Perhaps two of the most gifted and imaginative writer/directors of our time have teamed up to bring us perhaps the most imaginative creation ever put on the silver screen.
The story, revolving around the hilarious entracacies created by writer Charlie Kaufman (who later wrote the madcap and touching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and director Spike Jonze's claustrophic and tense imagination, is a thing of pretzel-logic beauty. Both a hilarious confection and a stirring mediation on identity and society's craving to be who you aren't and may never be. Craig (John Cusack), a street puppeteer, takes a job as a filing clerk, thanks to his nimble fingers, in the 7 1/2 floor of a Manhattan office building where we are thrown into a surreal and twisted world, at once throwing us off and luring us into a false since of "we've seen this shin-dig before" security. Beware however, you don't know the half of it.
From his office in the midget-sized floor Craig discovers a portal that leads directly into the titular character's concious where you can observe his daily activities for 15 minutes, then you are dumped on to the Jersey Turnpike. Soon Craig and his vixen of a co-worker Maxine (the smoldering Catherine Keener) cook up a plan to sell these off-the-map streams of conciousness for 200$ a pop. Craig's wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz looking homely) gets in on the plan as well and soon she and Maxine are in love and having sex through John Malkovich.
I won't spoil all of the suprises here (though trust me when I say selling tickets to Malkovich's head is only the very beginning) but know that Malkovich is rarely in control, though he manages to steal a scene or two, the actors are cast so against type they manage to astound at every turn, the script is a thing of mind-liquifying genius, a couple of celebrity cameos ratch up the satirical factor, and what starts out as a slightly-off comedy turns into one of the darkest, wierdest, piercing, finely made, and funniest comedies ever.
No comments:
Post a Comment