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Great Films of the 21st Century: Adaptation (2003)


You all may not be ready to head to the movie theaters to see the latest releases. This series, "Great Films of the 21st Century" is a chance to catch up on great films of the recent past on whichever streaming service you're using. I hope soon it will be safe for all of us cinephiles to get back to the theaters. 

Adaptation

Four stars

Director: Spike Jonze

Stars: Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton

Rated: R

Mixing film genres and subgenres more often than not comes across forced and artificial.

Director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, though, are uncommon with an uncommon film here. Their collaboration, "Adaptation," is just such an amalgam. But it is an engrossing, engaging film done with consummate skill and purpose. 

Though it borrows bits for its mosaic, it is startlingly creative. Kaufman and Jonze piece together biography, Hollywood satire, comedy, romance, drama of self-actualization and a thriller with an overarching theme that seamlessly brings the disparate parts together.

We are dealing with crafty, creative filmmakers here.

"He's really (expletive) good at structure," says one character about a filmmaker in the plot. That character may as well have been talking about Kaufman and Jonze themselves. 

Kaufman, ironically, is a character in the film. As with his previous film, "Being John Malkovich," he plays with the fiction/reality boundaries by writing real people into the fictional script. He does it so well, we're not quite sure of the difference. 

It starts with Kaufman (Nicolas Cage), who is struggling to adapt Susan Orlean's book "The Orchid Thief" for the screen. Cage portrays Kaufman as an awkward, balding, overweight bundle of nerves, full of self-doubt and self-loathing because of his shortcomings. His perceived failure is exacerbated by the impossibly lofty artistic goals he's set for himself. He has writer's block and can't find a way out of it.

While he re-reads Orlean's book to get a better feel for it, the parallel subplot comes into view, focusing on Orlean (Meryl Streep) as she researches her book's subject, Floridian orchid thief John LaRoche (Chris Cooper). 

Orlean covers her subject dispassionately. It's easy in this case because she's educated and LaRoche comes across as a backwards, no-tooth hillbilly. 

But as she delves deeper into his mission of finding the elusive ghost orchid, Orlean realizes LaRoche is quite intelligent and passionate, the latter quality she recognizes she is lacking. 

That may be a rather straightforward summary, but the film is anything but. Jonze and Kaufman manage to move from one comic interlude to another with such ease; from the beginning of time to Darwin's writing of the "Origin of Species," to a hysterically funny moment between Kaufman and his agent. 

The common thread is the film's title.

Kaufman must not only adapt the book to the screen, he must adapt better to his surroundings. He is helped along by his twin brother, Donald (also played by Cage), who blithely decided he wanted to be a screenwriter too. 

He bangs out a script about a serial killer, with multiple personalities, in no time at all, with the help of the screenwriting guru Brian McKee (Brian Cox). And yes, McKee is a real person and a real teacher of screenwriting. 

Donald's writing is the epitome of Hollywood convention - the anti-Charlie but with a gregarious personality. Since Donald's screenplay is an immediate success, Charlie reluctantly decided to seek McKee's help.

Orlean does her own bit of adaptation by following LaRoche further on his quest, long after her original article on him is written.

She admires his passion and longs to experience something like it. She adapts from the sophisticated New Yorker to a swamp rat to achieve fulfillment. 

At this point, the plots converge and the audience realizes how unpredictable the film has been. Just when we think we have a handle on things, we're surprised again. And the surprise isn't just for its own sake. Again, we are dealing with filmmakers who are pretty good at structure; it's just that we generally don't know what that structure is as we watch. 

As each surprise is revealed, we learn that it had its genesis earlier in the film. 

There is a wonderful sense of balance to everything, which is revealed in each character's dualistic nature (Donald might be considered Charlie's alter ego because the real Charlie Kaufman doesn't have a twin brother). 

At times the movie allows the beauty of Orlean's writing to come out while in the next frame comes a caustically funny joke. For example, we can see LaRoche is a gifted botanist but he says he's really going to make a ton of money with that "Internet thing" and launch a porn site. 

Those who say "Being John Malkovich" might have an idea of what to expect here. But few others will. Any time Jonze and Kaufman team up, I will certainly line up to see it.   

 

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