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Adaptation begins on the set of Being John Malkovich and shot through a hand-held camera. Then there is a shot of chronicling the evolution of the spot that would one day be Hollywood, California some four billion years later. This odd juxtaposition of shots compounded with the names of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman in the credits is sufficient confirmation that Adaptation will be a film like no other.
It’s a self-referential film, of sorts, but of the kind that only minds as creative as that of Jonze and Kaufman could make. On one level (and the film has many) Adaptation is about Charlie Kaufman himself and his struggle to find himself as an artist and to adapt a book on orchids as a screenplay. Adaptation can be interpreted as an experimental film, a screenwriter writing himself into the movie while reflecting on his craft by means of a fictionalized story. But the film is broader than that and encompasses a variety of artists.
Charlie Kaufman is played Nicolas Cage as a dramatized Woody Allen character. Through Cage, Kaufman paints himself as a manic depressive writer unhealthy obsessive about his craft. He has difficulty communicating with people but up to now has been able to communicate best through his screenplays. That is until he is assigned to adapt John Laroche’s The Orchid Thief to the screen.
“I don’t want to make it a Hollywood thing,” he tells his agent. Not in the world of Spike Jonze he won’t.
Fiction overlaps with reality in Adaptation and Charlie Kaufman is seen living with his lazy identical twin brother Donald (Cage again). They couldn’t be more different and Donald is often an unruly houseguest, but Charlie’s disdain for Donald stems more from a sense of jealousy towards his brother that is more successful than him without trying half as hard. When Donald pitches his own idea for a screenplay, the Kaufman brothers engage in a debate about the guidelines of good writing that truly feels like something Charlie Kaufman believes in.
It’s a credit to Nicolas Cage’s performance that we can always tell Donald and Charlie apart. There was uncertainty about Donald’s existence during the release of the film and it’s easy to see why. Most of the characters in Adaptation are fictional counterparts of real people. Meryl Streep gives an especially risky performance as Susan Orlean, who still writes for the New Yorker. Of course, it must have taken a lot of courage on the part of the real Susan Orlean to allow such a depiction. If she had really done half of the things this movie has her doing, she would be no more than a memory at The New Yorker. The versatile Chris Cooper becomes unrecognizable as the dirty orchid poacher John Laroche. Orlean, Laroche, Charlie, and even Donald are not based on real people. Rather, they are fictional egos of real people.
This is because Adaptation is told through the eyes and imagination of a screenwriter. The things that the Kaufmans write about become cutaway visuals of how the images appear in their minds. As a result, the film feels like a wondrous variety show with cuts of Charles Darwin, wild orchids, and glimpses of orchid seekers hunting the elusive ghost orchid in the swamps. Indeed, the story about the orchid thief (the story within the story) is as gripping as the framework involving Charlie Kaufman adapting it to the screen and could make a movie on its own.
Adaptation isn’t specifically about Charlie Kaufman, his fraternal struggles, or even about screenwriting. It’s a film about many things, from writing to botany. Mostly, though, it’s a film about inner passion.
The most important dialogue in the film is a conversation between Susan Orlean and John Laroche. Tellingly, they cannot explain the rhyme or reason of passion. What ties Susan, John, and Charlie together? Maybe it’s the ghost orchid, which to each of them represents a Godot. When the flower is found, Susan reveals to John her secret passions that she hides from her husband. What is Charlie’s?
Well, before he finds out he finds his life turning into the sort of thriller that Donald was writing a screenplay on. As his real-life is turning into Donald’s inspiration, the two reminisce about a high school crush named Sarah Marsh. They recall that when Donald asked her out, she laughed at him when she thought he wasn’t looking, but only one side of him cared. Through Donald, whoever or whatever he may represent to the real Kaufman, Charlie learns who he really is and to stop caring about what others think he is. Donald’s death, though sad, is a rite of passage for Charlie. He has learned enough from him to survive on his own. Susan, meanwhile, no longer needs the free-spirited Laroche to fulfill her passion.
The term ‘adaptation’ has a double meaning here. The obvious meaning is found in Charlie’s work, the other is a philosophical question. How do we grow while fulfilling our passions?
Watching Adaptation, we wish that Nicolas Cage could give action veggie pills a break and return to his indie roots. This is his best performance. Then again, here Cage is really giving two performances as this is a film of doubles. The two brothers represent the two brains of a writer. Charlie is the side that wants to wallow in self-pity while Donald believes in letting your imagination run free and taking advice form experienced writers. His screenplay about a cop with a multiple personality disorder sounds pitiful to Charlie but it proves successful.
There is a wink to the audience when Cage breaks the fourth wall and chastises his decision to write himself into the script. That is, of course, exactly what Charlie Kaufman did in this movie. There are then three representations of Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. There is Donald, the movie’s Charlie, and the real Charlie Kaufman behind the camera looking at himself. We have to see Donald as an incarnation of one side of Charlie Kaufman, both his fictional and real-life counterparts. When Donald’s lousy script sells, Charlie is mad at his success not out of jealousy but out of self-disapproval. In a way, Donald is the part of Charlie Kaufman that can sell out.
Adaptation feels like Jonze and Kaufman’s most personal film because it is. It is about a great screenwriter examining himself and his art, even the dues ex machina that can sometimes be a part of life as real as the alligators in the Florida swamps. After all, the best writing is often inspired by real-life.
Adaptation is the kind of film that is useful in many fields, from quantum physics to individual identity. Being broad doesn’t necessarily make a great film, but Adaptation is one of the very few films that have a genuine curiosity in the questions it poses and it strikes gold. It is a useful, inspiring, and perplexing work and easily the best film of 2002.

Adaptation (a film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by the brilliantly quirky Spike Jonze) is an exceptionally original work with the inventive story of a middle-aged screenwriter called Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage stars in the semi-biographical role, presumably written by the screenwriter to portray elements of his personality) who is an agoraphobic man who hates himself more with each day and also with his increasing inability to write his latest script. This problematic script he has been offered is a fairly difficult adaptation of the New Yorker writer Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, so while we are watching Charlie attempt to adapt the book, we are also watching Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) writing the book and interviewing the orchid thief (Chris Cooper) himself a few years earlier.

Two sub-stories involved are: Kaufman’s twin brother Donald who seems to be writing the perfect film himself while Charlie struggles to write his; and Charlie’s struggles to make his move on a lady friend Amelia. After losing his love interest to a new man and discovering his brother’s script has been picked up and loved by his manager, Charlie decides that if he is going to write the script he will need to meet the author of the book he is adapting first. From this point onwards, Cage and Streep are juxtaposed in a deliciously unpredictable twist.

The protagonist that we come to trust in as a viewer externalises everything from what he has learned and transforms it into his final script, not obliging to advice to keep away from clichés, he defies originality for possibly the first time. He finished the script sane. However, the ending is not the most important part of the film, the performances are almost perfect and Meryl Streep once again beautifully becomes her character to create a definite believability.

The film has been seen as a comedy by many but it is just a satire. It exists as a wonderfully imaginative piece that subtly examines human nature as well as the soul of filmmaking. The characters are intriguing, inspiring an atmosphere that is tongue-in-cheek but melancholy throughout.

This film is commendable not for its resistance from falling into self-importance but actually for its creative spirit, a surreal graceful beauty that has gained a large cult following since the film’s release eight years ago.

Many a film has depicted the writer’s journey, but never has one totally indulged in it. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman reinvents surreality by involving reality. Rather than painstakingly adapting an unadaptable book, he instead illustrates his struggle as a screenwriter and Susan Orlean’s struggle as the author. With a veil of self-pity, he stakes himself as the protagonist (played by Nicolas Cage), then over-externalizes his involvement by inventing a fictitious, screenwriting twin brother, Donald. Both characters share a moral fiber and both journey’s eventually overlap when Donald manually shifts the existentialist story into a high-octaine thriller, shaming the responsibility of an adaptation. Right? Exquisite writing, brilliant directing, impeccable acting. This is a work of genius.

(Originally written August 1, 2008)

Because this movie is technically about the making of Adaptation., I figure it was appropriate for me to discuss the writing of this review.

Before this “review,” I had not written anything about movies for a while, partly because of laziness. Also, I typically only write about movies in two instances: I either hate something so much about a film I want to express it or I need to write about a film to help sort out everything I experienced. Charlie Kaufman’s near masterpiece falls into the latter category. This film uniquely examines the creative process of writing a film while blurring the line between fact and fiction. Adaptation. is the 8 ½ of the 21st century, a irreverent yet often serious comedy about the difficult process of creating the film that is rolling before your very eyes.

When the film opens with footage supposedly from the set of Being John Malkovich, you know this is not going to be a typical film. The film is self-referential, quirky and easy to fall in love with. Nicholas Cage plays Kaufman, depicted as a self-loathing, pathetic, over-thinking depressive. He struggles to write an adaptation for a book by Susan Orlean, played by Meryl Streep, and we as an audience see him struggle writing the film. Cage’s Kaufman ultimately decides to write about his troubled experiences that would ultimately result in the movie the audience is watching. A bit confusing, but the film never gets strange to the point of being incomprehensible. Spike Jonze helps direct the audience through the fantastical world of writer Kaufman to help them gain a better understanding of what means is to create art.

Running parallel to Kaufman’s story are the experiences of Orlean who year earlier was in the process of writing the book Kaufman is basing his film on. Susan is profiling John Laroche, a man who seems to have a genuine passion for life and for plants. John, played brilliantly by Chris Cooper, seems unaffected by the harsh realities that Orlean struggles with on a daily basis. She wants to feel something other than indifference and pain, but she struggles to find anything exciting in her life.

What makes the movie so fun to watch is its strange play between possible reality and allegorical absurdity. Cage’s struggle to write a film could in fact be realistic, but the film descends into preposterous situations in the final act which would be unlikely to happen. Although some might feel that the final act of the film becomes a bit too outrageous, it plays out as a hilariously absurd allegory for the potentially dangerous nature of the writing processes of the two main characters, Kaufman and Orlean. They both go through creative processes, one as a screenwriter and the other as an investigative author, that lead them to self-introspection and ultimately self-destruction.

Writer Kaufman, the one who wrote the actual film, has created a masterwork. He criticizes his own work and at the same time connects his absurd fiction to the reality of the struggle of writing a film. And although the writing is excellent, what makes the film great are the performances. Meryl Streep is heartbreaking as Orlean, always hinting at the pain of being unable to feel but always pushing it aside in the name of professionalism. Chris Cooper is also excellent as the unaffected yet complex character of Laroche. He plays the character with a sort of innocence that allows him to be so happy, yet he also reveals a subtle sense of wisdom and understanding. Cage is the centerpiece of the film, talking on the roles of the tortured and the delighted by playing both Charlie Kaufman and the fictional brother Donald. The relationship between Charlie, who aspires to defy convention, and Donald, who is inspired by seminars on screenwriting, reveals the conflicted nature of the writer of a film. There is a tension between duty and innocence throughout this film that turns what could have been a clever one-idea movie into a challenging, moving experience.

Las dos caras de Charlie Kaufman, las obsesiones que se multiplican, los problemas que se multiplican. “Adaptation”, mas alla de esa oscuridad siempre presente en todo guión de Kaufman, es la pelicula mas optimista que el dúo que Jonze/Kaufman hayan podido dar. Y encima de eso es un retrato perfecto sobre el hecho de gestar un acontecimiento artistico, sobre todo lo que implica crear algo que verdaderamente importa, sobre las cosas que se ponen en juego a la hora de escribir un guión, sobre las modificaciones que ese hecho genera en nuestra mente, en nuestra percepcion de las cosas.