I am fascinated by puppetry, which is one thing that attracts me to this movie, despite its flaws, despite its sometimes being just too much. However, it is as engrossing as it is bizarre. I doubt that many people have actually experienced the art of puppetry the way it is portrayed in Being John Malkovich. It can be very unsettling to watch something lifeless become animated in the hands of a puppeteer. It can also be the most natural thing in the world, like in the musical Avenue Q, an ingenious Sesame Street parody. The puppeteer seems to disappear entirely, but they are an inseparable piece of the experience; you somehow read their emotions and transcribe them onto the inanimate object they are maneuvering. A few years ago, I saw a puppetry performance outside the Pompidou in Paris (try saying that five times, fast). I can still remember that thing's eyes, and how woeful it seemed, wandering around in its artificial circle, voiceless. Most of all, I remember that it really seemed to be alive. This was just a street performance, but I can recall it much more vividly than anything I saw once I actually entered the museum. To return to the point, puppeteering is an excellent metaphor for all of the themes in Malkovich, and it acts partially as a metaphor for film making--the director pulling the strings, manipulating the unknowing characters around a set. In this film, when wooden puppets are shown, it is editing, and the raw power of film making that breathe life into the puppets, as with the opening scene depicted above.
