This blog post examines how the film ‘Being John Malkovich’ reveals various human desires. We analyze the structure of desire within the work, including becoming someone else, manipulation, and voyeurism.
The Flow of the Overall Narrative
Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), a puppeteer and director of puppet theater, is a poor man shunned by the puppet world due to his obscure and controversial artistic vision. Even his wife, Letty (Cameron Diaz), who works at a veterinary hospital, urges him to find a normal job. Unable to endure his wife’s persistent urging and his own situation any longer, Craig sees a job ad seeking a “quick-handed person” and gets hired at the Lester Corporation. This company is uniquely located between the 7th and 8th floors of a building, on the so-called 7.5th floor. While organizing paperwork, he accidentally discovers a small door hidden behind a wall and crawls inside. This door was directly connected to the brain of actor John Malkovich, allowing him to share Malkovich’s five senses and consciousness for 15 minutes. After that time, he would fall out at the entrance to the New Jersey Turnpike.
Craig reveals this to Maxine (Catherine Keener), a coworker who treats him coldly yet secretly admires him. Maxine proposes turning it into a business charging admission fees. Meanwhile, Craig’s wife, Letty, experiences the portal and realizes her destiny is to live as a man. Maxine, upon meeting Malkovich, feels Letty’s gaze lingering within him and is swept up in a strange emotion. Maxine and Malkovich’s bodies, along with Lati’s spirit residing within them, subsequently fall in love. Witnessing this, Craig, consumed by jealousy, imprisons Lati in a chimpanzee cage and enters Malkovich himself to make love to Maxine.
Malkovich begins to feel someone is controlling him. Harboring this suspicion, he follows Maxine and discovers the existence of a portal leading into his own brain, along with a thriving business utilizing it. The world he enters through this portal is literally a ‘society entirely made up of Malkovich’. Malcolm decides to destroy the portal, but Craig, who has already seized control of his mind, succeeds in fully dominating Malcolm.
Maxine eventually realizes the being inside Malcolm’s body is no longer Lati but Craig, yet she doesn’t care much, leaving Lati utterly abandoned. Craig inside Malkovich leverages Malkovich’s fame and influence to marry Maxine. After retiring from acting, he begins directing puppet shows, a lifelong dream. Unlike his self-produced works, his puppet shows, released under the name of a world-renowned actor, create an enormous sensation.
However, as time passes, the couple’s life descends into boredom. Around this time, Letty recalls that when she was invited to the home of the former president of Lester Enterprises, there was a room filled with John Malkovich’s chronicles and photographs. She seeks out Dr. Lester (Orson Bean) to uncover the truth and discovers a shocking fact there. That small door was not merely a passage to John Malkovich, but a conduit Dr. Lester—or more precisely, the figures from past eras residing within it—had created to ensure his eternal survival by continuously inhabiting younger bodies.
Dr. Lester and his associates take Maxine hostage and threaten Craig, trapped inside Malkovich, that they will kill her unless he leaves his body. Ultimately, Craig relinquishes Malcovich’s body. Since complete transfer was only possible before a host’s 44th birthday, Malcovich’s body is now seized by the elderly. Later, Maxine confesses the truth: the child in her womb was conceived while Latti was inside Malcovich. Latti and Maxine reunite.
Seven years later, John Malkovich, now controlled by the elderly, gazes at a photo of the child destined to be the next host. That child is none other than Maxine’s daughter, Emily. Emily is happily playing with other mothers at the pool when the film reveals a shocking twist: Craig, now inhabiting Emily’s body, is looking at Maxine with heartbreaking longing.
The Structure of Human Desire
“Being John Malkovich” complexly reveals humanity’s most primal and instinctual desires. Therefore, this blog post aims to explore the work from a dimension closer to human nature rather than a sociological perspective focused on subjectivity and othering. The film presents seven fundamental human desires: The desire for immortality, the desire for sex, homosexual desire, the desire to live as another person, voyeuristic desire, the desire to control others, and the desire for self-reflection.
The desire for immortality is evident in Dr. Lester, Malkovich, and the elderly men who will later manage Emily’s body. Furthermore, the desire for sex can be seen in the sexual attraction Dr. Lester and Craig each feel toward their respective secretaries, Maxine and Craig. The act of entering into a Malkovich encompasses a multi-layered structure of desire: the desire to experience voyeuristic pleasure by feeling that person’s gaze, the desire to vicariously experience that person’s life, and the desire to actively manipulate their actions.
The relationship between Maxine and Lati reveals homosexual desire, and the scene within Malcovich’s subconscious where Maxine and Lati pursue each other visually resembles a representation of the unconscious structure defined by Freud and Lacan. Furthermore, the scene where the chimpanzee Eliza unties the rope binding Lattie’s hands visually reenacts his trauma, revealing the structure of the unconscious once again.
The most fundamental desire in “Being John Malkovich” is undoubtedly ‘becoming someone else’. Many people pay the considerable sum of $200 to visit JM Inc. (JM also stands for John Malkovich) for a mere 15 minutes to become John Malkovich. This experience is described as akin to a fetus emerging from the protected space of the womb into a new world. The narrow tunnel serves as a gateway from this world to that world, and the moment viewers pass through it, they immediately gain Malkovich’s perspective. Malkovich’s voice resonates through their ears (the DVD’s 5.1 channel version amplifies this effect with his first-person narration emanating from the rear speakers, creating an even more spine-chilling sensation), and considering elements like sex scenes, it seems as if even tactile sensations are shared.
Craig and Lattie manipulate Malkovich into performing specific actions unconsciously by repeatedly pushing assertions and commands into his brain. Craig, in particular, due to his profession as a puppeteer, brings Malkovich’s body under his control with astonishing speed. The setup where Malcovich plays an actor within the film, mirroring his real-life role, serves as a stark contrast between an actor embodying a character from within and a puppeteer manipulating a puppet from without.
Those who enter John Malkovich’s brain gain not only the thrill of manipulating others by controlling part or all of him, but also satisfy voyeuristic desires by sharing his field of vision. When Craig first entered Malkovich’s brain, what he saw was a cookie plate and someone’s hand. In the scene where he grabs the key, he saw Malkovich’s face in the mirror and assessed his appearance, then learned his name and social status through the taxi driver’s words. This entire process is a voyeuristic experience where others steal a glimpse into Malkovich’s life while he remains unconscious, simultaneously fulfilling the taboo desire to invade Malkovich’s private space.
Furthermore, Craig and Latti manipulate Malkovich while he is having sex with Maxine, observing the scene on one hand and intervening in the act itself on the other, fulfilling a desire to invade the most intimate realms of another person. Moreover, the desire to live someone else’s life is very natural to humans, and the premise of experiencing another person’s life for 15 minutes without risk maximizes its appeal. Malkovich is a titan of 20th-century American cinema and lives a life of luxury. This existence is inevitably all the more captivating to Craig and Latti, who are marginalized by mainstream society and lack financial security.
While other clients seeking JM aren’t heavily featured in the narrative, the scene where the first customer confesses, “I’ve always been fat and ignored,” reveals they are all marginalized individuals dissatisfied with their lives. For them, briefly experiencing the life of a socially successful person serves as a fantastical device to forget reality and, simultaneously, a temporary escape route.
The Desire for Immortality
The desire for immortality is most directly revealed in Dr. Lester. While he outwardly uses the name Dr. Lester, he is actually known as the designer of the 7.5th floor. The scene early in the film where he introduces himself as “105 years old” implies that while his soul may be 105, the body he possesses is much younger. He has acquired the body of his previous host, Dr. Lester, and now manages the next vessel he will inhabit: John Malkovich. His study contains detailed records on the next generation of bodies, a system designed to facilitate his swift adaptation after transferring into a new form.
This desire isn’t Lester’s alone. The acquaintances introduced to Latti are also people who will enter Malkovich’s body together. The line “Nobody wants to die” starkly reveals their reason for being, showing that the common notion “You die when you get old” is a fiction. The elderly men who take control of Malcovich’s body subsequently manage his biological descendant, Emily, immersing themselves in the process of preparing new physical forms. Throughout Malcovich’s life, those around him are gradually drawn into this network of desire, and hints are given that after Emily, more souls will crowd into more bodies.
Sexual Desire
Desire for sex is distinctly divided in Craig and Lester’s desire structures. For Craig, sex is not merely physical desire but an extension of communication. He is dissatisfied with the lack of emotional connection in his relationship with Lati and even refuses to have a second child, using financial reasons as an excuse. But with Maxine, it’s different. Believing he ‘connects’ with her, Craig desires love and communication, viewing sex as a byproduct of that. However, as his paranoid obsession grows, he competes with Laty, eventually locking her in a chimpanzee cage and deceiving Maxine into having sex with him in Malcovich’s body. Here, sex becomes a tool to seize the love he craves.
Lester, on the other hand, views sex purely as a pleasurable tool. He acts as if he loves his secretary Floris, but his interest is entirely focused on her body. His character, which insists on obtaining whatever he desires if necessary, is revealed in the scene where he takes control of Malcovich’s body and then places Floris by his side. He refuses to acknowledge even the language barrier with Floris, and conversation functions solely as a means to satisfy desire, not as communication.
Homosexual Desire
Homosexual desire is revealed in the relationship between Latti and Craig, with Maxine in between. While some critics label this work a ‘gay film,’ homosexual desire is merely one element among many throughout the piece. Critiques exist that the homosexual aspect is handled with excessive indifference. In the film, Maxine falls in love with Latif inside Malcom’s body, and Latif also loves Maxine. Craig also loves Maxine, but she is cold towards him.
An interesting point is that Maxine at one moment displays an attitude of “it doesn’t matter who’s inside.” However, after experiencing the chase within Malcovich’s subconscious, Maxine confesses that she decided to have the child because she was Lati’s child and reunites with Lati. At this point, a direct and explicit homosexual union is finally established.
The Desire for Self-Reflection
Another crucial desire in the film is the existential question: ‘Who am I?’ While tailing Maxine, Malcomich notices JM’s presence and chooses to enter his own mind. The world he sees is filled entirely with Malcomich. The woman across the table is a Malcovich, the waiter taking orders is a Malcovich, the writing on the menu is Malcovich, the woman at the piano is a Malcovich, and the jazz singer is a Malcovich. The language is also limited to “Malcovich?” “Malcovich.” “Malkovich, Malkovich.”
This scene ultimately visually maximizes the clichéd conclusion, “I am only myself.” While others pass through a narrow door to experience another’s perspective, Malkovich enters his own interior, becoming trapped in a logically inexplicable structure where inside becomes outside and outside becomes inside again. The film’s title, “Being John Malkovich,” represents Malkovich’s experience of becoming himself and observing his inner self. Yet what he actually encounters is not his own mental world or thought structure, but merely a nightmarish world ‘filled with Malkovich.’
This self-reflection is evident not only in Malkovich but also in the chimpanzee, Eliza. When Latti is trapped in a cage, Eliza sees her bound hands and recalls a childhood memory. The crucial point is not debating an animal’s cognitive abilities, but that Eliza is portrayed as a being capable of ‘making sense of’ her own trauma. As a child, Eliza had been unable to free her family from a trap, leading to their capture by hunters. This experience became a deep psychological wound in her subconscious. Yet, by freeing Latti’s restraints, Eliza heals her past self. This stands in stark contrast to Malcovich, who failed to heal his own wounds—such as the memory of being mocked as a bedwetter in childhood.
Malcolm failed to confront his subconscious and also failed to build a strong ego. As a result, he is portrayed as a character who loses his mental initiative to Craig, Lati, and even Dr. Lester. Human behavior does not stem solely from personality; it is greatly influenced by events accumulated throughout life—especially trauma. Every human action has a root cause, and humans desire to discover this and be reborn. It is widely known that psychoanalytic therapy is based on this structure. However, Malcovich experienced only despair, allowing others to invade his inner world without gaining any insight into it himself.
Conclusion
“Being John Malcovich” is often evaluated under the theme of ‘living as someone else’. Some, building on this theme, analyze the pathological structure of modern society where the other invades the subject and the subject excludes the other. However, such analysis—while not logically incorrect—remains somewhat narrow, confining the other to the other and the subject to the subject in fixed positions. The other invading the subject is also a subject to someone else; they can invade and be invaded simultaneously. For this reason, this essay examines the work through the lens of each character’s desire.
Craig represents the desire to manipulate others through puppet shows—both the puppet show early in the film and the later puppet show using Malcovich—to live another’s life through a narrow door, and to secretly spy on it. Latti possesses desires overlapping with Craig’s, along with homosexual desire, while Maxine becomes both an object of homosexual desire and sexual desire. Lester, Latti, Craig, and Malcovich are all connected to sexual desire, and Malcovich and Eliza (though non-human entities) also reveal a desire for self-reflection. Lester and the elderly embody a powerful yearning for immortality.
The desire discussed here is not confined to specific characters but represents a universal desire inherent in all humans. In other words, “Being John Malkovich” can be described as a film depicting all characters either realizing the desire within themselves or the process of attempting to realize it. While this conclusion applies to other works as well (for instance, even a simple action film can be defined as one dealing with the protagonist’s desire for violence), this film particularly focuses on one of humanity’s fundamental desires: ‘the desire to observe and manipulate others’. Combined with the powerful symbolic device of a puppet show, this desire persists relentlessly until the film’s final moments, establishing a highly original cinematic universe.
