38) Adaptation

Adaptation (2002)

Director: Spike Jonze

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Cara Seymour, Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Brian Cox

The second film of my lovely Sunday in front of the television was Spike Jonze's Adaptation. Adaptation and Memento are two films I have always put together in my head. I knew they both did interesting things with narrative and they had also both sold out in every DVD retailer in the country for years. Thank you eBay, though it must be said I only turn to eBay as a last resort for DVDs as sometimes I'm not entirely convinced about the legitimacy of the product I get (that's right, I'm talking to you what_a_bargain09).

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Cage) has been hired to write the adaptation of Susan Orlean's (Streep) book The Orchid Thief, based on the life of eccentric plant collector John LaRoche (Cooper). The prospect of writing a different, non-conventional style screenplay, much more in line with the feel of the book excites him, but he has no idea how to do it and is suffering from horrible writer's block. His quest for originality is made all the more frustrating by the fact that his less talented brother Donald (also Cage), who has recently decide he would also like to be a screenwriter, seems to be writing his naff, cliche-ridden screenplay with ease.

Adaptation has an incredibly clever screenplay, but for very different reasons to Memento. What makes Charlie Kaufman's screenplay for Adaptation so amazing is how self reflexive it is. The real life Charlie Kaufman was given the job of writing an adaptation of The Orchid Thief but struggled with how to make it work, so instead he writes a screenplay about Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter who was given the job or writing an adaptation of The Orchid Thief but struggles with how to make it work, so instead he writes a screenplay about Charlie Kaufman... It is like when you are in an elevator with mirror walls and they just keep reflecting and reflecting and reflecting, and getting smaller and smaller. The film starts of with a degree of reflexivity as we know that the character we see Nicolas Cage portraying is in fact a real life screenwriter, and is in fact the writer of the film we are watching. But where it gets really clever is when it starts becoming very apparent that the film we are watching Nicholas Cage write is in fact the film we are watching. About a third of the way through the on screen Kaufman has a brain wave and starts to narrate into his dictaphone the very sequence of scenes with which Adaptation opened. Thus as a viewer of the film, we see the events and inspirations responsible for the tone of the film we are watching.

From the beginning, Kaufman is adamant that he does not want this screenplay to be typical Hollywood stuff. He tells the producer: "I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know... or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean... The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't." Adaptation, continues in this vain for much of the film with Charlie struggling for inspiration, and not developing at all as a character until his brother Donald convinces him to got to a screenwriting seminar by Robert McKee (Cox). McKee preaches the importance of conflict, drama and character development, all staples of the typical Hollywood screenplay. After going to this workshop Charlie enlists his brother Donald to help him finish his screenplay and from that point on the tone of Adaptation changes. The cliched and conventional influence of Donald is felt in the film we are watching and all of a sudden many of the very things Charlie vowed to keep out of his script; sex, guns and car chases, manage to find their way into the film. This makes for a final act which has divided people. It is very different to the rest of the film, which has led a number of people to say it ruins the film, while others who appreciate the cleverness of the transition are very much supporters of the different ending. I can understand why it is the way it is, and appreciate how clever that is, but if you are looking at the narrative in isolation you'd have to say it's not a great ending.

Charlie and Donald Kaufman were nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. They didn't win, but this nomination is none the less notable due to the fact that Donald Kaufman does not exist, he was created for the purposes of the film. Thus Donald became the first ever fictional character to be nominated for an Academy Award (that is, unless you count the Coen brothers' nomination for Best Editing for Fargo which they edited together under the fake name Roderick Jaynes).

Once you work out what's going on, you will appreciate just how clever this film is. If you don't work it out you will find it a quite boring and frustrating film.