ADAPTATION
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Charlie Kaufman has in one stroke made his the most recognizable screenwriter's name in the country. His film, directed by Spike Jonze, is a meditation on the forces that make films successful; it is also a philosopher's chestnut and a marvelous mental toy. This is the kind of film that viewers can discuss for hours. Rating: 8 (0 to 10), low +3 (-4 to +4). Spoiler warning: it would be impossible to discuss ADAPTATION without talking somewhat about the nature of the film. That is a bit of a spoiler. Those who want the film completely unspoiled are advised to see the film without reading or hearing any discussion of it.
In the early days of television one of the first experiments broadcasters tried was training a television camera one a monitor displaying what the camera was seeing. What the monitor then showed was a picture of the monitor showing a picture of the monitor showing a picture of the monitor showing a picture of the monitor.… Like that image, ADAPTATION is infinitely self-referential. ADAPTATION is about a lot of different things. This is a film about orchids, about the book THE ORCHID THIEF, about the man who was the subject of the book THE ORCHID THIEF, about the woman who wrote THE ORCHID THIEF, about the man who wrote the screenplay of THE ORCHID THIEF, about the writing of the screenplay for THE ORCHID THIEF, about the twin brother of the writer of the screenplay for THE ORCHID THIEF, and about Hollywood. Above all ADAPTATION is, at least in theory, the largest cream pie that a filmmaker could throw in the face of an audience and still have that audience come up smiling. This is just a story but a treasure trove of jokes on the audience and weird script devices. The amazing thing is that when it is all over the viewer discovers there was a complete story being told.
In Charlie Kaufman's adaptation of Susan Orlean's THE ORCHID THIEF, real life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, here played by Nicholas Cage, is hired to write a screenplay for the book THE ORCHID THIEF by Susan Orlean (here played by Meryl Streep). He is drawing a complete blank on how to tell Orlean's story of her discovery of orchid collector and thief John Laroche (played by Chris Cooper). Lurching backward and forward in time, showing several story lines, the film shows Kaufman's paralysis of low self-esteem-fed writer's block and the incidents he reads of Orlean's relationship with Laroche. Meanwhile Kaufman is having problems with his twin brother Donald Kaufman (played by--who else?--Nicholas Cage) who wants to become a screenwriter himself, but whose ideas represent the worst of the Hollywood movie machine. Meanwhile Charlie is discovering himself fascinated with Orlean and suspects that she is fascinated by Laroche, an off-putting good ol' boy type.
Kaufman, who, I believe, does not really have a twin brother Donald, mixes together truth, fiction, and semi-truth. He cut his teeth writing material for TV shows "Get a Life" and "The Dana Carvey Show." He worked with Spike Jonze previously on BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, a good and wacky film. In that film, however, his writing was uneven. He had many weird ideas, all in the first third of the film. Through the rest of the film he just developed the strange ideas he had already without really adding much more. This film is much more smoothly written and uniformly strange.
This is a film that seems to be as self-modifying as it is recursive. This film is an audience-pleaser, but it helps if the viewer is a fan of the mathematical artist M. C. Escher. Though there is no reference to him in the film, the film could well be called Escher-esque. I rate ADAPTATION an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale. There are two scenes of extreme, sudden, and unexpected violence. I wonder what the real Susan Orlean thinks about her sincerely intended book getting sucked into this madcap vortex and her along with it. What does she think about how she is characterized on the screen?
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2003 Mark R. Leeper
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