Adaptation

Released 2002
Stars Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Judy Greer, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed by Spike Jonze
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman

This movie is alive from start to finish, and it's unlike anything I've seen before. It's laugh-out-loud hysterical until midway through when something comes out of the blue, and it becomes poignant. Then it becomes hysterical again. Later it takes a 180 degree turn to pull everything together while simultaneously destroying everything it had built throughout the entire movie. This film is not predictable.

They say you should write what you know. In this case, the well-respected, real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) writes about the well-respected, neurotic screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Charlie's trying to adapt Susan Orlean's real-life non-fiction book, "The Orchid Thief," into a movie script, which is just what the real-life Charlie attempted to do. I haven't read the book, but Charlie bemoans the fact that the book is unfilmable. It certainly sounds like it is, and Charlie is paralyzed over wanting to do justice to the book without making it a Hollywood hack. Meanwhile, his twin brother, Donald (also Nicolas Cage), takes a three-day screenwriting course and decides to write a thriller. While Charlie is suffering for his art, Donald is gleefully throwing every cliche he can at his script. All of this is hysterical, but there are two more storylines which concern a mixture of reality and fantasy about real-life writer Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) and the real-life subject of her book, John Laroche (Chris Cooper).

The movie is a movie within a movie with another movie, Being John Malkovich, thrown in for fun. It moves freely back and forth through time to tell this story, which is actually being written as it's told. With Charlie's voiceovers, we watch the film being written, and it's fascinating. We hear Charlie ponder his choices, and then we watch which one he selects. Later we hear him describe everything we had just seen. This movie is a blast as it toys with us and its characters. There's a major shift at the end that I don't want to give away, but it becomes completely tongue-in-cheek as we watch Donald take over the screenwriting. Naturally, we get the sex, drugs, guns, and chase scene that Charlie had feared. Personally, I appreciated it for what it was doing, but I would have preferred Charlie's script to work itself out. Still, this is easily one of the best movies of the year, and it's one of the best of the new century.

Summary by Bill Alward, January 19, 2003