Adaptation
Adaptation is a love letter to writers looking for originality everywhere. It’s also a stinging attack on the Hollywood formula. Spike Jonze (the team paired up with Being John Malkovich as well) brilliantly delves inside Kaufman’s mind and brings the script to life the way few could.
A simple synopsis of Adaptation is near impossible. It’s sort of a how-to manual on creating a screenplay. Nicolas Cage plays Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin brother Donald. Charlie has been commissioned to adapt Susan Orlean’s best seller, The Orchid Thief, but is finding it to be an impossible venture.
Charlie Kaufman appears to have suffered a monumental case of writer’s block as Orlean’s book does not follow a classic movie structure (as is hysterically stated in one of Charlie’s soliloquies, “I need to find the arc of the flower”).
Instead of writing a straight adaptation Kaufman made it more of the struggle to complete a screenplay. As Charlie continues to plow thru this un-adaptable book, we see scenes from the novel where the title character John Laroche (Chris Cooper) steals flowers from the swamps of Florida using Native Americans as his cover.
Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) goes down to write a story on him for The New Yorker, which proves so successful she ends up authoring a whole book.
Laroche is a fascinating character and we see why Orlean wrote the book to begin with. He’s part philosopher, comedian, thug, collector, and scientist. Cooper was amazing and his Oscar was well earned. Streep also shines as the writer intoxicated by her subject.
Unfortunately the book doesn’t have enough scenes involving Laroche. Charlie is stuck trying to figure out how to weave the novel into a movie. Meanwhile, Donald his loser of a brother writes his own screenplay invoking every clichÃ?© in the book and sells it for six figures. Cage is terrific at giving both characters a distinct look. Though he plays both twins, they could not appear any more different, a testament to his work.
The last act is a parody of the classic Hollywood thriller as every single plot device Kaufman says he wanted to avoid gets tossed in, along with the kitchen sink. Many viewers don’t get the joke on the first viewing, but once you do this section might be the best an most satisfying of the entire film.
It was a wonderfully brave thing to do (I can only imagine what Orlean’s reaction must have been to being a drug addict involved in internet porn) and really is genius.
Adaptation is something akin to a marvel. It’s a book adaptation and yet one of the most original screenplays ever put on film. Definitely a must see for writers everywhere.
four stars out of four stars
