John Malkovich Is a Tough Audience
John Malkovich reckons he makes a really good film once a decade. At his BFI London Film Festival talk in October, while discussing Wild Horse Nine, he went further: even a good performance in a disappointing film counted for little. An audience might reasonably object. Some of us have spent entire evenings waiting for him to come back into the frame.
An actor's dissatisfaction deserves a hearing. It should not get the deciding vote. Malkovich's peculiar gift is making another person's loss of control fascinating, whether he is causing it or suffering it. That is a perfectly respectable reason to choose a film.
Three older performances make the case. Start with the one that takes his actual name and turns it into something he cannot protect.
Being John Malkovich: start here
Being John Malkovich offers fifteen minutes inside the actor's head, followed by an undignified exit beside the New Jersey Turnpike. The joke starts with the unlikely merchandise. Who would build a business around temporary access to this particular man?
Then Malkovich has to play the person whose life has become the product. The imposing name belongs to somebody vulnerable, angry and entitled to a little privacy. His discomfort stops the premise becoming merely a clever sketch. You can laugh at the violation and still feel how horrible it would be.
It is the best starting point because it asks him to surrender the very thing a film star usually brings to a movie: authority over his own presence.
Dangerous Liaisons: let him run the room
Dangerous Liaisons gives that authority back. As Valmont, he makes seduction feel like an operation whose humiliating outcome has already been planned. The manners are part of the cruelty. Listen to how little he needs to raise the temperature of a conversation.
Watch this second. After the panic of the portal film, his composure looks especially sinister. A person who seems perfectly comfortable can make everyone around him work much harder.
In the Line of Fire: take the thriller option
In In the Line of Fire, he plays a would-be presidential assassin. Here the danger has a clear destination, and the film benefits from an opponent who appears to enjoy the contest. Choose this if you want a chase rather than a puzzle about celebrity or a room full of exquisitely dressed schemers.
Malkovich's complaint concerns whole films. These picks will not settle that argument for him. They do settle tonight's viewing: begin inside his head, then come back for the men who like getting inside other people's.
