(Adaptation, Amarillo By Morning, Being John Malkovich, How They Get There, Music videos: Beastie Boys, Bjork, REM)
Producers:
Jonathan Demme, Vincent Landay and Edward Saxon
Screenplay:
Charlie and Donald Kaufman
Music:
Carter Burwell
Cast:
Charlie Kaufman/Donald Kaufman: Nicolas Cage
Susan Orlean: Meryl Streep
John Laroche: Chris Cooper
Amelia Kavan: Cara Seymour
Valerie Wood: Tilda Swinton
Marty Bowen: Ron Livingston
Robert McKee: Brian Cox
Caroline Cunningham: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Ranger Steve Neely: Stephen Tobolowsky
Spike Jonze is not known for being the most straight-forward director.
I quite enjoyed his previous main feature, Being John Malkovich, although
it did go on a bit at times and while it wasn't the "must-see" that some people
said it was, it was certainly an intriguing movie.
Then when you watch his
latest work, Adaptation, it's one thing to know you're trying
to follow a film that shows Nicolas Cage playing twin brothers with
different personalities and with plotlines that play out in different periods
of time, but it's another to get to grips with the fact that the main twin,
Charlie Kaufman, was the screenwriter for the aforementioned film about
Malkovich, so that it's also trying to blend reality into the mix and that
parts of his one are filmed on the set of that one. Confused? It's a mindbending
notion that Tarantino would be proud to pull off.
Charlie is a neurotic 40-year-old who's losing track of himself and his
direction. He desperately needs a girlfriend, feeling that'll be the answer
to all his problems, yet he just doesn't have the courage to strike home with
Amelia (Cara Seymour, a younger-looking Ellen Barkin) and later moves
on to waitress Alice (Judy Greer) because she shares his passion for
orchids.
Yes, orchids. Why orchids? He's trying to write the screenplay for a movie
about flowers, because, (a), he's translating Susan Orlean's (Meryl Streep)
novel "The Orchid Thief" for the big screen and because, (b), there's never been a movie about
flowers before. "What about Flowers for Algernon?", chips in his brother
Donald. "It's not about flowers and it's not a movie", replies Charlie.
Donald confesses that he never saw it anyway.
It's party time for one of them.
Flashback three years prior to this - and chopping and changing regularly -
and we see Susan Orlean as a New Yorker journalist doing her preparation for
the book by following the 'thief' John Laroche (Chris Cooper) about
and learning what makes him tick and what his passions are, since it's not just
orchids that's seen his life through, but many other things stretching back
to turtles when he was a child, and later, fish, but he always made a clean
break before moving on to the next thing, so was he passionate about his
hobby?
Passionate - the very thing Susan wishes she could be about something, yet
she's not sure what John thinks about that emotion. Obsession also kicks in
with the other two principal characters, Donald, who's trying to write his
own movie that has all the making of a formulaic Hollywood nonsense blockbuster
and Charlie with his neuroses and impossible attempts to adapt the book into
a screenplay, just as adaptation is an important part of life and how difficult
that is to get right sometimes.
To go into it further would rob the viewer of the surprises held within, but
rest assured this is an even better film than Being John Malkovich,
perhaps one that's better for being more realistic in the twists and turns
presented. There's also adequate support from Tilda Swinton as the agent
who wants to turn Susan's book into a film, Brian Cox as screenwriting
lecturer Robert McKee and Secretary's Maggie Gyllenhaal as
Donald's girlfriend and make-up artist Caroline.
There's a couple of interesting parallels here too. Cox and the excellent
Chris Cooper both also featured in
The Bourne Identity,
yet don't get any screen time together here. Also, Meryl Streep's husband
is played by Curtis Hanson, not normally one for acting, but who directed
Streep in
The River Wild
and went on to direct 8 Mile and L.A. Confidential.
Finally, a worthy mention goes to Cage, himself, for finding an actor he
can bounce off in such a perfect and seamless fashion - himself! The two
brothers work so well together, despite being played by the same actor. Some
trick CGI is used in a scene or two to blend them in like that, but that
doesn't become the emphasis of the point when there's such a unique chemistry!
Alone in a lift with La Streep...
There's no problems with either the sound of the picture. The film is
presented in an anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio with zero flaws, but
also has nothing to make it particularly stand out, but then it's a drama
that's not meant to.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound comes in English and Italian flavours and, again
for a drama, doesn't come across particularly striking but does the job,
only shouting out in a shock car crash scene.
What is surprising is the total lack of any decent supplemental material.
Basic filmgraphies for main cast members, plus trailers for this film,
Maid in Manhattan
and
Sunshine State,
do not extras make. In the old days I might've awarded one star for such a
paltry effort, but DVDs have been around since April 1998 in the UK and
Columbia were one of the first companies to release a few discs in that early
soft-launch period so not to bother over five years on is shameful.
The main menu is largely static with some subtle animation, plus a looped
piece of music, there are subtitles in English, Italian and Hindi,
with the main feature being divided once again into 28 chapters.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
