Adaptation. (2002)

Well. It requires a good performance from Nicholas Cage. And this time, he nails it. Because the movie is a comedy as much as anything, Cage's quirks are perfect. The drama is brought by the great Meryl Streep. In terms of the writing and plot, is truth that at times Kaufman wants to show how smart he is (he is) and can get a little annoying (just a bit). But when is over, you are going to realize how different and good this movie was.

The first time I watched this movie, I thought "this is either pretentious garbage or pure genius". After letting it sink in for a few days, I thought about it and certain pieces started fitting together. I decided to give it a second watch, and afterwards I was like "oh of course, its genius".I think a lot of people who criticize this film don't understand what the film is going for. I'll try not to spoil anything, but I left a disclaimer since I'll be roughly outlining the plot. A common criticism I see is that the film tries to reject the Hollywood screen writing clichés but chickens out at the end for a dumb action-packed climax. Here's the thing: The film uses the 3-act structure in an ironic way. The film is about the writing of the film. Early on in the film, Charlie Kaufman (the character, not the real person) is trying to stay faithful to the source material he's given to adapt. The source material is The Orchid Thief, a nonlinear book that doesn't really follow a typical 3-act structure. When he experiences writer's block, he asks his twin brother, who went to a screen writing seminar, for help. He even goes to the screen writing seminar himself. Every piece of advice he gets makes the script more formulated, and thus so does the film. It should be fairly obvious once we see Susan Orlean (the character, not the real person) snorting plant drugs and fornicating with John Laroche (the character) that fiction has taken over. That's also why Charlie and Donald follow her to Florida, and crazy stuff involving guns and an alligator ensues. The film's ending works on multiple levels. It can be enjoyed by the average moviegoer as a dumb fun climax but more discerning viewers will be in on the joke.One thing I want to bring up before I wrap up is Nicolas Cage's performance as the fictional Charlie Kaufman. At first I thought "oh come on, there's no way anyone is that insecure and submissive" but then I saw videos of interviews with the real Charlie Kaufman and was like "oh wow, Nick Cage nailed it". Its not an exact recreation, but it definitely works as a fictional portrayal.There's more details I'll leave for you to discover on your own. All you have to know is this is a very clever film and serves as a great satire of Hollywood tropes. Personally, I think this movie is perfect, and there's nothing I would change that I could imagine making the film objectively better. Charlie Kaufman is one of the most fascinating screenwriters working in Hollywood today and I'd say all of his films are worth a watch!

Adaptation's plot revolves around a script-writer, Charlie Kaufman, and his brother, Donald Kaufman, and how Charlie Kaufman attempts to bring a non-fiction book about flowers called THE ORCHID THIEF into a film script to be adapted into a movie, which serves the purpose of the title of the film. Stress comes with Charlie's process of creating the script and meanwhile Donald Kaufman achieves success with his script, The 3, stirring up disgusted envy for the character Charlie Kaufman and adding to his continuous stress. Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman are both played by Nicholas Cage and each have funny, unique and likable personalities with Donald Kaufman being the naive "stupid brother" comic relief and Charlie Kaufman being the intelligent, experienced serious man. They both contain great chemistry on the screen considering the fact that it's played by one person only and revolve importantly in the storyline of the film while also being entertaining in their roles, and it's a pure joy to watch the two characters interact and react to the situations in the movie. Adaptation is an excellent film however mainly because it serves the purpose of feeling like a dream by feeling strangely surreal and perfectly normal at the same time, but it also raises a lot of thought-provoking questions about the topic it is on: movie scripts. Adaptation incredibly breaks the normal structure of a movie by rearranging, replacing and even removing, and sets out to do feats that no other movie would dare to do and you may find yourself wondering if the normal film structure is as good as everyone says. The film remains in a strange taste, uses voice-over narration to explain the characters and uses no ordinary structure, yet we are fascinated and entranced by the magically dream-like atmosphere of the captivating film but also being self- aware of it's actions by expressing it in an intentionally destroyed manner. When you watch this movie, I think you'll get feelings that you never thought were there.

The kaleidoscope of metalanguage presented in the film, are presented and used with mastery, either at the beginning of "Adaptation" which is linked to the term "Being John Malkovich", both directed by the distinguished Spike Jonze. Still on metalanguage, which is about an adaptation of a book to a cinematographic script, which is created simultaneously with the film itself, ie a film about itself, as a joyfully self-referential exercise of self-deconstruction. But it is also, more profoundly, a film about its own non-existence - a narrative that confronts both the impossibility and the desperate need to tell stories provokes our expectations of coherence, plausibility and fidelity to the reality lived.There are variety of games presented in the film are dominated by the restlessness of knowing what is real what imaginary, what in fact thinks Charlie Kaufman, movie roter and what in fact thinks or thought Susan Orlean, when writing the book "The Orchid Thief "that inspired the film. What script rules are actually followed, ignored, and subverted? And that in the film are presented and worked through the figure of the writing twins Charlie Kaufman / Donald Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) and scriptwriter Robert McKee (Brian Cox).So well adapted to this story are the actors, who in addition to acting are guides who invite us and lead us to organize the fragmentary data of the film. If in the figure of the twins writers we have two sides of the same man, and that in "Adaptation" is referenced like the opposites of the same figure of a policeman and a bandit, where both are complementary. If the script uses these two men to present the diversity of the same man, we have in Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) the perfect adaptation of the divergences that fit in a single person, of how human and fragile and volatile and how the process Of adaptation of a person is not necessarily followed by completely philosophical or psychological questions, are in the measure, impulses of an immediate action. The character Susan surprises with her abrupt change in the end and unpredictability of her attitudes, though consistent, without script or construction failures.The use of the pace in "Adaptation" is undoubtedly an important and necessary point to tell this story, Jonze with his experience in clips and series for MTV, was able to absorb the freshness of a stormy pace that assists in the complexity of moments lived by Charlie and Susan or in moments of lull and mockery of Donald's life as well as in the great final Match Point, a frenetic, accelerated jab of actions and images, but which unfortunately comes out too much, unnecessary, in trying to present solutions that lead to an outcome.At first, Charlie's overly self-conscious and pseudo-intellectual crises are fun as we recognize the same tendencies in ourselves. So we also feel his yearning when he is so touched by a book that it looks like it could be the catalyst to kick him out of his narcissistic lifestyle. That is, until Kaufman reveals his great epiphany - that even after enlightenment, life is still cheap and dirty. What is not true or absolute lie, but turn into two hours of a film, where director and screenwriter apparently dialogues with each other and the public is the passive stance to accompany their discussions.