The Write Stuff

Charlie Kaufman pens, and lives, a fascinating "Adaptation." (Film Review)

    Charlie Kaufman is a real person.  He is one of the two listed screenwriters of Adaptation.  He is also the main character in Adaptation.  Adaptation, essentially, is about Charlie Kaufman writing Adaptation.

    Confused?  We haven't even gotten there yet.  Have I mentioned that the other screenwriter is none other than Charlie's twin brother, Donald, who is also a character in the film? However, unlike Charlie, outside of Adaptation, Donald Kaufman does not exist.

    Okay, so we go...

    Adaptation opens in 1998 on the set of Being John Malkovich, the bizarre hit that put Kaufman and his partner and Adaptation director Spike Jonze on the map.  We see Kaufman (played with balding head and swollen gut by Nicholas Cage) stand in the shadows of the production.  His is the writer- the alchemist behind this strange concoction, yet no one seems to know who he is and one gaffer shouts at him to get off the stage.

    In real life, Kaufman was tagged with adapting Susan Orlean's non-fiction bestseller The Orchid Thief into a filmable screenplay.  Orlean herself based the book on a story she wrote for The New Yorker about John Laroche, a semi-lawless Florida horticulturist who was convicted of trying to steal rare orchids from a nature preserve.  Again, in real life, Kaufman found the task near impossible, especially the "sprawling New Yorker bull****" that served as filler for Orlean's book when her story about Laroche could not fill an entire volume.  The cultural history of orchids.  The physical history of the Florida wetlands.  How can one write a screenplay about this?

    As I said, this all happened in real life.  This also describes much of what happens in Adaptation- right up to the point where Kaufman decides to write the screenplay about him trying to write the screenplay.

    To most people, this premise is going to sound as intriguing as all get out or as boring as hell.  The hall-of-mirrors effect that this mix of real and real is wildly disorientating (I mean this in a good, I'm-glad-I-rode-that-rollercoaster-that-almost-killed-me, kind of way) but Adaptation isn't simply a colossal stunt in the coliseum of the self-referential: the thrust of the story isn't about Laroche or Orlean or Florida or orchids.  It is about Kaufman (a self-described "mess" who puts all of his spirit into his on-paper creations so that he has none left to face the world) struggling to find some structure to his story- and to his life.  And since this is a story ostensibly set in reality, in one avenue he will succeed and in the other he won't.

    Donald Kaufman (also played by Cage) looks almost exactly like his twin brother only with a little more on the top and a little less in the middle.  One of the film's creative twists, Donald acts as Charlie's antithesis.  Where Charlie is self-loathing, Donald is confident.  Where Charlie is socially inept, Donald is suave and charming.  Donald announces that he wants to be a screenwriter just like his brother and sets off attending workshops and reading books that promise the secret to writing "blockbuster" scripts by dropping garrish buzzwords and phrases and teaching formula.  Donald is the devil on Charlie's shoulder.  His screenplay for a hideously idiotic-sounding serial killer movie becomes a smash with agents while Charlie still struggles to carve his own path.  But there is a soft heart in the story for Donald and it says great things for the film's maturity that it doesn't thumb its nose at him.  Creativity, the message seems to be, is a most worthy path for a writer.  It is the grail to create new worlds and do things that have never been attempted.

    But it doesn't hurt to titillate your audience once and a while, either.

    Charlie's sphere eventually collides with that of Orlean (an impeccable Meryl Streep) and Laroche (scene-stealing Chris Cooper).  This is where Adaptation takes its flight from reality.  Not simply crossing the border from non-fiction to fiction, but another surreal layer is added in a story that Charlie Kaufman admitted he couldn't find an ending to.  To describe it any further would ruin the surprise, although once you see it, you'll understand why non-existent brother Donald is also credited with the screenplay.

    Adaptation is a superb film.  Cage shows a great deal more humanity than I've witnessed from him lately and makes the real Charlie Kaufman a character to be adored rather than pitied.  He also makes brother Donald distinctive enough to believe that, yes, these two could be brothers.  There are times where it can be hard to tell the two apart- until one walks or opens his mouth.  The contrasts between the two are carried to a point- there is no doubt that Charlie is the better writer but in the end, he learns that he can learn a lot from his brother, too.

    My recommendation for Adaptation comes with some warning.  Because it has so many layers to dive through, Adaptation holds great opportunity to be misunderstood.  I've already seen critics complain that it embraces the same Hollywood system of doing things that it also decries (not true: the movie isn't anti-Hollywood in the slightest) or that it sells out its cleverness for a "conventional" Hollywood ending (think back to Donald).  It is impossible to figure where in the range of feelings any given viewer will fall when it comes to Adaptation, but there is one thing for certain: you've never seen anything like it before.  A