I feel that John Cusack is still very good at choosing films. "The Phantom 1408", "Deadly ID" and "2012" are all movies that you can't get tired of watching, and this "Becoming John Malkovich" is even more Brain out of the sky. The film involves soul theory, bisexuality, transgender people, longevity, sex, animal protection, racial discrimination, religious abstinence, incest and many other fields. Although most of them are not too deep, the first four themes can be very useful if they are brought up alone. , And in this film, the taste is spicy and ironic when it is mixed together and stewed. If the character and psychological activities of the characters were richer and fuller, this brain-burning classic would be even more famous in history
The film tells that although the puppeteer played by John Cusack is highly skilled, he is unhappy. With his own business, he can't make money and can't find other jobs. His wife Lottie wants him to find a job, so his fingers are flexible. The puppeteer became a company filer. One day, he discovered that the company had a secret tunnel, and anyone who climbed into it could enter the mind of a famous actor, John Malkovich, for fifteen minutes. He shared the secret with Maxine, a female colleague he admired, and the two formed a company that charged everyone who wanted to be someone else for 15 minutes $200. Until one day Malkovich discovered the secret...
The most terrifying and disturbing scene in the movie is that the unfortunate John Malkovich, who was crossed by countless people, discovered the secret and climbed into the hole to find out. When he entered his own body, he found that the whole world had his face, and the words and words of the world had become one word - Markovich, his name. People keep repeating the word "Markovich" to communicate, everyone has the same face, but they can be male and female, young and old, happy and sad. Everyone is Markovic, uniqueness and uniqueness are shattered here.
The small company also indicates that this is originally a puppet world, and everyone who comes in is just a puppet being manipulated. Even if our protagonist is a puppeteer, he has to lose himself after coming to the strange world.
The setting of the plank means that only those who desire to change back to themselves can leave Malkovich's body. It's a pity that everyone has the heart to become someone else, but has no ability to change their own destiny.
According to the following plot, we can infer that the tourist who entered before the real Markovic entered into Markovic's brain, and Markovic entered his own subconscious, that is to say, the tourist What he entered was Markovic's body in his subconscious mind, and what he saw was also Markovic's subconscious. What's uncomfortable about this egocentric image of just me in the world is that it shows both the arrogance of Markovic and the loneliness of his inner world. What the film's lesbian lovers see when they burrow into his body because of love and hate are Malkovich's deeply hidden childhood memories: the neglect of his parents, the unbridled sex in front of him, the Parents punished without reason, self-denial, ridiculed for being gay, no friends, disliked by female partners... Such a tragic childhood history made him subconsciously construct a perfect and desperate castle: there is the whole world in it , and the whole world is only him.
This is the poor big boy we were sneaked into. He became a human skin shelf for others to realize their dreams, a human VR game console for others to seek excitement, a tool for the ambitious to achieve longevity, and many others became John Malkovich, but no one really cared about his past and life. Despite his Hollywood fame, neither his name nor his work are remembered. After he became famous, he was no different from his childhood, and his sense of existence was so low that everyone wanted to take a share of the life that tortured him. Don't dare to refute the woman on him for calling him the wrong name during sex, and can only plead sadly when he is invaded. His fragility and helplessness were exposed, but under the cruel law of the jungle, he could only become a victim.
The existence of this orangutan is actually a symbol of Markovic. Like Markovic, he has an unfortunate childhood trauma. The orangutan rescued him by untying the heroine's rope through a scene similar to childhood. At the same time It also saved a self that had been plagued by trauma; and Malkovich had no such opportunity, his pain followed, and he let himself be destroyed by it.
The owner of this company, Mr. Lester, is a man who has mastered the use of burrows for immortality. His company is between the seventh and eighth floors, or 7½, perhaps a nod to Platform 9¾ of the Harry Potter series leading to the wizarding world. According to the Leicester company profile, the reason why the ceiling of this floor is so low that normal people can only walk hunched over is because the founder of the company is a builder, because he obeyed and fell in love with the advice of a dwarf, in order to prove fraternity and equality The ceiling on this floor was deliberately low to make it more comfortable for gnomes to work. In fact, aside from this bizarre company video profile, we never see a second dwarf appear. The rent on this floor is extremely low because the working environment is poor for normal people, which makes it very popular with greedy bosses. In a world that indulges in indifference, the substance of this company is downright hypocritical.
Lester owns a book that teaches him how to use burrows to invade other people's bodies to gain immortality. He had to invade before midnight when the person to whom the cave was leading turned 44 years old, or else there would be another baby of Malkovich blood on the other side of the cave. And invading babies is extremely dangerous, because from then on, they can't come out again, and they can only see the world from another person's perspective, which is not in line with the original wishes of the immortal. And there is a potential danger, it is easy to become a human skin VR machine that is invaded by others.
Sex is a very subtle and important existence in the film. The three protagonists in the film are desperate to play new tricks in the crossing because of their desire for sex, or women invade men and women have sex, or men invade men and women have sex. , Bisexual beauty Maxine is obviously pregnant with the child of Malkovich, the target of the invasion, but the father of the child is Lottie who is a woman. In the end, he was so embarrassed that he put Mi's puppeteer into their child's body through a hole in the ground. He coveted his mother every day, and resented Lottie, who used to be his wife but now became his other mother. It's not just transgender anxiety, it's incest mania lost in sex.
There are two classic puppet shows in the film. One is the puppet master controlling the puppet at the beginning, and the puppet's despair and awakening after discovering the truth. Later, the puppet master manipulated the real person and then performed the cruelty with the real person; the other is the separation of the nun and the priest. In two rooms, making love to each other in fantasy. This sex alludes to the tragedy of all sex in the film, the repressed desire. Everyone can't have sex with the person they love the most. Love is just a hopeless fantasy. Obstacles are the driving force of our passion and progress, not possession.
The special effects of the two women sneaking into Markovic's subconscious are comparable to the weightless elevator in "Inception" with their identities in 1999. Women run from one room to another, connecting different directions, times and spaces from room to room. The whole space is Malkovich's dark childhood, the man who helped Lottie realize his true sexuality and gender, the man who allowed Maxine to find his true love, was completely ignored. Just like his life, like his self.
This work that erects a soft sci-fi banner but discusses the philosophical self, although the brain hole is crazy and novel, is actually a sad tone. People become another person under the premise of self-value denial and voyeuristic desire. The intruder becomes the original driving force. The pursuit of fame and material things is their way of exploring themselves. This picture is rich and famous but has no real sense of existence. The expelling of the husk has become the ferryboat for many self-life losers. But is it Malkovich or the intruder who survived? Who is the real identity in schizophrenia and transgender people? A huge philosophical myth runs through the film, and the only thing that can be known is that no one can escape being a puppet. Life is never short of weird and absurd farces, but it lacks people who really know what they want and who they are.
View more about Being John Malkovich reviews
