“Adaptation” is a film that’s a living, breathing, thing. In one sense, writing a review of it makes about as much sense as trying to write a review of your best friend, or someone you love. Clearly, words are not the best method to accurately describe such a thing. Any attempt is predisposed to failure, and the words unwittingly shift in the opposite direction of clarity.
Of course, there are people who must have at least an inkling of what they’re getting into before they go see something like a movie. For the benefit of such a demographic, I’ll go ahead and try — emphasis on try — to describe a film that largely defies explanation when it comes down to the question of “What’s it about?”
Sure, there’s a skeleton, or frame of a plot, which is, this is a movie about a man writing a movie (actually, adapting it from a book about orchids). But from this foundation, the characters and events of the film are a mixture of fiction and reality, the implied point being the lack of difference between the two. Much like the lives of the characters involved, the only narrative present is one utterly unpredictable and direction-less.
It might help to know that this work comes from director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman, who crafted “Being John Malkovich.” “Malkovich” is a wicked, weird adventure involving portals into the consciousness of a movie star, office building half-floors and John Cusack as a puppeteer. If this sounds strange, and if you haven’t seen the 1999 film, consider it required viewing for “Adaptation.” Basically, “Adaptation” is on the whole, an even stranger film. Or rather, it builds on “Malkovich” by taking the already strange and making it stranger.
The film’s protagonist is screenwriter Kaufman himself, played by Nicolas Cage. Cage/Kaufman attempts to adapt Susan Orlean’s (also a real person, played wonderfully by Meryl Streep) book “The Orchid Thief” and ends up in personal crisis, which turns into a kind of writer’s block. The more the Kaufman character becomes obsessed with the project, the more it becomes a reflection of his personal life. Eventually, there is the realization, from both the audience and Kaufman, that the situation playing itself out is the film that got written, and the one that is supposedly being watched.
Cage works double time, also playing Donald, the fictional identical twin-brother of Charlie (who, in further blurring the line between fiction and reality, receives screenwriter credit).
While at times “Adaptation” is sickeningly self-referential, its comedic overtones are mirrored by a dark underbelly, filled with moments of sudden and sheer intensity. Two car accidents occur; the one involving an explication of a character from the “The Orchid Thief” novel (another plot strand woven throughout the film) is intense in both its surprise and understated realism. The scene itself only lasts about a minute, but it’s one of the most intense ones in recent cinematic memory. Also, one of the film’s closing scenes, a conversation between Charlie and his brother — probably their first serious conversation throughout the film — is quite revelatory and sincere.
“Adaptation” is probably the most honest of studio films released in 2002. Critics have been keen on the double meaning contained within the film’s title — both a literal and evolutionary adaptation. However, the same folks who have artificially tried to conclude their reviews of the film by calling it any one thing have missed the point. There are so many themes — inspiration, love, alienation, passion, to name a few — working here that what you come out of the theater with depends on what you brought in.
An early scene, taking place on the set of “Malkovich,” involves Charlie Kaufman observing the filming while being blatantly ignored by the crew — actors, directors, lighting personnel — around him. But whereas he was invisible in “Malkovich,” in “Adaptation,” there’s a real Kaufman somewhere behind it all, smiling.
Check out “Adaptation” at Cinemark 17 theaters in Springfield.