Release Date: December 6, 2002
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Cara Seymour, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed by: Spike Jonze
Written by: Charlie Kaufman
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Entertainment
MPAA Rating: R (language, sexuality, some drug use, violent images)
In Adaptation, their second collaborative feature, director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman may have established a subgenre of comedy that holds astounding possibilities for creativity: the Hollywood introspective. Both 1999's Being John Malkovich, the pair's first movie, and Adaptation look to get inside the mind of an individual inside the movie industry. But whereas in that first film it was merely a creative fancy, here, the themes and symbolism are thicker and more developed -- perhaps because the individual we're getting inside is Kaufman himself.
Nicolas Cage plays the neurotic Kaufman in the movie, as well as his fictional, more outgoing twin brother Donald, in a performance that is alternatively grating and persistently engrossing. Those who can't stand the actor Cage for his seemingly perpetual emotional exaggeration certainly won't enjoy the double dose that Adaptation provides, and indeed, the two Kaufmans are little more than caricatures of Cage's typical performances (either over the top, in the case of Donald, or moody and depressed, in the case of Charlie). But the whole of Cage's efforts work well. Here is an actor who understands that the meat of the performance is not in either of the individual roles but in how they play off of one another, and in capturing this, he has accomplished no small feat.
Kaufman, like his real-life counterpart, is a Hollywood screenwriter, who has recently been commissioned to adapt the decidedly un-cinematic book The Orchid Thief, by real-life New Yorker columnist Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), to the screen. The Orchid Thief is about a fanatical orchid grower, John Laroche (Chris Cooper), who was arrested removing a rare species of orchid from a Florida wildlife preserve. But Charlie has writer's block in the worst way -- a fact that is only aggravated by the reckless Donald, who, inspired by the real-life screenwriting guru Robert McKee (Brian Cox, in a wonderfully blunt extended cameo), is currently writing a hackneyed, clichéd, overwrought, serial-killer screenplay and plugging along just fine.
Anyone who has ever attempted to write anything will appreciate Charlie's frustration: The Orchid Thief is no easy project, and Kaufman, having come off the success of Being John Malkovich (both in real life and in the movie -- Malkovich and Catherine Keener have cameos), feels pressured to live up to his earlier work. There is always the sense that he could take the easy road, and write the kind of screenplay his brother is writing, but he doesn't, and he hates himself for setting such high personal standards.
So he decides that the best way to continue his work is to travel to New York to talk with Orlean, but, flake that he is, Charlie can't get himself to do it (he even comes as close as standing in the same elevator with her at the New Yorker's offices). He does, however, attend a screenwriting summit held by McKee, who tells Kaufman, "Wow them in the end, and you've got a hit." The conclusion of Adaptation conforms to this principle, especially after Charlie calls in Donald to help him straighten his story out. The bulk of the movie is the visualization of a comical cross between writer's block and identity crisis -- but once Donald comes onto the scene, it's all sex, drugs, and car chases (standing in for rock and roll, but neither of the Kaufman brothers seem to be big on music).
Part of the fun in watching the movie is watching Kaufman's screenplay develop, which director Jonze shows in parallel. It's hard to tell which part of the movie is the plot proper, since technically the movie is based on Orlean's novel, The Orchid Thief, but, as in the movie, Kaufman writes himself into the story. The movie is reflexive on multiple levels, and while it is enjoyable to watch without considering the real-life implications, it's more fun to watch it as if this were Being Charlie Kaufman, and the movie were a portal into the writer's brain.
The portions of the movie involving Susan Orlean (an understated turn from Streep) are vaguely connected to Charlie's sections, in that both characters are desperately in need of some passion in their lives. Orlean finds it in the quirky Laroche, who is vividly portrayed by Cooper -- his performances always have a raw, throaty drawl, as though he were the Missouri-bred stepson of Al Pacino or Kris Kristofferson. Charlie, on the other hand, never truly fulfills this need, or at least not until the movie's closing moments, but it's there in front of him the whole time. His brother Donald, while not quite Charlie's intellectual equal, nevertheless has an unfettered zest for life, and Donald's relationship with a Hollywood makeup artist (Maggie Gyllenhaal, in a small role) suggests the possibilities open to Charlie, if only he would relax a little.
This is an unquestionably complex movie. It's the cinematic equivalent of holding two mirrors up to one another, creating the visual effect of an infinite series of mirrors within mirrors -- just as when Kaufman puts himself into his screenplay, it creates an infinite series of writers within screenplays. But director Spike Jonze, working on only his second feature film (after 1999's Malkovich), has just as definitively mastered the technique of presenting complex material.
The movie will also probably inspire audiences to think more of Hollywood screenwriters, or at least the ones like Kaufman who endeavor to provide us with something different. Unfortunately, most of them are probably more like Donald than Charlie (the movie Donald is writing, The 3, is an overwrought parody of movies like The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en). On rare occasions, however, exciting collaborative pairs of talent develop, and the bland commercial paste of which most screenplays consist make creations like Kaufman and Jonze's -- genre developments like the Hollywood introspective -- worth the wait.
all contents © 2002 Craig Roush