We asked you to choose the next two subjects of the Almost There series, and you came through. After more than 800 votes overall, Cameron Diaz won out from the new-to-streaming batch. Her against-type supporting turn in Spike Jonze's 1999 Being John Malkovich conquered around 24% of your votes, with Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind coming in as a close second. So, for now, let's focus on Diaz and her frizzy-haired Lotte…
Cameron Diaz is an actress with plenty of performances that fit the criteria for this series about acting feats that came near to an Oscar nod but failed to make the cut. From her breakthrough in 1998's There's Something About Mary to 2005's In Her Shoes, she was regularly in the awards conversation, often garnering a lot of precursor support before a disappointment come Oscar nomination morning. Of her snubs, none seems more noteworthy than that which came in 1999, after Diaz managed to secure Globe, BAFTA, and SAG nominations for her performance as a puppeteer's discontented wife in Being John Malkovich.
When we first meet Lotte Schwartz, we see her through the eyes of her misanthropic husband, Craig. She's a central piece of his life, but is usually at the periphery of his perception – a good morning kiss, a comforting hug, a tender hand, fragmented gestures, and body parts, never a full person. Jonze's camera indulges in this sidelining of Lotte for her first scenes but gradually allows us to see that there's something more to this woman than her wifely presence. For starters, she's caring to a fault, something that's plain to see thanks to the way she turned her house into a menagerie for animals in need.
However, when the movie lingers on her face, Diaz hints at a sad reality painted over by kind eyes and an understanding smile. There's an unhappiness to Lotte, something that's marrow-deep and unsettling to behold. It's so ingrained that she's learned to live with it and rarely lets any evidence of its existence shine through her mask of shallow sunniness. Only when some bizarre turns of events shake the foundation of her routine does Diaz truly reveal Lotte's depths, her prickly discontentment towards Craig, the caustic need for love that bubbles under the surface, the pent-up sexual want, and much more.
After getting beaten up on the street for the umpteenth time, Craig decides to put his dreams of puppeteering glory on hold and applies for a desk job. His new place of work turns out to be a half-floor of a nondescript office building where, one day, he finds the doorway to a strange tunnel that leads into the mind of John Malkovich. For 15 minutes, anyone can live inside the actor's head before being vomited unto the New Jersey Turnpike. Maxine, Craig's office crush, doesn't seem particularly fazed by the metaphysical and existential ramifications of his discovery, worrying, instead, about the mercenary profitability of the phenomenon. In no time, they have a small business running on the side, selling rides on Malkovich's unsuspecting head.
What prompts Lotte's transformation is her first foray into Malkovich-land, after which she starts to question her identity, her gender, her sexuality, and her own sense of self. More than any other character in the movie, Diaz's animal lover wrestles valiantly with the intimate complexities at the heart of the story's wacky premise. Because of that, she often functions as a grounding element, an anchor tying the absurdist writing to an earthly reality. The situation is only made trickier and more prone to heartbreak when Lotte starts falling in love with Maxine through the proxy of Malkovich's body. Diaz, for her part, matches the script's challenges with impressive actorly fervor.
Far from playing Lotte's obsession and romantic epiphany for laughs, Diaz drains her portrait of any irony. The actress performs it all with the sincerity and the seriousness of a born tragedienne. Even her more endearingly goofy moments, like the nervous flirting she does during a dinner with Maxine and Craig, come off as reflections of the character's inner turmoil. Unlike many movie stars playing dowdy people, Diaz doesn't just rely on cosmetic effects to sell the idea of an unattractive individual who's aware of how others perceive them. During that dinner, she is fidgety, constantly touching her hair and fixing her expression, trying to call attention to herself but hide her body at the same time.
It's a spectacle of mousy self-consciousness that tells us all we need to know about Lotte's trepidation when dealing with Maxine's allure. Such is the actress' talent, that I have to say that nothing delighted me more about this re-watch of Being John Malkovich than seeing how generous Cameron Diaz is as a scene partner. She has great chemistry with everyone, even a chimp, and makes each instance of disconnection from the other actors count as a deliberate, pointed, choice. As she is repeatedly betrayed, caged, and cheated on, Lotte starts to give in to despair, but Diaz never lets us forget that, at her heart, this is a kind-hearted person who cares about those in her life - except, maybe, Craig.
Her goodness is evident and Lotte's naked longing vibrates off the screen, at the same time as passion makes her consider living inside the head of a stranger. At a certain point, that ardor even makes her hold a pistol to the woman she claims to love and threaten her with a swift death. If there's one negative aspect to point out about the performance is that, just like Catherine Keener's unable to make a cohesive sense of Maxine's late-film maternal instincts, so does Diaz struggle with Lotte's homicidal fury. That being said, in both cases, the performers' commitment to the script's oddities make up for the shaky characterization.
Awards bodies and critics certainly seemed to agree back in 1999, with the two actresses receiving numerous nominations in the Best Supporting Actress category. Keener went on to get an Oscar nod, along with Angelina Jolie for Girl Interrupted, Samantha Morton for Sweet and Lowdown, Chloë Sevigny for Boys Don't Cry and Toni Collette for The Sixth Sense. It's an impressive lineup, where Collette probably took Diaz's spot. While I wouldn't take the Australian actress's nod away (she's my winner out of Oscar's selection), I can see why others mourn Diaz's snub. She's given many nomination-worthy performances over the years and, since she quit acting, it seems like we'll never see her get some overdue love from AMPAS.
Being John Malkovich is newly available to stream on Netflix.