The idea that inevitable change drives us is an uncomfortable reality for many. I can accept the idea in theory, but one thing I've never been able to figure out is the significance of timing and change - why is it that change always seems to come at the most inappropriate or most unexpected times? It occurs when we're most unprepared to exit our insulated comfort zones, yet when we really wish for a change and prepare ourselves for something great that's just around the corner, we often come up short, disappointed and empty-handed?
The human evolutionary premise that change and adaptation are inevitable for survival lies at the center of a breathtaking new film comedy. A film so adventurous in spirit and so fast and loose with reality and fiction, that just thinking about the implications of the real versus the unreal, the fiction versus the fiction-infused real, is dizzying.
I'm talking about the much anticipated new film by director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman, the wildly inventive duo responsible for the offbeat hit Being John Malkovich. A comedy so original in tone, absurd in premise and straight-faced in out-there logic that Malkovich is the rare cult movie that's so original and sincerely performed that it remains an excellent film as well. And though Adaptation may not reach the decidedly wacko, deadpan brilliance of that film, its merits expand on Malkovich by offering genuine depth and feeling amidst all of the comic antics and logic reversals.
Adaptation is a human comedy that works on many levels: it's a Hollywood satire, an inventive adaptation of a popular non-fiction book, an examination of the relationship between art, passion and living, and a showcase for some of our most unpredictable filmmakers and actors. It's also the best comedy of the year.
Trying to describe the expansive and ambitious plotting of Adaptation is daunting, indeed there's so much going on here, some of it culled from reality, some of it fictionalized, that it all starts to overlap.
The film opens with real-life Malkovich writer Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) suffering from debilitating neurotic insecurity, combined with writer's block, after he's engaged to write a studio-driven screenplay for a non-fiction book named The Orchid Thief, authored by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), a prolific writer for The New Yorker. The book, about the relationship between Orlean and a sort of renegade orchid poacher named John LaRoche (the excellent Chris Cooper), set amidst the swamps of south Florida, is the starting point for his script, which gets weirder and funnier as the film progresses.
Charlie also shares his L.A. home with polar opposite twin brother Donald (also played by Cage), a gleeful airhead, who also happens to be an aspiring screenwriter, as dedicated to over-the-top Hollywood formula as Charlie is to his independent vision.
As Charlie begins to read Orlean's book in creating his screenplay adaptation, we see her personal story unfold. A successful New York journalist who has everything in her life but passion, she desires beyond all else to care deeply about something in life. As we witness the subtle life shifts in her book and personal journey, she comes to feel closely about LaRoche.
Back in L.A., Kaufman's writer's block and inability to finish the screenplay becomes so extreme that he begins to realize he must take a more active role in his writing. At the same time, he realizes that it's quite possible he has fallen in love with the character or Susan Orlean, and decides to travel to New York to meet her in person, searching for inspiration and behind the studio deadline for a finished script.
It's here that the film really begins to take off, as Charlie travels to the East Coast, attends a hilarious seminar on screenwriting by a melodramatic Hollywood guru, played to perfection by a commanding and flamboyant Brian Cox.
Soon brother Donald joins him in New York, and after making contact with Orlean, some pretty extraordinary events transpire that put Kaufman directly into his own script, and Orlean emerges with some startling secrets of her own.
To tell anything more would be a criminal spoiler, since so much funky originality and surprise has been woven into the mind-boggling third act. Suffice to say that fiction and reality overlap, and characters hold both wild and poignant surprises. It's in these stretches that Adaptation, which had been such a knowing and funny comedy up to this point, takes flight into a sort of dark comic nightmare that can be seen but not quite described.
What's fascinating about Adaptation is separating the fact from the fiction, and looking at how brilliantly the real-life Kaufman adapts the actual events of the real-life Susan Orlean's book, and then fictionalizes her to the point where he becomes a part of her story, and she his.
Adaptation succeeds beautifully as a clever meditation on what makes a writer tick, how Hollywood manufactures people and ideas, and an observant picture of a writer so out of touch with real feeling and passion that her literary wanderlust takes on poignant life.
Cage gives a revelatory comic performance that's absent of vanity or affectation, as the overweight, balding twins Charlie and Donald. He's just superb, and the two brothers have so much chemistry together you almost forget it's a just a visual trick. It's in the rare role like this that we're reminded what a real actor Cage is, since we often think of him in limiting macho posture roles, or persona-reflexive comic turns.
The artist Meryl Streep, though initially given the less flashy of the leads, ends up with a meaty role and much to do - she's sexy, funny, romantic and sad. Her Susan Orlean, in her desire to be "free," takes on unpredictable dimensions and ends up a remarkably vivid creature in the hands of Streep, who infuses her with signature detail and committed passion.
Chris Cooper initially seems a comic foil as unlikely love interest LaRoche, but he's also hiding some painful secrets of the past, and when he connects with Orlean later in the film, he reveals an uncommon gravity and heart that beats inside the gruff redneck of the film's earlier passages.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, who turned in such a wonderful performance in this year's Secretary, also shows up in a small, thankless role as Donald's free-spirited girlfriend.
It's tongue-in-cheek that Adaptation resolves its central conflicts with precisely the type of third-act Hollywood action climax Charlie dislikes, albeit delivered with thrilling character turns and all-out lunacy. But as the amazing Brian Cox, playing real life screenwriting expert Robert Mckee, states during his fire-and-brimstone seminar, "You've got to wow `em with the ending."
Adaptation does just that, from beginning to end. It's a wild, loopy film full of intellectual complexities and provocatively mounted ideas about re-birth, life, passion and movies, mixing reality and fiction seamlessly.
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