Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
Another in the long line of Bruce Willis’ final performances releases this weekend. One of his co-stars in White Elephant is the legendary John Malkovich. For such a good actor, it’s rather surprising that his filmography has a lot of mediocre films in it. However, there were just enough to put him at the center of this week’s five favorites article.
Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
In the long list of film performances Malkovich has delivered since his uncredited debut in 1978’s A Wedding, his work in Dangerous Liaisons may well be his best. Stephen Frears directs Malkovich, Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman, and Keanu Reeves in a sexually-charged drama that pits Close and Malkovich against one another and whose schemes cause irreparable harm to everyone involved.
Christopher Hampton adapted his own play based on a Pierre Choderlos de Laclos novel. Close, Malkovich, and Pfeiffer deliver standout performances in a film that exposes pre-Revolution Parisian social and sexual mores in scintillatingly perverse ways. The film is a period delight featuring beautiful costumes and settings, but it;s the backroom machinations of both Close and Malkovich that give the film its gleefully vicious pulse.
The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
Malkovich once again put on period finery in this adaptation of Henry James’ 1881 novel of the same name. Jane Campion directs Laura Jones’ adaptation of the novel with finesse as it follows Nicole Kidman as a young woman who’s supposed friend (Barbara Hershey) encourages her to marry the aloof and mentally abusive Malkovich, one of Hershey’s ex-lovers. While the courtly intrigues in this film are less interwoven than Dangerous Liaisons, they are no less involving.
Campion, unlike Frears, is more conscientious of the harms she does her female characters by not pitting them against a patriarchal backdrop. That the film resolves poorly for the protagonist who fails to recognize the love given her by someone infinitely more deserving of her affections, is as feminist as it gets for such a male-dominated period. The film is sumptuous in its period details and Kidman and Malkovich are superb, but Hershey is the absolute best in this ensemble.
No original review available.
Being John Malkovich (1999)
By the time of this film’s release, Malkovich had created a familiar, acid-tongued, scheming character like in the films above while remaining largely companionable in his off-screen persona. He had become a part of the zeitgeist in a way few actors had, one of a handful of actors to have this kind of larger-than-life persona that followed him from Dangerous Liaisons forward. At the time Being John Malkovich was released, the concept of “meta” had only just begun to evolve with films like Scream and helped develop what is common cinematic parlance today. This film helped enable that.
The film’s premise is that of a unemployed puppeteer who discovers a secret door hidden in an office building that allows him to enter the mind of John Malkovich. Once he and an associate begin charging for the privilege of using the portal, things get even more bizarre as Malkovich himself gets involved. This is the kind of bizarre, absurdist narrative that only the mind of Charlie Kaufman could create. As envisioned by Spike Jonze, the film helped establish both, in their film debuts, as purveyors of well respected strangeness.
No original review available.
Changeling (2008)
For those unfamiliar with the term changeling, the term comes from Irish folklore wherein a fae replaced a human child with a simulacrum. It was supposed to look and act like the stolen child. Thus the title of this film is a fitting description of its content. In it, Angelina Jolie plays a single mother in 1928 who returns home to find her 9-year-old son missing. After complaining to the police and securing the assistance of a local preacher (Malkovich), her “son” is found by police and returned to her.
Jolie suspects the child isn’t hers and gets evidence from his doctor and dentist asserting this fact, but because she has become a pest, the police force her into an institution where she’s declared delusional. The film unwraps the story in slow, methodic fashion, ultimately revealing that this imposter was such and that her son may have been the victim of a serial killer. It’s a fascinating film told amiably well by director Clint Eastwood, but the film’s success is entirely a result of Jolie’s courageous and potent performance. Malkovich lends strong support.
RED (2010)
I recently discussed this film as one of Bruce Willis’ best. Truth be told, it’s one of the best films from everyone in the cast. This includes Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, and Helen Mirren among others. The action comedy stars Willis as a retired CIA black ops agent forced into early retirement. When he uncovers a plot to kill him as well as other members of his old team, he reunites with all of them to go on the hunt for the instigator.
Everyone in the film looks like they are having fun and vicariously we have fun with them. Mirren and Malkovich seem to be most enjoying themselves, which makes their rather simple characterizations pop. That director Robert Schwentke would never do anything better seems a bit obvious since the interplay between the actors is what helps the film succeed and not as a result of his direction. It’s a great deal of fun even if it is modestly predictable and follows familiar action comedy formulae.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.