14 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FILM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 2003
Look for posters in your Kansan to take to the game
'Adaptation' will puzzle and thrill at the same time
In the spirit of this crazy movie, I thought I'd write myself into this review. I used to be a student filmmaker, and I bought a copy of the religiously studied movie manual Story, by Robert McKee. I still have a copy of it, though I've never read it.
REVIEW
And for that, I might get a spiritual pat on the back from Charlie Kaufman, the writer of Adaptation, a delirious new comedy from eccentric filmmaker Spike Jonze. Kaufman apparently detests McKee and everything he represents for the movies: strict structure and a painting-by-numbers approach to conflict. This movie is a riff on both McKee and the absurdity of his restrictions.
The hero of Adaptation is Charlie Kaufman, a sweaty, balding screenwriter played by Nicolas Cage. He has been assigned to adapt The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean's true-to-life, decidedly non-cinematic book about flowers, into a movie. As if that's not complicated enough, the real Kaufman tried to adapt the book but couldn't do it, and he came up with Jonze's movie. Are you following this?
The opening moments of Adaptation give credit to Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman for writing its screenplay. Also played by Cage, Donald is Charlie's fictional twin brother. As Charlie hunches over his typewriter, the vulgar Donald flips through a copy of Robert McKee's Story. Donald decides to write his own screenplay, a serial-killer thriller that follows the rules of McKee to the letter. The script becomes a big hit, as Charlie continues to struggle with The Orchid Thief.
Even though I had a blast watching this Mad Hatter movie idea play out, I'm worried about a critical bias. Film critics are really aspiring screenwriters. Often deliberately confusing. Adaptation slides from the past and the present to the real and the surreal. It frequently speaks to an extremely limited audience, but Jonze's movie never falls short of being completely engaging.
The parts that translate Orlean's book to the screen are so wonderful they almost make you wonder how a more traditional adaptation might have looked. Meryl Streep plays Orlean, an uptight journalist at The New Yorker. She's investigating John Laroche, a greasy horticulturist played by Chris Cooper who journeys through the swamplands with Seminole Indians to lift endangered orchids from Florida's state-owned parks. The movie turns the blooming orchids into a metaphor for Orlean's romance with Laroche, whose obsessive
Steven Shupe
sshupe@kansan.com
'ADAPTATION' ... A-
Starring Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper
Rated R for language, sexuality some drug use and violent images
Playing at Southwind 12,3433 Iowa St.
passions begin to rub off on the author.
The last 20 minutes of Adaptation represent bizarre moviemaking, either at its best or at its worst. The movie concludes exactly the way Donald and Robert McKee would want it to, as Jonze's inventive directing style deflates and his film fully embraces generic Hollywood formulas.
The flowers metaphor extends to Charlie's creative process, and it pays off in a big way in the film's dazzling final image. After Donald's success with the serial-killer script. Charlie attends a screenwriting workshop held by McKee, played in the film by Brian Cox. Charlie eventually enlists Donald to help him finish the adaptation. Charlie and Donald's writing sessions are hilarious parodies of the struggling artist, with Charlie clinging to his integrity as Donald drags the script down into a derivative hell. Cage gives a blistering performance in each role.
Still, Jonze's talent undercuts his satiric intentions: the ending's cliché chase sequences are thrilling despite themselves. Whether we're talking about the real Charlie Kaufman or just the sad-eyed loser Cage has created, the man has written a restlessly original work.
Some will get the joke and find it funny; others won't and will think it's sad. I'm hoping at least a few will find it serious because the movie could open up exciting new possibilities for the medium. Let me be the first to burn my copy of that screenwriting manual Donald Kaufman seems to love so much.
Shupe is a graduate student in journalism from Augusta.