When John Malkovich, in Being John Malkovich, enters the portal which provides access to the thoughts and experiences of Malkovich, a series of strictly Cartesian questions arise, such as: Why does he do this, given that he already has access to his thoughts and experiences? Can the events of that moment of terrifying self-transparency be psychoanalysed? Ontologically, what is the status of that experience? Is it a dream? Is it “reality”? What is its materiality? The brilliance of Being John Malkovich resides in what many perceive as its failure: its reliance on a Cartesian view of the subject as puppeteer. Imagine that Malkovich entered the portal thinking that he might uncover the greatest secrets of the human subject, only to discover one banal certainty: “I think, I exist.” This, then, is the Cartesian Real which Lynch can’t stomach: if one enters the subject, there is no transcendental crisis, only the terrifying certainty of the cogito - a moment of pure appearance, resisting all (psycho)analysis.
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