Sometimes great filmmakers get credit where credit isn't
due, and even a bit of bad filmmaking is glossed over by people hell-bent on
asserting that Jonze and Kaufman can do no wrong. I can easily see the case
being made that the final third of the film is intentionally bad, because
Kaufman had spent much of the film poo-pooing the very kind of cheap thrill
screenwriting that most thrillers employ. However, I'm not going to play that
game, because even if taken on those terms, the minimal value of the irony
employed just isn't worth how much time is spent exploring it.
Ok, now comes the time where I have to explain the plot. I
suppose I feel a little like Charlie Kaufman here, because the much of the
film is about Kaufman's frustration on trying to adapt an novel that can't be
adapted, and that same frustration comes into play when trying to write a plot
outline for a film that has no discernible plot. Basically, all I will say is
that Adaptation is about Charlie Kaufman's (Cage,
Windtalkers) frustration while
adapting Susan Orlean's bestseller, "The Orchid Thief." He suffers from bouts
of writer's block, feelings of inadequacy, a lack of a love life, and a
deepening disgust of screenwriting for the Hollywood establishment.
Meanwhile, his twin brother Donald (Cage, in a dual role) succeeds without
much talent in all the areas that Charlie feels he is failing at. Juxtaposed
with this story, is the story of the book, which features Susan Orlean (Streep,
Defending Your Life) writing her book
about a man who steals endangered flowers, and in the search finds that she
has been lacking passion for life all along.
Adaptation is undeniably a real achievement of
multi-textural thematic layers, all tied in to one central element, that it's
quite a dizzying effect trying to sort all of them out as I sit and type
this. Even the title of the film is not simple, because the film is literally
about struggling with an "adaptation" of a book, while a screenwriter
struggles to "adapt" to life, while writing about another writer who is having
trouble "adapting" herself. Oops, I think my brain is spewing smoke out of my
ears from overwork.
Nicolas Cage is terrific as the Kaufmans, both Charlie and
Donald, and the fact that they are quite easy to tell apart even though they
look exactly alike is testament to Cage's admirable abilities. The supporting
cast is just as appealing, as is the unfaltering direction by Spike Jonze in
keeping the tone of Kaufman's maddeningly complex plotting just right, at
least until the anti-climactic climax. (How's that for an oxymoron?)
Interestingly enough, Adaptation actually does manage
to adapt Orlean's book by extracting the ultimate message about being content
with oneself, foibles and all. It's one of those films that may lose some
people because it is self-indulgent and a tad pretentious, as snobbish in its
intellectualism as
Punch-Drunk Love
was in its artsy-ness. Kaufman is a brilliant man and may be endlessly
talented, but he isn't perfect and neither is the film, as there was one bad
joke in the film, and unfortunately it's the one that ran far too long.
