Being John Malkovich turns the ideas of screen theory into a narrative in order to draw criticism on spectatorship, and break down concepts such as the male gaze and the cinematic apparatus.
In the beginning of the film, Craig is living in the Imaginary, spending hours with his art. Lotte suggests to him that he should go out and find a real job, which he does at Lester Corp. But the Imaginary that Craig lives in is stable compared to the “real” world, or the Symbolic, where everything is seemingly off or strange. His apartment is filled with animals; the office where he works is on the 7 ½ floor, situated between the 7th and 8th floors with low ceilings; the people that he is surrounded by are all a little off, but perceive themselves as normal. When he enters into the portal, he once again enters into the Imaginary, finding that he prefers the stability and order of the Imaginary to the Symbolic. This is symbolic of films and the pleasure of going to see films. The real world that we live in is chaotic and strange, causing people to feel out of place. When we step into the cinema (through the “portal”) we enter into the Imaginary created by films. There is a pleasurable aspect in going to the movies, in the escapism of believing that the Imaginary is more “real” than the real world.
Malkovich is a stand-in for the cinematic apparatus, and also for the object of fetishization. Casting an actor to play himself was a choice made by the filmmakers that plays into the self-aware nature of the film. It would have been simple to allow the portal to go into any average person, but since the film is an attempt to form a narrative around screen theory, it was necessary to cast someone like John Malkovich. The portal itself is symbolic of...
... middle of paper ...
...e experience: $200 for fifteen minutes inside of John Malkovich’s mind. The first customer tries to explain why he would want to be someone else, but Maxine cuts him off, uninterested in what he has to say. As the word of J.M. Inc. spreads, the line slowly begins to get larger and larger. People will pay good money to “be all that someone else can be.” And this is ultimately how the movie industry works in relation to the spectator. In the end, movies are a business that lures the spectator in with promises of voyeurism and escape from the Symbolic into the Imaginary, for a price. People will line up for the premier of a new movie just like people will line up to experience Malkovich. In the end the whole experience and anything profound that we might take away from it, as Craig says to Lotte, “[is] just the thrill of seeing through someone else’s eyes. It’ll pass.”
Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
November 1998, written for FILM 220: Aspects of Criticism. This is a 24-week course for second-year students, examining methods of critical analysis, interpretation and evaluation. The final assignment was simply to write a 1000-word critical essay on a film seen in class during the final six-weeks of the course. Students were expected to draw on concepts they had studied over the length of the course.
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
In this paper I will argue that understanding the context of a film is vital for a more in-depth understanding of it and I will accomplish this through a deep analysis of the following films: Flowers of War, Edge of Heaven, Battleship Potemkin, and the Big Heat.
Regardless that the film appears to be designed for a specific age-related target audience, there are several characters throughout the entire film that viewers can relate to. Therefore that in return keeps the viewer exceedingly intrigued, interested, and ultimately, entertained. Consequently, as a viewer the most prolific symbolism in the entire film being the metaphoric infinite abyss. As a viewer, the infinite abyss represents life in general, the meaning of life. Life can be a deep dark bottomless pit. One can either succumb to it, as it swallows you up and takes you down, or one can prefer to stand at the top and scream down at it in defiance, and create your own paths in life, and fill that abyss with meaning, purpose, friendships, family, happiness and love. Therefore, as soon as you alter the manner you view the world, you transform everything that happens to you within it. Life is just a state of
It not only opens the eyes of the audience, but it also allows one to quickly learn from Chris McCandless’ mistakes and unintentionally harbor a great deal of respect for the naïve adolescent. Though one may not take such extreme measures to live in the Alaskan wilderness with no supplies, it serves as an emotional punch for life and its casualties. The end the film expresses both the fear and elation of life as individuals struggle to find his/her own path instead of what society tries to dictate to us. Overall, McCandless teaches us that human life cannot be ruled by reason and this unfortunately disestablishes our ability to have any certainty in life. What is the point of knowing exactly how your life will play out? Sean Penn accurately portrays these thoughts and feelings in the astonishing film “Into the
Lehman, Peter and Luhr, William. Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
Perhaps an even stronger testament to the deepness of cinema is Darren Aronofsky’s stark, somber Requiem for a Dream. Centering on the drug-induced debasement of four individuals searching for the abstract concept known as happiness, Requiem for a Dream brims with verisimilitude and intensity. The picture’s harrowing depiction of the characters’ precipitous fall into the abyss has, in turn, fascinated and appalled, yet its frank, uncompromising approach leaves an indelible imprint in the minds of young and old alike.
Clara’s experience with the motion picture industry gives us a picture of what it was like in the 1920’s. It was new and intriguing, enticing and corrupt. The motion picture industry underpaid Bow, which is almost inconceivable today. The environment of Hollywood now pays actors and actresses corpulent amounts of money...but that may be the only change. The “star-maker” environment is still as enticing and corrupt as yesterday’s.
When the lights come up the audience is immediately thrown into an old and dingy movie theatre complete with popcorn strewn across the floor. It is within this set that deep social commentary is made throughout the
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
...people escape from reality and live in a dream. Even the names of the cinemas had a feel of romance. But disaster struck in the 50’s and 60’s, these were the decades that the majority of households would have televisions, therefore families could experience film in their own living room. This lead to the cinema losing the description of being a “picture palace”(Richard, 2010,p.18). From this a lot of cinemas were either going through closure or demolition; “cinema after cinema has been levelled to make ways for yet another supermarket or department store” (Richard, 2010,p.18). However cinemas are still around nowadays because there is new technology, instead of just watching a film on a big screen, there are 3D films, this new found pleasure, keeps costumers coming to the cinemas. Even though we have this new technology, the romance and dream worlds seemed be lost.
In Wim Wenders’ 1984 film, Paris, Texas, we find its theme of loneliness harboured in Travis Henderson, but very much so in the film’s imagery, eloquently captured by Dutch cinematographer, Robby Müller, “When I choose to work on a film, the most important thing to me is that it is about human feelings. I try to work with directors who want their films to touch the audience.” And his imagery does just that in Paris, Texas.
...s you to get lost in a completely different world; it takes you to the future, a place where things are supposed to be better and brighter but instead it is darker and gloomier than ever before. It opens your eyes to something so much bigger and you don’t even realise until you have left the cinema.