Adaptation

What a strange, wonderful little movie this is that has such big movie stars in it. Leave it to Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman to create a seemingly fully-formed and original genre: the fictional autobiography that also deals with themes of evolution and literary merits. I think that’s as good a description that I can come up with for it.

The title Adaptation is a play on words, both a self-referential nod and wink to the fact that Kaufman is detailing his struggles in finding a way to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief into a film and the basic themes of the novel which dictate how evolutionary theory can be grafted onto botany and show the strength of actual science at work to explain our world. It’s a smart, engaging film filled to bursting with grand and eloquent ideas that never feels bogged down or trite in trying to express them.

It helps tremendously that Kaufman fractured his own psyche into two different but completely realized presences in the film to give voice his internal struggles, not just in writing the damn thing but in life. One brother, Charlie, demands originality and great art to pour through him in everything he writes, while the other, Donald, prefers to crank out pulp-y entertainments which sound enormously entertaining for their sheer insanity and like empty calorie movies that Charlie abhors. Within the same household is a dialog, a very sweaty, neurotic, stuttering, socially awkward, passive-aggressive dialog, about the differences in art and commerce and what a writer should be striving for in Hollywood, and at large.

And we haven’t even begun to talk about the whole storyline with Susan Orlean and John Larouche, which begins as a fairly routine relationship between a journalist and a charming and intelligent, if crass and uncouth, subject. By the end of the film they’re chasing the brothers into the swamps of Florida and ready to murder them for discovering their affair. How we got from watching Charlie torture himself to adapt The Orchid Thief into a useable screenplay to this noir ending is baffling even after you’ve seen the film. But most of the joy is in watching the screenplay smartly and methodically lay down each of its cards one at a time.

Of course when a film is blessed with a cast as diverse and talented as this, that most certainly goes a long way in allowing for an audience to be a little lost and confused and not minds too much. Lead by Nicolas Cage, in one of his last great performances before selling his soul out to questionable choices like National Treasure and Ghost Rider, and brilliantly supported by Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper, Adaptation has got one of the all-time great ensembles. Cage’s double performance is a masterpiece, embedding each distinct brother with a fully realized personality and letting them battle each other is a great deal of fun. Streep and Cooper are, of course, great, but Cooper’s magnetism and unexpected sensitivity and poetry in his role is truly something great to watch. He deserved that Oscar. And it’s nice to see Streep letting her hair down, freak flag fly and generating laughs, most notably in the scene where she’s high and trying to get Cooper to help her recreate a particular dial tone.

Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal (who for me has always been a more interesting and better actor than her brother), Brian Cox and Cara Seymour help add even more color and originality to a film ready to pop with those very things. Swinton, so subtle and smart, plays a movie executive and with one blink of an eye or half-smile can totally destroy Charlie. And Cox as Robert McKee is obviously having a grand time playing someone who stopped giving a fuck a long time ago.

Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze make for a great pairing. Kaufman’s scripts are smart and delicate, they require someone who can juggle their variations in tone and styles, and Jonze seems to deeply understand his work and have mastered that particular art of juggling. Wouldn’t it be great to see them collaborate for a third time?