Adaptation
(2002)
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Following up their acclaimed debut, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze are back to metaphysical moviemaking with ADAPTATION. The film stars Nicolas Cage as both Charlie Kaufman and his fictionalised identical twin brother Donald. While the boisterous Donald freeloads off his sibling and works on a serial-killer movie script, Charlie is tormented by both his own army of neuroses and his new project, adapting Susan Orlean's book THE ORCHID THIEF into a screenplay. As Charlie struggles to shape the nonfiction novel into a film, he begins writing himself into the story of Orlean (Meryl Streep), a sad-eyed journalist, and her subject, renegade Florida flower expert John Laroche (Chris Cooper). The resulting tale extends far beyond the scope of the book, stretching from Hollywood to New York to...Hollywood four billion years ago. |
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Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze again demonstrates his astonishing style and originality with this inventive comedy drama. Based on the Bafta-winning screenplay by previous collaborator Charlie Kaufman (who credits his fictitious twin brother Donald as co-writer, the first of many games Kaufman plays), the film takes the idea of life imitating art to new extremes. Instead of a straight adaptation of journalist Susan Orlean's non-fiction book The Orchid Thief, Jonze presents a surreal version of Kaufman turning the literary work into a screenplay. It's a dark, hilarious and visually intoxicating celluloid trip, made even more appealing by a riveting double turn from Nicolas Cage as both the creatively blocked Charlie and Donald, who's an aspiring screenwriter of action blockbusters. However, in a delicious tale crammed with such ingenuity, it's Meryl Streep who's the biggest revelation. She lets her hair down to incredible effect as the experience-hungry Susan Orlean, adding the final brilliant touch to a dazzling and emotionally vibrant movie.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Witty, inventive, playful movie about a blocked writer trying out various approaches to intractable material before relying on Hollywood clichés to get him through to the end; it's much funnier than it sounds, aided by some stylish direction and expertly