Adaptation
The King of That
The worst thing about Adaptation is its screenplay.
This is not to say that the screenplay in Adaptation is bad. Well, actually, it is. Sort of. I mean, it’s brilliant, and everything, but it’s still bad. Famously bad, even.
The story is the stuff of legend. You have a famous Hollywood screenwriter, well known for his creativity in a business where originality took a hike some time ago and is now in semi-retirement in Arizona, selling real estate. His next task is adapting a book for the screen — well, not exactly a book, you see, more like an extended magazine article, a halfway-ironic story about the environment and law enforcement and natural selection, and who knows what all. And it’s out of the New Yorker, you know, which is good and traditional and all, especially since they fired that English chick, what’s her name. But it’s not what your movie fan reads, it’s not like it was out of Movieline or Premiere or, God help us, Entertainment Weekly, it’s not something that people will be familiar with. And the thing is padded, you know, stuffed to the end papers with trivia, like some sort of demon-possessed John McPhee book with bits and pieces of information drawn from, well, the whole wide world, the entire history of everything, thrown in here and there. And — and this is key, damn it, it’s about flowers, about orchids, which are nice and all, but which just sit there, you know, just sit there and look pretty, which is fine for the visuals, the look of the picture, but don’t do a thing — not one single God-blessed thing — to move the narrative forward. And then, just to top it off, you have the main character, the hero of the piece, who is just impossible. A swamp rat with a rattletrap van! A charming rogue, sure, but he’s also a horticulturist, someone who knows the Latin names for plants, a self-important pseudo-intellectual cracker with long hair and no front teeth. Impossible! Can’t be done.
So the screenwriter, who is under the gun, turns in this… well… it’s hard to pigeonhole it… turns in this thing, this narcissistic self-absorbed navel-gazing piece of… well, it’s just bad. What he’s done, you see, is to make the screenplay about him, not about orchids or the literary style of the New Yorker or about the intricacies of the Endangered Species Act or anything else even closely related to the book, but about him! Imagine what kind of level of egotism it would take to do something like that! To write about yourself in the context of somebody else’s book! And not only that, to cast yourself in the worst possible light, to show yourself as an old, fat, balding pathetic excuse for a human being, twisted around the narrative like a pretzel, broken on the wheel of enforced creative output.
And that’s just the beginning of it. The screenplay is bad enough just in its structure and its conceits and the general overall creepiness of its main character, the aforementioned screenwriter, but does it have to provide an identical twin for the character? Who may or may not exist? (Just try getting a straight answer to that question!) No straightforward photography in this picture, this means mirrors and trick shots and who-knows-what-all! And the majority of the sex in the movie is… well, better not go into that. And all those scenes in the lost and trackless swamp, just a miserable place to shoot, maybe the worst possible environment for delicate electronic equipment. And this guy calls himself a screenwriter! Oh, dear God… just imagine how you cast this part, nobody’s going to want to do this, nobody is going to want to play a writer in the first place, much less a fat balding pathetic wretch who’s only in the movie because he can’t, apparently, write his way out of a wet paper bag.
You see what I mean about the screenplay.
But that’s the worst part of the movie. The worst part! Even though the screenplay is undeniably brilliant and creative and different and unpredictable, everything else in the movie overshadows it. Think of it! Adaptation is wonderful, fabulous, simply sublime. Despite the weaknesses, the twitches, the overwhelming — there’s no other phrase for it — monstrous narcissistic obnoxiousness of the screenplay — the movie succeeds, it soars, it… yes! even inspires.
There’s enough credit for this astonishing, amazing, unprecedented achievement to go around. Let us first provide all due praise to director Spike Jonze, who rides, powerful but unseen, on the back of this wild beast of a screenplay, this heaving, rolling, bucking bronco of a narrative, and makes the damned thing gallop, gives it momentum. Given the impossible task of making a movie out of an impossible screenplay adapted from an impossible book, Jonze pulls off a tour de force, a movie that is brilliant, eloquent, and meaningful.
What Jonze does here is simple and graceful; he accepts the absurdity inherent in the screenplay without beating the audience over the head with it. It would have been easier to call attention to the nature of the screenplay, to highlight its twisted logic in the same way that the screenwriter highlights passages in The Orchid Thief. Instead, Jonze lets the audience discover the screenplay’s absurdities and ironies and pretzel logic for themselves. It’s an approach that rewards the intelligent viewer (assuming there are a few of them out there; they may be more endangered than the movie’s “ghost orchid”). Matters such as the curiously charming Seminole nurseryman and the impressively crude agent and the famously overbearing script doctor are handled with an impressive grace and aplomb.
Then there is the acting. A self-absorbed screenplay like this lives and dies based on its main character; Adaptation is extraordinarily fortunate to have Nicolas Cage at the top of his form. Cage has the part of the self-destructive screenwriter, and it’s a treat to watch him twist and squirm his way through the movie. Cage has what one reviewer (OK, well, me) called a “particular combination of deadpan hangdog stubbornness and manic energy”. He’s got both on display, showing the agony of the frustrated writer stubbornly clinging to the task of finishing the killer screenplay as well as the occasional breakthrough of mad creative inspiration. It’s a perfect part for Cage, playing both to the neurotic and recklessly overconfident aspects of his nature. He turns in a brilliant acting job, somehow making the audience care about his character despite his constant whiny voiceovers and obsessive self-loathing and his general obliviousness to the world around him.
And this may not be the best acting performance in the movie. You have the supporting cast. Brian Cox, for one, who suddenly, out of nowhere, this year became the best character actor in the world. He’s got a small part, but a vital one, and the best self-referential line in the movie. Chris Cooper as the Orchid Thief his own bad self, reveling in the Low Rent lifestyle and greasy mullet and cracker accent. Then there is Meryl Streep, whose performance surpasses even Streepian-level expectations, and which will be undescribed here as a treat for the audience.
Then there is the ending, which likewise must go undescribed; although it is adequately foreshadowed, it is still a delicious surprise.
“Why not just put in a wild story?” Cage’s character is asked by his agent. “You’re the king of that.” Cage’s character is the king, the king of the postmodern semi-nihilist philosophical thrill ride, and he has created here a brilliant, wonderful screenplay that waves its deficiencies in the air like banners. But Adaptation is more than just a brilliant screenplay; it’s a wonderful movie that engages the hearts and minds of the audience. More than that, it writes the audience into the screenplay, too, invites them to share the jokes, to feel the pressure of incipient failure, to understand that flowers can transcend their plantlike sameness to become important, vital characters in a narrative. Adaptation will challenge you, test you, draw you out, make you think and feel and care, and that is what great movies do.
And you will never, ever, pick up a phone and listen to a dial tone the same way again.