Being John Malkovich (1999)

Film Title: Being John Malkovich (1999)
Writing credits:
Charlie Kaufman (written by)


Story Analysis

Who is the main character?
Craig Schwartz

What is the character meant to learn?
How to love himself.

Does the character actually learn that or not?
No.

The character goes from ____ to ____.
A depressed and self-loathing puppeteer to a man condemned to live in the hell of his self loathing.

Was the film successful and demonstrating the character's journey?
Yes.

The set up is:
An unsuccessful puppeteer finds a portal to John Malkovich’s mind.

Major turning points are:
* Craig takes a job at Lester Corp.
* Craig goes out with Maxine.
* Craig finds the portal.
* Craig and Maxine become business partners.
* Craig profess love to Maxine but Maxine likes Lotte/John.
* Craig traps Lotte and becomes John for a date with Maxine.
* Craig learns how to control John.
* Craig/John becomes a world famous puppeteer and marries Maxine.
* Merton and Lotte kidnap Maxine to force Craig out of John.
* Craig leaves John only to be rebuffed by Maxine.
* Craig reenters portal but is routed to Maxine’s child instead.

Major themes are:
Self loath/escaping one’s self.
Success versus being at peace with one’s self.



Character Analysis

Flaw:
Self loath.

Want:
Be someone else (escape himself).

Need:
Love/accept himself.

Hell:
Trapped in himself (unable to escape to someone else).

Event that Changes Everything:
Craig gives up being John Malkovich to save Maxine.

Choice:
Let go of John Malkovich and love himself or let go of John Malkovich and continue seeking false affirmation in Maxine.

Selfless Act:
None.



Further Thoughts
Charlie Kauffman’s breakthrough script relies on giving completely to the main character what he wants. Craig hates himself and therefore wants to escape by being someone else. He finds that escape first in puppetry, and then later as John Malkovich-- both efforts in “thinking differently... feeling differently” because he hates the way he thinks and feels.

Because he hates himself, Craig can’t really love anyone-- neither himself nor his wife, Lotte. His relationship with Lotte is more codependent: she allows him to continue to be a sick little boy feeling sorry for himself instead of dealing with his issues. The fact that she maintains a menagerie of pets is not accidental: Craig is another one of her pets. Like Elijah, the pet chimp, Craig is an injured animal who hasn’t quite figured out how to deal with his issues. Craig’s self loath propels him to invest in a fruitless venture: Maxine. He doesn’t really love her either; it is a completely masochistic move on his part, an investment in an ideal vision of love. He never falls for Maxine but rather an imaginary version of Maxine.

Maxine is, of course, completely vain. She doesn’t and will never love Craig as Craig or Craig as John. And she never quite gets over her vanity; despite her affirmations of love to Lotte at the end, there’s not enough evidence to support the idea that she actually changes rather than continues to capitalized on her pleasures where she can find them.

The temptation is to think that Craig’s choice toward the end is that “leave John and save his love” or “stay in John and keep his notoriety”, but that would be incorrect.

The act of leaving John has nothing to do with addressing his real need: to start loving himself. Instead, he acts just as his character has acted all along: he finds false hope in Maxine, in the idealized version of love rather than the real thing. (Even as John, Craig hates himself and, as the cliché goes, one cannot love someone else until he loves himself.) Reaching out to save Maxine is another masochistic action: Craig knows Maxine doesn’t really love him. He suppresses it but it’s there-- evident in his reaction during the television biography about him as John. He leaves John anyway, hoping against hope, knowing the relationship with Maxine is ultimately doomed.

If Kauffman had decided to write a comedy, he would have had Craig realize the errors of his ways. He would recognize his self hate and perhaps its source, realizing that he needs to love himself first before anyone else.

Craig would leave John, not necessarily to save Maxine (although this could be an accidental feature of leaving John) but rather to save himself. He would move out from Lotte’s place. And just as he let John go, and he would let Maxine go as well.

To emphasized the journey, Kauffman could have had Craig prevent anyone else from accessing John Makovich by destroying the portal. Craig might even give up puppeteering... “I want to try being myself for a while... figure out what it’s like to feel like I feel, think like I think.” This would have been a very powerful ending, indeed.

But Kauffman wrote a tragedy. Not only does Craig not get what he needs, he doesn’t get what he wants either... and must live the hell of never being able to escape himself and his self loath.

The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Film Title: The Squid and the Whale
Writing credits: Noah Baumbach (written by)
Story by: N/A

Story Analysis

Who is the main character?
Walt.

What is the character meant to learn?
Walt was meant to learn that his father is fallible and human.

Does the character actually learn that or not?
Yes.

The character goes from ____ to ____.
An angry boy idolizing his father to a young man facing the (harsh) reality of his father’s shortcomings.

Was the film successful and demonstrating the character's journey?
Yes.

The set up is:
The separation of Brooklyn writers causes a young man to face his father’s limitations.

Major turning points are:
* Bernard and Joan separate
* Walt turns on Joan blaming the separation on her
* Walt learns (from Bernard) that Joan had an affair
* Walt decides he will not stay with Joan anymore
* Walt begins to see Sophie
* Walt and Bernard allow Lili moves in
* Walt plays at the school show and then breaks it off with Sophie
* Walt is caught having palmed off a Pink Floyd song as his own
* Walt remembers going to the museum with his mom
* Walt finds Bernard with Lili and runs off and dunks his head in the lake
* Walt reconciles with Joan and Bernard collapses in front of his eyes
* Walt breaks down at his father’s bedside
* Walt runs to the museum to see the squid and the whale at the museum


Major themes are:
* Learning to face fears/reality * Accepting the shortcomings of your parents



Character Analysis

Flaw:
Blind idolization.

Want:
Be just like his father. Blame his mother for everything wrong in the world.

Need:
Accept his father’s shortcomings. Recognize his mother’s love.

Hell:
To turn out to be NOT like his father.

Event that Changes Everything:
Counselor helps Walt remember museum trips with mom. (Finds Bernard with Lili.)

Choice:
Recognizes Joan’s role in raising him (museum memory) or ignore it all and continue idolizing Bernard.

Selfless Act:
Forgives mom.



Further Thoughts
The story is told with tenderness and intelligence. The subplot with Frank, Bernard and Joan enrich the main storyline of Walt’s journey from idolizing his father to accepting his father’s shortcomings. Walt invests so much in his fathers supposed greatness that it is difficult for him to see him as he really is: a once recognized writer, now a depressed and penny-pinching English teacher.

My first impression of the third act turning point was to consider it too weak. The event of Walt’s finding Bernard with Lili didn’t seem strong enough to send Walt over the edge about idolizing his father. In conjunction with his earlier realization when talking to the counselor (that his father was absent much of the time when he was younger and that his mother isn’t all evil), the turning point has more strength-- it “seals the deal,” so to speak, in weather Walt is going to accept that his father isn’t everything Walt’s boyish idolization wants him to be.

This event could have been made more powerful. For example, had Walt become intimate with Lili in some way, successfully acting on his boyish lust for her, this would have raised the shock of Walt when he discovers Bernard with her. It would have also made Bernard less likeable.

The resolution is tight and moves economically with well-thought imagery and metaphor. Walt finds Bernard and Lili and soon finds himself at the park dunking his head in the water-- a metaphorical cleansing by water, a baptism and rebirth. We then find Walt and Joan having something of a reconciliation, and Bernard appears soon thereafter without pause. The heart attack (or collapse) of Bernard then occurs quickly as well-- a perfect metaphor (again) of Bernard’s humanness and “fall” as a hero in Walt’s eyes.

At Bernard’s bedside, Walt breaks down then leaves, asking for breakfast not for his father but for “the man in that room”-- not an accidental reference. He feels compelled to go to the museum immediately and see the thing which he had feared as a child-- the battling squid and whale, something which he had always feared to see. This image was a reality which (ironically) his mother had protected him from when he was a child, something of a metaphor again, because the other reality she protected him from when he was younger was that his father was absent and emotionally unavailable-- the reasons why she had affairs and ultimately divorced him.

Capote (2005)

Film Title: Capote
Screenplay by: Dan Futterman
Story by: Gerald Clarke (book)

Story Analysis

Who is the main character?
Capote

What is the character meant to learn?
Capote was meant to learn compassion and selflessness.

Does the character actually learn that or not?
No.

The character goes from ____ to ____.
Manipulative, playful, lying literary figure to self-pitying alcoholic.

Was the film successful and demonstrating the character's journey?
Yes.

The set up is:
A great writer finds his next subject in a small town where a horrible crime has occurred.

Major turning points are:
* Capote decides the subject is too big for an article and needs to write a book.
* Capote decides to help Perry get better legal representation.
* Capote gets Perry to talk about the night of the murder.
* Capote turns down Perry's final plea for legal help with a short note/telegram.

Major themes are:
* The price of great art.
* The danger of being too closely connected to one's subject.
* What goes around comes around.



Character Analysis

Flaw:
Vanity.

Want:
Write the great American literary work of the century.

Need:
Develop compassion (think about someone else but himself.)

Hell:
Universal ridicule and failure in writing the great American literary work of the century.

Event that Changes Everything:
Perry Smith forgives Capote and is executed.

Choice:
Capote balks at helping Perry avoid execution.

Selfless Act:
There is no selfless act.



Further Thoughts
* There is a temptation to think that Capote suffers from guilt at the end (implying that he "learned" on some level) but all he suffers from is self pity. Capote manipulates, lies and uses people to get what he wants throughout the film: to achieve his "great book". He develops a strong connection to his subject, Perry, but it’s all for the purpose of the book. That point is made painfully clear when Capote returns to Perry for the last time, demanding that Perry reveal what happened the night of the murder.

Capote never learns true compassion or selflessness. Instead, he abandons Perry in the end (ironically, like Capote and Perry were abandoned as children) so that he could be “done with it” once and for all. Although he says just before the execution of Perry and his accomplice that he “did all he could do” we know that he didn’t: his terse note saying that he couldn’t help Perry anymore with legal help and his confession that he just wanted to be done with it all are clear indications. The aftermath, though, is that Capote obdurate pride keeps him from learning the life lesson. Instead, he resists coming clean and drowns himself in alcohol.


* Special thanks to JC for debating this film with me and making this a stronger analysis.