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Photo courtesy of Colombia Pictures
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Nicolas Cage (left) and Meryl Streep star in "Adaptation," a film by the same directing and screenwriting team behind "Being John Malcovich."
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By Lindsay Utz
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday January 16, 2003
With Hollywood so desperate for solid, original scripts, the majority of what hits the screen is more often than not a story based upon a book. But sometimes books are too quiet to be movies, full of soft insights yet little plot movement.
When screenwriter Charlie Kaufman ("Being John Malkovich") was commissioned to adapt Susan Orlean's best selling novel "The Orchid Thief" into a script, not only did he discover that it was one of those cases, but he became obsessed with his inability to adapt the highly passionate, beautiful but slow-moving book.
So Kaufman did the smartest thing he could've done: he broke the rules.
After "Being John Malkovich," we thought it couldn't get any weirder or smarter, but it did. Kaufman teams up with the talented Spike Jonze again in a film as quirky and intelligent but even more compelling than its antecedent.
According to Robert McKee's novel "Story," a bible of sorts for any aspiring screenwriter, thou shall not use voice-over. Thou shall not be self-indulgent. Thou shall not have a character whose conflict isn't resolved by the end of the film. And thou must absolutely not write yourself into your own screenplay.
So begins the "Adaptation" and the breaking of all these rules.
The film smoothly weaves together, more or less, three stories, with Charlie's writer's block serving as the soil from which the other two grow.
There is the story of John Laroche, played by Chris Cooper ("American Beauty"), an orchid breeder who was caught stealing plants from a Florida state preserve. He has dirty hands, is missing his front teeth, and considers himself the smartest man he knows. Cooper's performance as the untamed redneck is remarkable. He's confident, smart, wise, and pained, all at the same time. He's a fascinating character played by a fiercely talented actor.
Susan Orlean, performed radiantly by Meryl Streep ("The Hours"), is a classy journalist who writes for The New Yorker. Sent to Florida to write a piece about Laroche, she finds herself oddly touched by he whose passion for flowers is so genuine, the type of passion she quietly longs for. She expands the story into a novel that Charlie is hired to adapt.
Charlie's writer's block is brutal. He's frustrated, insecure and hypercritical of himself. He's everything every writer privately is. Maybe a muffin might help him write, or a coffee. He suddenly comes up with a new idea and frantically shouts it into his tape recorder. Moments later, replaying the tape, the idea sounds ridiculous.
But the idea isn't a failure because it's here, playing out before our eyes. It's totally self-indulgent, there's no character resolution, the author is a part of the script, it's breaking all of the rules, and it's brilliant.
Nicolas Cage plays Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald. It's amazing that five minutes into the film you've already forgotten that Cage is playing both characters.
Charlie sits with a blank page in front of him, panicked and idea-less. Meanwhile, Donald has decided to become a screenwriter, too, and he's always there, spitting out rules from McKee's bible: each one broken before us, as we watch and laugh.
Charlie points out to his brother that there are no rules of story structure, just principles: a distinction that separates clichˇ work from original work. "Adaptation" is an outlaw, a rebel of a script, following only principles. It's playful, insightful, difficult, burning, sad, funny and mean ÷ a direct reflection of the struggle to write, to care, to desire, to adapt.
Donald follows the rules of storytelling and his clichˇ thriller script becomes a hit.
Charlie's screenplay, on the other hand, is not so simple. Unlike the other scripts he's written, this one has no plot and is just too delicate for the big screen.
He reads Orlean's book again and again, staring at her picture on the back fold. Although he admires the book, he's more fascinated with her.
The framework of this film and its structure break many of McKee's rules. While it moves from story to story, from fact to fiction, from flower to flower, from Cage to Cage, we are breathless.
Three-quarters of the way through there is a major shift in the story. For most of us, it probably isn't the ending we want. There's action, surprise, epiphany and resolution. There are even daisies and a happy song. It becomes the movie it fought so hard not to be; but it's appropriate, self-reflexive, making fun of itself, commenting on the industry, stabbing at McKee and all the other rule-makers, and messing with you and me.
I sat in the theater as the lights came back up, unable to move from my seat and unable to accept that it was over and I'll never see it for the first time ever again.
There is a scene in the film when Laroche explains to Orlean how orchids seem to drive people crazy, that those who love them love them madly. I love "Adaptation", I love it madly, and I've tried so hard not to write myself into this review, but I've broken the rules anyway ÷ sometimes it's just too personal.
