovitch full time and Craig-Malkovitch starts to resemble Craig, he stops being an actor, he becomes a world-renown puppeteer, and he grow his hair longer and marries Maxine. This is where John Malkovitch becomes the star(and the focus of the story) and gives an amazing performance. The movie stops and plays out as a gossip-documentary on the life of John Malkovitch.
Then the film becomes even weirder. There is a conspiracy plot, which involves the now excluded Lotte. Lotte chases Maxine to murder her through the painful memories of the legit John Malkovitch. They end up in a lesbian couple.
The film is the most absurd. The strangeness is reinforced by the fact that there are no jokes. The movie plays the subject matter so straight-faced. It is rather dark and sad. But it is unique.
On the technical level everything is perfect: the camera-work, the lighting, the music, the sets. It is a very visual movie. There is absolute mastery of all these elements. However, they are all at the service of the weirdest story ever.
I do not really know what to make of it, and I guess that was the point. The nihilism of the film is it's shell, but also it's substance.
There are no proper themes at play. You could argue that there is a criticism of celebrity-worship and a reflexion on 90s existential angst (same as in American Beauty, the Matrix, Office Space, Fight Club). But it is too subtle and submerged by the absurdity.
1999 is regarded as the last good year in American Cinema. And while this movie might not be what people had in mind; it certainly is a pinnacle of absurdity that has not been topped since.
