Caged Heat
Adaptation (12)
On general release. Directed by Spike Jonze. Starring Nicolas Cage: Charlie/Donald Kaufman; Meryl Streep: Susan Orlean; Chris Cooper: John Laroche; Tilda Swinton: Valerie; Brian Cox: Robert McKee; Cara Seymour: Amelia. Written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. Based on The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean.
Once, journalist Susan Orlean wrote a New Yorker piece on a Florida trial of John Laroche, accused of breaking federal conservation laws. She turned the piece into a book, an exploration of the passion that flowers could produce in one man. Adaptation is the film of the book of the article. Or not. The film skips the parenthetical meditations and background that characterise such journalism. And real life pieces tend not to have an arc, or lessons, or drama.
Adaptation takes real people: Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), John Laroche (Chris Cooper), Charlie and Donald Kaufman (both Nicolas Cage), Robert McKee (Brian Cox), among others and fictionalises them. Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich, and is protrayed by Cage as a neurotic worrier — Cage looks to me like a larger Gene Wilder and seems possessed by his spirit. Donald Kaufman hasn't written a movie until this one, and is played by Cage as a confident, thick-skinned, happy survivor. That the Kaufmans send themselves up so early in the film is a clue to where it goes with the other characters.
Donald wants to write, but learns by attending Robert McKee's lectures; Charlies says he talks like he's 'joined a cult' — some of the fun is Donald's self-conscious jargon scratching Charlie the wrong way. Cage is simply terrific; his body language alone is enough for an Oscar. It's a show-off role, but from now you can never doubt that he can act. He's funny as Donald, and funny, annoying, and moving as Charlie. Charlie wants to write, but can't find the words or the story he wants to tell.
There isn't a plot as such: two guys try to write, one comes up with a horrifyingly awful script (about a serial killer with a split personality who is his last victim and the cop chasing him: there are chase sequences, even though how someone chases himself isn't worked out), the other is blocked. His script includes the entire history of the world (which makes it to the final film). Somehow two scripts get written. There is a pivotal moment, which may be intended ironically when Charlie attends a McKee lecture himself to hear the audience berated for thinking that life is without big drama — precisely the point of the molasses slow book. So Adaptation slides into a Hollywood film, with events and chases and the like.
Covering the story of a film like this is to spoil it while adding nothing. It's more like a mid-period Seinfeld episode. A lot of talking, fretting, and social manners being picked over. The dialogue is well handled, every line is funny, and the central performances are strong. It's a critics' film, a lot of it works best when being recalled or discussed. It's a film to make you feel smart. These are weaknesses. It is still the most original film to have come out in a long time, and full of small, memorable pleasures.
