Being John Malkovich
and
The Messenger:
The Story of Joan of Arc.

by Pat Holmes
12/99

kay, come on, admit it—you've always wanted to be John Malkovich. What you wouldn't do for just 15 minutes as that celebrated actor, star of all those great films you can't really remember the titles of right now, but there was that one where he played the jewel thief that was really good even if he says he never played a jewel thief.

Oh Malkovich Schmalkovich. What you really want to be is famous, a celebrity, even if it's only for the Warhol-mandated quarter-hour. And, knowing that, why wouldn't someone unfamous like us, like the unfamously named puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), whose last street corner show was busted for public lewdness, make the most of a great opportunity not just to make a few bucks but to get close to Maxine (Catherine Keener), the alluring ice queen at LesterCorp, the small—or at least short—company located on floor 7 1/2 in New York's Mertin-Flemmer Building. That's where he works as a file clerk and where he found, hidden behind a cabinet, the doorway to a portal that leads inside the head of John Malkovich, where you can spend 15 exhilarating minutes before being dropped by the side of the New Jersey Turnpike (where, Paul Simon says, we've all come to look for America). You can do it too, if you've got the $200 bucks Craig and Maxine are charging for the head trip, and if, as fame demands, you are willing to make sacrifices, or at least, like Craig, willing to leave your wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) locked up in a cage with her pet monkey, especially if she has also become smitten with Maxine.

Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze, is one of the rare occasions where the feature debut of a commercial and music video director might be called (cautiously) auspicious. Working from an outrageous and consistently inventive script by first-time screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, Jonze (currently appearing as an actor in Three Kings) is as concerned with what is happening as he is with how it looks. While most of his fellow video grads, unwilling or unable to abandon the visual bombast that has been their stock in trade, the emphasis on how the package is wrapped over what it contains, Jonze places his visual skills in service to the script's ingenuity. Lance Acord's cinematography and K.K. Barrett's production design illuminate the lunacy without overwhelming or forcing it, creating the sense of an alternate universe that is believable on its own terms.

In fact, Jonze's style is relatively straightforward, approaching the absurdity with a feeling of near reality that proves more subtle and gripping than a more fantastic treatment would have been. In the process he comes wonderfully close to the madcap spirit of classic screwball farce.

These days, comedy rarely rises above groin level and dies in the rarefied atmosphere of the head, but Jonze and Kaufman blend cheerful satire of our celebrity obsession, cracked romantic comedy ("You've been him, haven't you?," the dejected husband asks his wife, after she has been, ahem, getting head from, or with, Malkovich; "and you've been him with her"), through-the-looking-glass metaphysical silliness (Malkovich eventually enters his own portal), and show-biz silliness. The cast is indispensable when it comes to maintaining our belief in it all, and there's memorable supporting work from longtime TV familiar Orson Bean (recently of the Dr. Quinn series; a game- and talk-show raconteur for us old fogeys) as the dotty head of LesterCorp whose secretary, Mary Kay Place, is so intimidating she has her boss convinced that her hearing problem is actually his speech defect. Charlie Sheen's appearance as himself is almost as nifty as Malkovich's own heady turn, and Brad Pitt turns up in what must be his most effective screen appearance thus far (it's wordless, and lasts about a second). Of course, without the inspired participation of head-man Malkovich it would all come to little. But the actor proves to be a great sport and offers one of his best performances as the host with the most. It's enough to give an actor a swelled head.

fter the head-spinning thrill of Being John Malkovich, you'll have to settle for watching John Malkovich make lots of interesting shapes with his lips as the soon-to-be king of France in director Luc Besson's splashy The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. Besson's Fifth Element star and recently divorced wife Milla Jovovich stars as the Maid of Orleans in what would like to be a visionary epic version of Joan's childhood trauma and visions, her military triumphs and her trial for heresy. Besson's style is dynamic as ever, but the battles that occupy most of the middle half of the film are often so stunningly forceful (reminiscent of Braveheart, which is to say reminiscent of Orson Welles' Chimes At Midnight) that they leave her later interrogation feeling strained and drawn-out, unaided by the presence of Dustin Hoffman as a figure who may be God, Satan or just Joan's conscience. Jovovich vibrates like a tuning fork but her intensity never really translates adequately into a characterization, while the final shot of the abrupt conclusion—lengthy inquisition, then bang, she's toast—features a cross surrounded by flames in what proves to be a merely puzzling (inspired triumph or bitter irony?) rather than cathartic or heroic finale.

—Pat Holmes

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