Adaptation. Review
by Michael Dequina (mrbrown AT iname DOT com)February 2nd, 2004
_Adaptation._ **** (out of ****)
Thanks a lot, Charlie Kaufman. Thanks to you and your superlative script for _Adaptation._, I and millions of others can no longer use writer's block as a valid excuse for the shittiness of our writing.
Leave it to Kaufman to turn what was intended to be a screenplay based on Susan Orlean's nonfiction book _The_Orchid_Thief_ into a story about his own difficulties in adapting the book. Furthermore, leave it to him, director Spike Jonze and Kaufman's own imaginary twin brother Donald--more on that later--to twist such a shameless indulgence into an incredibly clever and wildly entertaining ride that is perhaps a better film than any straight-ahead movie take of _The_Orchid_Thief_ ever could be.
_Adaptation._ (the period is part of the title) is at once more unusual and more conventional than Kaufman and Jonze's previous mindbender of a collaboration, the literal head trip that was _Being_John_Malkovich_. That this film focuses not on inexplicable portals into actors' brains but the down-to-earth difficulty of the writing task makes it a more accessible one by default; that said, this film is even more of an insular look into someone's head, with Kaufman going so far as to invent a polar opposite twin brother to illustrate his struggles on the screen. While the self-loathing artiste Charlie (Nicolas Cage) struggles to capture the essence of Orlean's poetic but decidedly uncinematic prose about orchid enthusiast John Laroche, brother Donald (also played by Cage) is having a far easier time with his own creative (in name only) writing endeavors, slavishly adhering to the structure guidelines set forth by screenwriting guru Robert McKee (played onscreen by Brian Cox) to come up with a thoroughly formulaic Tinseltown-ready thriller.
From this description, the film sounds like it's way too inside, but the inherently indulgent nature of the story is offset by Kaufman's smart, self-lascerating sense of humor and Jonze's inventive direction, not to mention the efforts of the cast. Cage pulls off the dual role without a hitch, and while Chris Cooper has been winning the most critical accolades and awards out of the cast as Laroche, doing just as well in a perhaps more difficult role is Meryl Streep, who plays Orlean. She (and, for that matter, Cooper) is mostly seen in vignettes taken from the book (yes, there is indeed some adaptation going on here), but the film's twists afford Streep an opportunity to display her dramatic and equally formidable comedic chops all at once.
The directions taken by those twists make _Adaptation._ even more divisive than it already is to begin with; it's all too easy to say that Kaufman and Jonze lose their way, and everything falls to pieces in the end. Far from it, I say. The pair know exactly where they are going, and the sheer bravado alone makes the film more alive and exciting than most films that have seen release this year. That they pull off the joke with such savvy hilarity (and, wisely, without so much as an obvious wink-wink, nudge-nudge to the audience) is just gravy.
©2002 Michael Dequina
Michael Dequina
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