The author analyses the intriguing and carefully constructed film diptych from the director Spike Jonze and the scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman, consisting of two films: Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002). In their diptych Jonze and Kaufman cleverly use the habit of viewers to separate extra- and intra textual spheres within the narrative. They engage the viewers into a game based on the apparent mixing of reality with fiction on several levels at once. Being John Malkovich and Adaptation create a complicated construction that provokes and deceives the viewer by using and mixing multiple levels of fiction and apparent reality. In order to disturb the hierarchical dependency between reality and fiction, Jonze and Kaufman applied metaleptic solutions in both films. And so a complicated, pan-fictional narrative structure, with elements of auto reference was created.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.