Adaptation

Jason Killingsworth, January 27, 2003

This is not a review of James Cameron’s film Titanic.

But do you remember a few years back when Titanic made its big screen debut? When all those 12-year-old girls were practically throwing themselves out of windows in protest of Jack’s hypothermic demise? When those same 12-year-old girls were dropping half their allowances on movie tickets, attending three or four showings a day for weeks on end, driving Titanic’s net gross into the billions of dollars?

Well, I too remember all the hoopla surrounding Titanic, and I could never understand those girls’ almost pathological fanaticism; I mean, who in their right mind would go to the theatre to see the same movie twice in one day? Well, after this past Friday, the answer is apparently “I would.” And what movie inspired such reckless devotion, such blatant disregard for my financial well being? Well, the answer to that question is Adaptation.

This is a review of Spike Jonze’s film Adaptation.

Shut up, everyone – the movie’s starting. Dark background, opening credits appearing momentarily along the baseline of the frame, and the screenwriter’s self-deprecating voice-over monologue begins. The tentative voice we hear (belonging to Charlie Kaufmann, played by Nicolas Cage) complains of being fat, bald, unattractive, a walking cliché. However, he couldn’t be any more wrong on the final point.

Adaptation’s refreshingly unconventional script is the work of Charlie Kaufmann, who enjoyed quite a bit of media attention for his work on the bizarre and wildly inventive Being John Malkovich script. This time around he shares screenwriting credit with Donald Kaufmann, a fictitious twin brother who figures into the film’s plot, providing a perfect – not to mention, hilarious – counterpoint to the soft-spoken, anxious, sexually frustrated Charlie.

You see, Charlie Kaufmann is not just the writer of this film; he is the central character in the film’s action, resulting in a treatise on the writing craft, on writer’s block, on the challenge in adapting a fellow writer’s material for film, on the human element of creativity. How long do you have to stare down a blank sheet of paper before inspiration descends? What do you do after you realize that, in the ultimate act of self-indulgence, you have written yourself into the screenplay you are working on?

In the opening scene of the movie, Kaufmann has recently finished the Being John Malkovich script and taken on the job of adapting Susan Orlean’s best-selling book, The Orchid Thief, for an upcoming motion picture (the motion picture you are watching unfold before you). A profusely sweating Kaufmann outlines his vision to an attractive film executive over dinner at a swank Hollywood restaurant.

He is determined to write a non-traditional, anti-Hollywood script – no sex, no high-speed car chases, no guns, no espionage or drugs or fantastical climaxes.

But how do you write a script dealing primarily with flowers without putting half your audience to sleep? How do you make flowers interesting? Are flowers interesting? Adaptation follows Charlie through his artistic journey, allowing you as a viewer to observe the road that winds crookedly through the uncharted subconscious mind of the writer. Where are the simple rules, the pat answers?

The concept of adaptation is also examined in a variety of interesting ways aside from the obvious one: Kaufmann’s adapting of Orlean’s book. Characters are forced to adapt to their own circumstances, their own misgivings about life and relationships, their own perceived role in the universe. Adaptation celebrates the dynamics of living in a frighteningly complex world where the ridiculous Hollywood ending often appears to make about as much sense as real life.

Brilliantly acted. Cunningly written. Trippy. Interesting. Definitely worth going to see. Once. Possibly twice, if you share my taste in my movies.