AdaptationIs life more real on the big screen, or is it just escapism? Adaptation--stylized as "Adaptation."--unfolds like a matryoshka doll; it is about real-life screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage), who is in the excruciating process of adapting "The Orchid Thief" by real-life journalist, Susan Orlean (played by Meryl Streep), into the next quirky Hollywood hit. Charlie is confronted by both the immensity of doing justice to the source material and his longing for producing something original, becoming overwhelmed by his anxiety and self-loathing, and leaving his imagination to run rampant at the expense of his work.
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To describe Adaptation as self-aware would be an understatement; it is a story about a story that includes real people in a narrative framework that rarely allows for much invention, engaged in imagined--and potentially libelous--activities. Adaptation exists because Charlie Kaufman wrote it, which is true for both the plot and in real life; the events in the movie--be they tragic or comic--are a direct result of his writing. That the delicate balance of reality can hinge on the most precarious of fulcrums--like a neurotic screenwriter--is a leitmotif in Kaufman's work. Charlie Kaufman is not just a god in Adaptation, he is God, albeit an impotent and anxiety-riddled one. In the beginning of Adaptation, there is darkness; and a voice spoke, and it was Charlie. Charlie's opening voice-over--to be vehemently avoided, per screenwriting guru, Robert McKee (played by Brian Cox)--is filled with overflowing despair and doubt. Fear is paralyzing him, from his writer's block to his anxiety in sharing his intimate feelings with women, like Amelia Kavan (Cara Seymour), his lady friend and a concert musician. Charlie's twin brother, Donald (also Nicolas Cage), has been crashing at his house and decides to make a quick buck by taking up screenwriting for himself. Donald's gregarious exuberance threatens to expunge Charlie's morose cloud of self-loathing, and diminish the narcissistic, self-indulgent funk that he's in. Adding insult to injury, Donald turns out to be a screenwriting wunderkind, churning out a superficially derivative screenplay, getting the attention of Charlie's own agent, Marty (Ron Livingston).
If Charlie is God in this world, then he has only himself to blame for being trapped in creative hell, powerless to escape his suffering. Charlie is depressed after leaving the set of Being John Malkovich because no one in the cast or crew recognized him as the writer. He subsequently asks himself how he "got here", prompting a montage depicting the last four billion years of evolution in a few minutes, leading up to his birth. Adaptation is filtered through Charlie's psyche, and as a result, nothing can be taken as absolute truth. Charlie sees himself as a "loser", despite being lauded as an accomplished screenwriter by "statuesque" studio executive, Valerie Thomas (Tilda Swinton). He wishes that he could share how he feels about Amelia with her, but he suffers cold feet and stammers at every opportunity. After she starts dating someone who looks like Charlie, it becomes a manifestation of how Charlie believes he should be "punished" for failing to seize the perfect moment and open up his heart. Donald is intentionally overblown and obnoxious--Donald notices this when he reads about himself in Charlie's screenplay in progress. This shows how Charlie is jealous of his brother's easy demeanor and willingness to dedicate himself to something, even screenwriting. Charlie is threatened by Donald, who seems to possess everything he wishes he had--including his attractive new girlfriend, Caroline (Maggie Gyllenhaal)--and condescends to him out of spite when Donald asks him for advice. Yet Donald does the work which Charlie only bemoans, actively learning how to write a screenplay, and offering to help his brother--whom he kindly and guilelessly calls "the genius"--when things are looking down. Charlie's arrogance shines through when he begrudgingly attends McGee's seminar in New York City, only because it represents a convenient way to get out of approaching Susan Orlean, which was the real purpose of his trip. Instead of listening to the teacher, he spends his time ruminating on his foolishness at being there at all.
Charlie's stress levels spike when he is at his most self-conscious, like when he encounters attractive women. When he wants to be charming and welcoming, he instead mumbles and sweats, invariably making them think there's something wrong with him. A perky waitress at a local diner named Alice (Judy Greer) comments about Charlie's copy of "The Orchid Thief", giving him a golden opportunity to add that he's working on an adaptation of it. Instead, he fumbles with his words, and goes on at length about varieties of orchids, which does nothing to inspire her interest. After an erotic fantasy about her the night before, he stages a repeat visit, to invite her to go to an orchid show with him. Before he can finish making the offer, her disheartening and awkward escape makes it clear that Charlie probably shouldn't be hitting on waitresses in the first place. When Valerie approaches Susan about adapting "The Orchid Thief" into a movie, the slick exec employs the same verbage she used on Charlie. Why? Because this version of Valerie is the one Charlie remembers--and he "writes about what he knows", incorporating this version of Valerie into his "adaptation". The foremost example of Charlie projecting himself into the world of Adaptation comes in the form of Susan Orlean. (I can't claim to have read "The Orchid Thief", but I presume it isn't saturated with the same melancholy which Charlie contributes.) Adaptation often cuts away to Susan and her increasingly frequent trips to southern Florida to research a local flower poacher named John Laroche (played by Chris Cooper), who wades into waist-deep swamps filled with alligators to collect rare and exotic specimens, including the elusive and prized "ghost orchid". John is superficially portrayed as a Floridian stereotype--a sketchy, skinny blowhard missing his front teeth, making frequent trips into the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve to exploit a legal loophole with his Seminole colleagues to purloin the forbidden flora. But John is also prone to monologues of great philosophical beauty, like when he asserts that his love of plants comes from their "mutability"--that they can adapt to become whatever they need to be to survive. It is a romantic revelation for Susan, who begins to question what it means to risk changing who you are, and the reward that comes from adapting. Susan spends more and more time with John, empathizing with his fervor for the flowers, and then becoming enamored with his vivacity and lust for life. Susan sees a void in her life, despite enjoying a celebrated career, cultured friends, and a husband. Her wistful longing brings her back to John again and again, searching for something ephemeral--answers to the unspoken questions. Is this the real Susan Orlean? Of course not; this is the fantasy of Susan that Charlie has sculpted to express his own longings, which makes it all the more ironic when it runs out of control and becomes something virtually unrecognizable in the final act.
When Charlie and Valerie are discussing the adaptation of "The Orchid Thief", Charlie fervently protests that he doesn't want to cram Hollywood "sex and violence" into it to gloss it up--but this is exactly what happens in the end anyway. Despite Charlie's protestations, he secretly longs for this kind of excitement in his own life. After all, if movies are a form of escapism, and popular movies often have aspects of "sex and violence", couldn't it be said that people (like Charlie) really long for a reprieve from mundanity? Consider when Charlie and Amelia are driving home from a concert, and he gives her a spontaneous compliment about her talents as a musician, despite her self-deprecating claims that she's "mediocre at best". He proclaims that she's great and "he loves to hear her play". The audience doesn't know how Amelia plays, but it doesn't matter; to Charlie, she's the best in the world. Her art surpasses clinical or critical analysis, compelling Charlie to overcome his difficulty in articulating his feelings. The moral is that Charlie becomes attractive and desirable to Amelia because he is himself in the moment, and it represents that for Charlie to manifest this passion in his writing, he must approach it with the same level of honesty and authenticity.
Recommended for: Fans of clever subversion of traditional literary adaptations, and one that is painfully honest about writer's block. (The moment when Charlie stares at the blank page in his typewriter and debates the merits of banana nut muffins says it all.) Adaptation will entertain audiences with its alternately dry and absurdist humor, but devotees of the craft will also find "Easter eggs" in the film. (I was dumbstruck when I realized that I had the same edition of Robert McKee's "Story" on my bookshelf.)
If Charlie is God in this world, then he has only himself to blame for being trapped in creative hell, powerless to escape his suffering. Charlie is depressed after leaving the set of Being John Malkovich because no one in the cast or crew recognized him as the writer. He subsequently asks himself how he "got here", prompting a montage depicting the last four billion years of evolution in a few minutes, leading up to his birth. Adaptation is filtered through Charlie's psyche, and as a result, nothing can be taken as absolute truth. Charlie sees himself as a "loser", despite being lauded as an accomplished screenwriter by "statuesque" studio executive, Valerie Thomas (Tilda Swinton). He wishes that he could share how he feels about Amelia with her, but he suffers cold feet and stammers at every opportunity. After she starts dating someone who looks like Charlie, it becomes a manifestation of how Charlie believes he should be "punished" for failing to seize the perfect moment and open up his heart. Donald is intentionally overblown and obnoxious--Donald notices this when he reads about himself in Charlie's screenplay in progress. This shows how Charlie is jealous of his brother's easy demeanor and willingness to dedicate himself to something, even screenwriting. Charlie is threatened by Donald, who seems to possess everything he wishes he had--including his attractive new girlfriend, Caroline (Maggie Gyllenhaal)--and condescends to him out of spite when Donald asks him for advice. Yet Donald does the work which Charlie only bemoans, actively learning how to write a screenplay, and offering to help his brother--whom he kindly and guilelessly calls "the genius"--when things are looking down. Charlie's arrogance shines through when he begrudgingly attends McGee's seminar in New York City, only because it represents a convenient way to get out of approaching Susan Orlean, which was the real purpose of his trip. Instead of listening to the teacher, he spends his time ruminating on his foolishness at being there at all.
Charlie's stress levels spike when he is at his most self-conscious, like when he encounters attractive women. When he wants to be charming and welcoming, he instead mumbles and sweats, invariably making them think there's something wrong with him. A perky waitress at a local diner named Alice (Judy Greer) comments about Charlie's copy of "The Orchid Thief", giving him a golden opportunity to add that he's working on an adaptation of it. Instead, he fumbles with his words, and goes on at length about varieties of orchids, which does nothing to inspire her interest. After an erotic fantasy about her the night before, he stages a repeat visit, to invite her to go to an orchid show with him. Before he can finish making the offer, her disheartening and awkward escape makes it clear that Charlie probably shouldn't be hitting on waitresses in the first place. When Valerie approaches Susan about adapting "The Orchid Thief" into a movie, the slick exec employs the same verbage she used on Charlie. Why? Because this version of Valerie is the one Charlie remembers--and he "writes about what he knows", incorporating this version of Valerie into his "adaptation". The foremost example of Charlie projecting himself into the world of Adaptation comes in the form of Susan Orlean. (I can't claim to have read "The Orchid Thief", but I presume it isn't saturated with the same melancholy which Charlie contributes.) Adaptation often cuts away to Susan and her increasingly frequent trips to southern Florida to research a local flower poacher named John Laroche (played by Chris Cooper), who wades into waist-deep swamps filled with alligators to collect rare and exotic specimens, including the elusive and prized "ghost orchid". John is superficially portrayed as a Floridian stereotype--a sketchy, skinny blowhard missing his front teeth, making frequent trips into the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve to exploit a legal loophole with his Seminole colleagues to purloin the forbidden flora. But John is also prone to monologues of great philosophical beauty, like when he asserts that his love of plants comes from their "mutability"--that they can adapt to become whatever they need to be to survive. It is a romantic revelation for Susan, who begins to question what it means to risk changing who you are, and the reward that comes from adapting. Susan spends more and more time with John, empathizing with his fervor for the flowers, and then becoming enamored with his vivacity and lust for life. Susan sees a void in her life, despite enjoying a celebrated career, cultured friends, and a husband. Her wistful longing brings her back to John again and again, searching for something ephemeral--answers to the unspoken questions. Is this the real Susan Orlean? Of course not; this is the fantasy of Susan that Charlie has sculpted to express his own longings, which makes it all the more ironic when it runs out of control and becomes something virtually unrecognizable in the final act.
When Charlie and Valerie are discussing the adaptation of "The Orchid Thief", Charlie fervently protests that he doesn't want to cram Hollywood "sex and violence" into it to gloss it up--but this is exactly what happens in the end anyway. Despite Charlie's protestations, he secretly longs for this kind of excitement in his own life. After all, if movies are a form of escapism, and popular movies often have aspects of "sex and violence", couldn't it be said that people (like Charlie) really long for a reprieve from mundanity? Consider when Charlie and Amelia are driving home from a concert, and he gives her a spontaneous compliment about her talents as a musician, despite her self-deprecating claims that she's "mediocre at best". He proclaims that she's great and "he loves to hear her play". The audience doesn't know how Amelia plays, but it doesn't matter; to Charlie, she's the best in the world. Her art surpasses clinical or critical analysis, compelling Charlie to overcome his difficulty in articulating his feelings. The moral is that Charlie becomes attractive and desirable to Amelia because he is himself in the moment, and it represents that for Charlie to manifest this passion in his writing, he must approach it with the same level of honesty and authenticity.
Recommended for: Fans of clever subversion of traditional literary adaptations, and one that is painfully honest about writer's block. (The moment when Charlie stares at the blank page in his typewriter and debates the merits of banana nut muffins says it all.) Adaptation will entertain audiences with its alternately dry and absurdist humor, but devotees of the craft will also find "Easter eggs" in the film. (I was dumbstruck when I realized that I had the same edition of Robert McKee's "Story" on my bookshelf.)