Existentialism is an incredibly broad topic, encompassing numerous philosophic ideas and the ramifications associated with those aforementioned notions. The negative here is that the actual definition of what existentialism is often gets muddled up in the process. This latter reality results in claims of existentialism in books, plays and films when, in reality, existentialism is not really the key code of ideas at work. . But on the other hand, this is a great boon to the philosophy. Existentialism as an umbrella term can then be better used to describe the effects and consequences to existential ideas that make up so much of what the philosophy is really about. Two prime examples are Duncan Jone’s (Director) spaceman thriller Moon and Charlie Kaufman’s (Writer) black comedy Being John Malkovich. These two films focus on the two entirely opposite ends of existentialism – personal identity and intersubjectivity – while being bonded together by the one most significant tenet of the philosophy: we are what we do.
SPOILER ALERT
Ironically however, the movies do not focus on the ends of the spectrum a viewer might think they would. Where John Malkovich is a film with a full cast and numerous personal relationships, this movie is centered around the existentialism as it relates to the self. Moon, which is practically a one man show performed brilliantly by Sam Rockwell (with the occasional hand from Kevin Spacey voiced robot Gerty) is about the interaction we have with others defining our lives, even if the other people are just clones of yourself.
Let’s begin with Being John Malkovich. Between the two films this one far outdoes the other in terms of using the medium of film to its advantage. If the devil’s in the details, then Kaufman has clearly sold his soul; the film is littered with motif dialogue and word play that highlight existential themes – Maxine, the master of manipulation, often refers to Craig and others as “doll face” and aside from being hysterical, Dr. Lester’s hearing impeded secretary makes a great statement on perspective being everything. Off putting lighting, camera work and set design set an idiosyncratic tone; the film is in an almost perpetual state of dim lighting with disorienting camera angles accentuating the overwhelmingly pathetic homes and work spaces of the main characters. And Charlie Kaufman’s meta screen plays always seem to wring the best performances from his actors (not a problem here with the great John Malkovich but I never knew Nick Cage had Adaption in him). All these traits add a feel of philosophic introspection and encourage the audience to take an active role in deciphering the action on screen. And in fact, John Malkovich’s performance acts as a perfect jumping off point for audiences and critics to analyze the movie’s existential roots. Ultimately, Being John Malkovich is a movie about being someone else in a world where the characters are comically dismal and pathetic people, yet a great irony of the film can be found in Malkovich’s performance. When he isn’t being possessed by sex crazed women or an unstable puppeteer, Malkovich is portrayed as being a mind numbingly dull person. He’s happily stuck in his routine and passionately apathetic. The only thing he has that others don’t is a finite grasp on his own identity, though he’s not particularly quick to defend it (his reaction, or lack thereof, to a cabbie insisting he played a role he did not is priceless). The further irony, that the only man who knows who he is in the film is an actor, only compounds the movie’s humour. But, as Craig’s wife Lotte says after her first Malkovich experience, “Being inside did something to me. All of a sudden everything made sense. I knew who I was.” And with Craig’s response – “You weren’t you. You were John Malkovich” – lies the main theme of the movie, who am I?
Being John Malkovich is one big existentential mid life crisis, in which everyone doesn’t know who they are and in turn, are unhappy with their lives. All these characters try to escape their responsibilities and the lives they have built for themselves with the actions they have committed by entering the mind of the ultimate existential escapee, a bland, personality-less actor. Who could be more of a blank slate than that? But the trouble arises when escaping from reailty (existential cowards that they are) becomes controlling reality. Criag, puppeteer that he is, evolves from an existential coward into existential scum when tries to control Malkovich’s life. But as the movie concludes with Craig trapped forever in Maxine and Lotte’s daughter’s body, it proves that even the actions you do in another person’s body still effect your own life.
If John Malkovich asks “Who am I”, then Moon wonders, “Where am I?” This question is the first one asked by every incarnation of Sam Bell, the film’s energy harvesting protagonist. Taking place in the near future, Sam works for Lunar Industries overseeing the automated harvesters, which provide Earth’s, clean burning Helium 3 energy, harvested on the dark side of the moon. All alone up in his base on the Moon, save for his robot assistant Gertie, Sam monitors, repairs and harvests the energy that is gleaned from the 10 or so He3 harvester tanks that roam the moon’s surface. He appears to be an amiable hard working, relaxed individual who is starting to go a little stir crazy toward the last two weeks of his three-year contract. Hobbies include talking to his plants, ping-pong, running on the treadmill and carving an extensive wooden model of his hometown. Yet, this movie, in which Sam Rockwell occupies a solid 98% of the screentime, this movie is really all about intersubjectivity, proving time and time again that the only thing that allows us to be anything more than ourselves, is to interact with something more than ourselves. Well, sort of.
Duncan Jones, David Bowie’s son who made his directorial debut with this film, has a very particular style of thriller, one which is repeated in his new film Source Code (currently in theaters, I highly recommended it). In both of his movies, Jones reveals the film’s twist toward the beginning or middle of the story, allowing the rest of the film to play out with the audience possessing knowledge that most thriller directors would try to hold on to until the last 20 minutes. This creates a movie watching experience that almost feels like seeing two separate films, one before and after the twist. And while I admit that this style is slightly anti-climactic (much more so in Moon than in Source Code), it allows and forces the audience to cope with the consequences of the twist’s truth, a style that frankly, is existential in its own right. This movie’s unexpected development is that the Sam we confront at the movie’s start is the fourth clone of the original Sam Bell, who, through the film’s development, accidentally results in the awakening of the fifth Sam clone. This shatters the typical cycle of three year contract in which a clone works for three years, is euthanized (we assume) in the so called cryogenic chamber where he is supposed to prepare for his return journey, and a new clone is woken up. However, here is the existential kicker, each clone is awoken with the same memory set of the original Sam Bell upon his landing on the moon; he is married to his wife Tess who is pregnant with their daughter Eve, beginning his three year contract on the moon. Couple this with a broken live communications satellite (its really being jammed by Lunar Industries) that is replaced by the recorded video messages Tess sent the original Sam during his original tenure in space and suddenly, every Sam clone has the exact same experience as the one before him. This results in an endless cycle of repeated actions. At one point Gerty, who is not at all the malevolent HAL robot you make him out to be, awaits Sam’s departure so that he can awake the next Sam clone. “The new Sam and I will be back to our programming as soon as I have finished rebooting.” Of course, Sam’s perfectly existential response is, “Gerty, we're not programmed. We're people. Understand?” but the message is made clear; without any variables in environment and no one to interact with, any one person will repeat their actions over and over again, be they good or bad.
One particularly interesting theme that is made very clear in the film is that Sam has clearly grown as a person during his time in space. As I said before, all these clones begin with the memories the original Sam had upon arrival. They are fully grown adults but only as fully-grown as the original Sam was upon his moon landing. The older Sam has mellowed and become almost Zen like during his solitude (as all the Sam’s before him had become) but the newly awakened Sam clone has a temper, going so far as to get in a fistfight with his pacifistic future self. Smaller details also elegantly reinforce this point. Both Sam’s exercise every day but where the older Sam just runs on his treadmill until he collapses, younger Sam jumps rope and aggressively beats a hanging punching bag. In one scene, the younger Sam who has yet to devote the “938 hours” that his prior self has put into the intricate wooden model of his hometown, flips it over in a fit of rage. This action portrays the most vital existential point in the film; this younger Sam is not the same individual as the older Sam. He is not yet that future version of himself because he has not done the actions that turned him into the man he is to become. Because young Sam has not put in the time and effort that every Sam Bell prior to him has put into that model, he feels no attachment to it. Yet we know that, were he left to his own devices, this young Sam would become that man that he encounters. It is only through intersubjectivity and interacting with another person that his actions have any real meaning in defining who he is, otherwise Sam is just as robotic as Gerty.
While I love the fact that existentialism is broad enough that these two movies can dive deep into its philosophical issues without overlapping one another, both movies do preach the one core value of existentialism: you are what you do. Both Sam and Craig want to give themselves a new chance to define who they are. Old Sam sacrifices his chance to go back to Earth so that young Sam can live his life freely.
Young Sam(YS) : Are you sure about this?
Old Sam(OS) : Yeah. You should—You should travel, you know?
YS: I always wanted to do that.
OS: Amsterdam or...
YS: Yeah, I was thinking about Hawaii or maybe...Mexico.
OS: Aloha! Bring me back a piña colada. All right, pal?
Furthermore, young Sam ends the film by destroying the live communications jammer placed by Lunar Industries, forever changing the static environment that locked in Sam’s “programming”. Sam’s actions give all subsequent Sam’s a chance to live life with different actions and different outcomes. When Craig inhabits Malkovich’s body, instead of trying to live a new life with his clean slate, he only succeeds in living out his same old dreams of being a puppeteer by using John Malkovich’s resources. But even as John Malkovich, Craig is the same pathetic loser as before because he changes Molkovich’s life and actions, to Craig’s life and actions. This dooms him to his eternal prison inside Emily’s mind, Maxine and Lotte’s daughter, where he has to watch helplessly as her life, his new life, unfolds before him. This sentence, to truly have no control over your actions is the ultimate existential punishment.
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