Movie Review: Adaptation

Adaptation (2002)

Directed by Spike Jonze

Written by Charlie Kaufman

Starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox 

Release Date December 6th, 2002 

Published December 6th, 2002 

Originality is a lost art in modern Hollywood. Many people would tell you that everything has been done, and, well, they are right to a point. That is where Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze come in. They take a simple setup and make it original, fresh and funny. Being John Malkovich was a wild, literal, head trip of originality and humor. Now, their new film Adaptation moves the head trip inside the mind of the writer himself. In Adaptation, Kaufman writes himself into his own screenplay and the result is a film unlike anything Hollywood has ever seen.

I spoke before of originality and interestingly enough that is where the film begins. Kaufman, as played by Nicholas Cage, is wondering to himself if has an original thought in his head as he sits at a movie pitch meeting. A studio executive, played by Tilda Swinton, is offering Kaufman the opportunity to adapt the studio's latest acquisition a book called "The Orchid Thief."

Right off the bat this could have been a scene from Robert Altman's The Player with a studio executive spouting off about how this book is going to be the studio's big prestige picture, and, indeed, the book itself sounds like a Hollywood creation. However, "The Orchid Thief" is a real book by a real author and writer for The New Yorker magazine--Susan Orlean. And, in reality, Charlie Kaufman was asked to adapt "The Orchid Thief" for the screen. We are merely in the first scene and already the film is twisting reality in knots.

We flashback from there to Susan Orlean--as played by Meryl Streep--as she researches the story of John Laroche, a real-life orchid hunter played in the film by Chris Cooper, in an Oscar-courting performance. A story in the newspaper about a guy and three Indians arrested in the Florida wetlands for poaching flowers catches Orlean's eye and she is soon in Florida meeting Laroche with the intent of writing about him in The New Yorker. The article became the book and was then snapped up by a movie studio to be made into a film.

Cut back to Charlie, who explains that he doesn't want to make this a Hollywood thing, and wants to write a film that does justice to the book. The book, however, is mostly about orchids and has no real cinematic arc. Charlie has no idea what to write, and his problems will strike a chord with anyone who has ever attempted to write something. Rewards and punishments. Excuses for writing and not writing. How the mind tends to wander off when you know you have to write something but can't. 

As I write this review I'm going on almost four days since I saw the movie; not exactly a good quick turn around. I sit and stare at the computer alternately tapping out my review in my strange hunt and peck typing style that drives my girlfriend up the wall. I write a paragraph and then wonder if my laundry is done. Another sentence and wonder if I should get a bottled water or make soup. Then I realize that I have unconsciously written myself into a review of a movie about a writer who writes himself into his own screenplay. 

Adaptation will do that to you as it twists inside itself and torturously weaves reality and fiction. Kaufman does an amazing mixing job, using real people like Orlean and Laroche and even the cast of his previous film, Being John Malkovich, and then creating a fictional twin brother who acts as his onscreen id.

Cage plays both brothers, both a technical and acting feat pulled off to perfection. Donald Kaufman seems to be the antithesis of everything Charlie stands for. Donald is a lazy layabout with an ease with woman and self image far healthier than it maybe should be. Charlie is both disgusted by Donald and envious of him. They are two sides of the same coin. Donald one day announces that he too is going to be a screenwriter and with the help of a screenwriting coach played by Brian Cox, writes a typical Hollywood schlock thriller and sells it for a million dollars. 

My impression of Donald is that he and Charlie are actually the same person and that Donald allows Charlie to express how easy it would be for him to buy into the Hollywood system. Donald's amazingly bad script is riddled with everything intelligent people despise about modern Hollywood, but, on further examination, the plot mirrors the same dynamic that plays out in Adaptation. I don't want to spoil it. You have to make the connection on your own.

Lost in all the madness onscreen is director Spike Jonze who craftily loses himself behind the camera, putting all the focus on Kaufman. It is Jonze's steadiness that draws this wildly-out-of-control film together. Jonze and Kaufman litter the film with tiny details that will have you going back to see it repeatedly.

My review is finished now I can go eat, but I better check my laundry first. Hey I wonder what's on TV.