| ADAPTATION Rating:  Director: Spike Jonze Producers: Edward Saxon, Vincent Landay, Jonathan Demme Writers: Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman Director of Photography: Lance Acord Cast: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew |
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Review by: Ryan
Kugler
12/08/02
Being John Malkovich, arguably the most original film of the 90s, was a smashing success upon release and it ushered in a couple of brilliant new visionaries. First-time feature director Spike Jonze (a music video veteran) was praised for making the leap to Hollywood without bringing the typical music video style (that most of his ilk brings) with him. The person that got the most attention however was Charlie Kaufman, whose way out-there, though brilliant screenplay was the key reason that Malkovich was as unique and memorable as it turned out.
According to the latest work by this duo (the most exciting director/screenwriter team currently working), during the time that Malkovich was wrapping production, Kaufman was hired to adapt Susan Orlean's nonfiction book The Orchid Thief into screenplay form. After the lunacy of Malkovich, Kaufman was ready to try something different and was totally up for this challenge. Once he read and re-read (and read again) the complicated account of collector/poacher John Laroche and his obsessions for flowers, fish and other strange things, Kaufman realized that he bit off way more than he could chew; The Orchid Thief was unadaptable and, therefore, unfilmable. There was no way that he could turn this rambling book into anything resembling a film without adding such Hollywood conventions as drugs, sex and car chases, and he wasn't willing to sensationalize the material. After an extremely dark period of self-doubting and self-loathing, he came up with a brilliant idea and decided to write himself into his script. Instead of hammering out a straightforward adaptation, Kaufman's latest would focus on his inner demons and the struggles he had in adapting such a monster.
The above, in a nutshell, is what Adaptation is all about. To give anything more than this little bit of background information (information that I believe is helpful, especially to people going in with no prior knowledge) would be to ruin what is easily the most original film since the last time these two wackos (Kaufman and Jonze) got together.
As wonderful and unique as the story (which reminded me a tiny bit of The Player) and direction are, without the top-notch work of the accomplished cast (all working at the top of their game), it would all be for naught. Nicolas Cage is a revelation as Charlie (and his twin brother Donald), giving his second best performance to date (Leaving Las Vegas is a personal favorite and Cage devastated in the lead role.) Yes, in Adaptation Cage plays dual roles and he does a masterful job of giving each of them their own personality and there is never any doubt at any time as to which brother is on screen. Charlie has a bleak outlook on life and suffers from paranoia and self-loathing, while Donald (a far more commercial writer) is confident and positive about seemingly everything. Pulling off one of these performances would be a great feat, but Cage excels in both. Strangely enough, both Charlie and Donald (a fictional character) Kaufman are credited with the film's screenplay and I can't wait to see what happens when both names are read on Oscar night (since this will win one of the two screenplay awards, though I think it deserves to win in both the adapted and original categories).
For the first two-thirds, the film alternates between scenes of Kaufman trying to write the adaptation and Orlean researching and writing an article for the New Yorker, the basis for her book. In these scenes (which take place 3 years before the stuff with Kaufman), Meryl Streep as Orlean and Chris Cooper (in a surefire Oscar nominated performance) as Laroche are great together and they provide the film with some much-needed humor missing from the Kaufman segments. Both storylines are well handled and Jonze does an admirable job of moving back and forth between the two without ever distracting.
The three leads (and although Cage's Charlie looms large over all of the proceedings, all three share an equal amount of screen time) are given some nice support from Brian Cox as a TJ Mackey-like screenwriter who provides both brothers with some guidance, Ron Livingston (with the year's funniest line) as Charlie's agent and Maggie Gyllenhaal (a potential nominee for her work in this year's Secretary) as Donald's girlfriend. All of these performances are sharp and help add some color and flavor to the story.
If I have any complaints about Adaptation, it would be that it sort of loses its way in the final twenty minutes, veering off into a direction that I wasn't really satisfied with. In the end, the choices made sense and I could clearly see why Kaufman and Jonze took us that route, but I just didn't enjoy this stuff nearly as much as I did the previous ninety minutes. Regardless, this is a wonderful new film (which actually made me run out right after and pick up the Being John Malkovich DVD) about the power of the pen and I eagerly await the next Jonze/Kaufman project. Actually, I only have to wait three weeks for Kaufman's latest and you can bet that I'll be first in line when his adaptation of Chuck Barris' Confessions of a Dangerous Mind opens on New Year's eve.
(A Sony Pictures release. Opened in
New York and Los Angeles on December 6. Expands to more cities
at later dates.)
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