That Obscure Object of Desire

The delirious, subterranean logic of Being John Malkovich finds its deepest roots in the surrealist nightmares and identity fractures of European arthouse cinema. Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman drew upon the spatial claustrophobia and psychological unraveling of Roman Polanski's The Tenant, translating its apartment-based paranoia into the cramped, hunchbacked absurdity of the 7½ floor. Kaufman has frequently pointed to the subversive, dreamlike cinema of Luis Buñuel as his guiding light, utilizing the surrealist disconnect seen in That Obscure Object of Desire to completely normalize the bizarre within the narrative. Additionally, the film's literal portals into another consciousness echo the mythological underworld transitions established in Jean Cocteau's Orpheus.