Review of Adaptation. (2002) by Sol H — 26 Dec 2010

We've reached a point in fiction where we can indulge the 'meta', actually making films about films and breaking the traditional layers and structures of how to tell a story. Charlie Kaufman here has written a film about a fictionalised version of himself, during filming of a real life movie he wrote (Being John Malkovich), trying to adapt a real-life novel into a screenplay, while telling a fictionalised story about that novel's author and her experiences which led to her writing the book. Confused yet? Imagine what its like watching the film then!

It's very hard to categorise Adaptation into anything. Is it a comedy? Its not quite funny enough. A documentary? No. A biography or based on real-life events? I doubt Kaufman was chased through the Everglades by a gun-titing Susan Orlean, so no. Yet a great many of these characters ARE real people, not to mention the fact certain actors cameo as themselves. It's a very bizarre concoction that serves as a way of exploring the fictionalised Kaufman, and the idea of growth and change. The meta idea is applied to this: Kaufman is trying to write something where the characters DON'T change or grow, which defies writing structure (as a writer, I can understand this), while conversely his twin-brother is writing traditional Hollywood pap. The real point of the story is how KAUFMAN grows and changes, Orlean too, in different ways yet through the tangled and complex web they become embroiled in. It's very hard to explain what happens in this movie because it doesn't follow tradition at all, operating on several levels only certain people I honestly think will get. It certainly detaches you as a viewer sometimes - I had to stop & pause on occasion, never was I truly engrossed because it was just so damn odd I had to try and think about what was happening!

The performances though are exemplary. I think Nicolas Cage is a terribly overrated and melodramatic actor, but here he plays largely against type as the chronically insecure & social-retarded Kaufman, plus his deluded yet far more outgoing twin Donald - and skillfully manages to create two very different men. I wish he was this good in everything; Meryl Streep was good as the detached, passion-seeking Orlean (if not Oscar-worthy, as she was nominated) and rather Chris Cooper steals their scenes as orchid thief LaRoche, a self-aggrandising, uncultured yet charming & tragic figure. Brian Cox too crops up for a brilliant cameo as straight-talking, legendary screenwriting guru Robert McKee (the way he chews out Kaufman in one scene is punch-the-air awesome). A shame really they're undercut by a quite unnecessary 'action' ending which ironically is far closer to what Kaufman (the writer and character) spends the whole movie denigrating. Maybe that was the point.

BUT... it's a marmite of a film. Extremely clever, superbly acted, but it could leave you cold and if not confused necessarily, a bit baffled as to what it all means. That's how it left me anyway.