ADAPTATION  ***1/2

Reviewed 12/7/02

ADAPTATION is writer Charlie Kaufman’s version of 8 ½, the Federico Fellini masterpiece about a filmmaker with writer’s block.  Instead of an alter ego played by the debonair Marcello Mastroianni, Kaufman puts himself into his story as a “fat, balding, and repulsive” Nicholas Cage.  Thus, Kaufman, again with director Spike Jonze as collaborator, pulls another BEING JOHN MALKOVICH wherein a real-life personality, this time the author himself, is turned into a fictional character.  Exactly how much of the real Kaufman is in the fictional Kaufman only the real Kaufman knows, but in this postmodern age, he trusts that the movie audience will be smart enough to tell the difference between movie characters portraying real people and reality.   If all this sounds too meta, it’s only the beginning.

The fictional Charlie Kaufman (Cage) agrees to adapt Susan Orleans’ nonfiction New Yorker article turned book, “The Orchid Thief” into a screenplay.  Against turning this “story about flowers” into a crass Hollywood cliché, he vows to eschew melodramatic love affairs, guns, chases, car crashes, and characters who learn life-altering lessons.  Only, Charlie is stymied because “The Orchid Thief,” about rebel horticulturalist John Laroche (Chris Cooper), has no real story arc.  Charlie’s frustrations are amplified as his (completely fictional) shallow twin bother, Donald (Cage again), tries to fashion his own screenplay, a serial killer thriller that screams sell-out product.  When Charlie does get inspired, first by inserting Orlean (Meryl Streep) into the story, then later adding himself, it still leads him nowhere.  Desperate, Charlie finally hurls himself into a screenwriting seminar by (another real-life personality) Robert McKee (Brian Cox), whom Charlie looks at the way a classical-music professor would eye Yanni.

While ADAPTATION is filled with funny throwaway lines and literal masturbatory fantasies, it lacks the lunacy of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.  Where it does engage in MALKOVICH-like flights of fancy – showing the entire evolution of homo sapiens starting four billion years ago and a flashback involving Charles Darwin at work – these bits come off rather flat.  What works better is the symbolic relationship between the Kaufman brothers.  Donald is the id to Charlie’s superego.  Where Donald gets things done though his confidence, vivaciousness, and even ignorance, Charlie is paralyzed by his fear, self-flagellation, and pessimism.   This could well be Cage’s career performance as he manages the incredible feat of making one forget that Charlie and Donald are played by the same actor despite their looking utterly identical.  Cooper is equally revelatory, and a Streep performance hasn’t felt this loosely playful in a long time.

The ending is a bit of a conundrum.   Does making the ending in some ways purposefully bad make it good?  On the one hand, it feels like a spoof of the kind of Hollywood conventions Kaufman holds in contempt, but it is also played with enough affection that it’s both a rejection and embrace.   It’s a risky gamble that would have been easier to accept if explained away as sheer artifice.  Thankfully Jonze and Kaufman refuse that option, turning the ending into a more complicated lesson on compromise in the creation of art.  In any case, by the end, ADAPTATION has come to refer to Kaufman’s own evolution as a human being rather than just what he was trying to achieve with Orlean’s book.  The very last shot though could have gone without quoting Wong Kar Wai’s HAPPY TOGETHER.