I first watched Being John Malkovich soon after it came out in 1999. And I finally got to watch it again tonight.
I was interested in re-watching it not just because it's a memorable classic but because of an interest I have in artistic pivots, presented in the film through the transformation of Malkovich, under the parasitic occupancy of Craig Schwartz, from a celebrated stage and cinema actor into a puppeteer.
I remembered the plot and spirit of the film very well, but it seems that with the benefit of twenty-five additional years of cinema-watching and general life experience I was able, this time, to notice some things I missed completely the first time around.
The most obvious one was how bad the quality of the production is. Watching it now it feels almost like a student film (which I guess it almost is). It may not have been so distinctly bad for 1999, but nowadays even low-budget movies look better.
Another thing I missed completely, even though I remembered the story with a degree of accuracy, is the explicit reference to the transgender angle of Lotte romancing Maxine while occupying Malkovich's body. You'd think I'd have noticed that.
More importantly, if at first watch I considered the film to be very "meta", with Malkovich playing a fictionalised version of himself, I completely failed to appreciate the many other aspects of in-your-face ars poetica.
The entire cast, and especially Malkovich, go out of their way to demonstrate ridiculously poor acting. Schwartz's puppeteering and Malkovich's involuntary action are merely the most obvious clues. Everyone's acting is so obvious and unconvincing and they're all constantly making oblique and sometimes quite direct references to the idea that all behaviour, on and off stage, is just bad acting.
The other big meta clue is the bizarre aspect ratio. The half floor with a very low ceiling, where most of the action takes place, as well as additional references like the monkey cage or the scene hiding under the bed, all constrain the characters unnaturally in an aspect ratio that is fundamentally incompatible with the physical existence of upright humans.