REEL REFLECTIONS

ON BEING MALADAPTED
A Review of "Adaptation"

David Greiser

Years ago I owned the Pink Floyd album "Ummagumma." The album had an unusual jacket photo. The photo showed the band standing next to a mirror. In the mirror was an identical picture of the band standing next to a mirror, and in that mirror was the same picture, and so on until the reflections in the mirror grew too small to see.

"Adaptation," a brilliant and complex movie created by director Spike Jonze and screenplay writer Charlie Kaufman, creates a similarly dizzying effect. This is a story within a story within a story. It is the story of an orchid fancier, John Laroche, and his obsession to find and harvest ghost orchids in the Florida Everglades. It is the story of a screenwriter’s attempt to transform a book about Laroche’s story into a film. And it is the story of how the orchid poacher, the writer, and the screenwriter become improbably involved in each other’s lives (I will not reveal how). Above all, it is an essay on the multiple meanings of the movie’s title. It is a story that exists at several different levels simultaneously.

The film contains scenes featuring real actors playing themselves (John Malkovich and John Cusack); real people played by actors (Nicolas Cage as Charlie Kaufman and Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean); and at least one person, Donald Kaufman, whose reality the film never makes completely clear, even though the credits list him as co-writing the screenplay. Got that?

What do living organisms do to thrive in the real world? How do we adapt? One critic suggested that to watch the film "Adaptation" is to become personally involved in the challenge of its creation. If that is so, then this film is quintessentially postmodern, since such co-construction of narrative is a tendency within postmodernity.

In real life, screenplay writer Charlie Kaufman, the creator of the critically acclaimed screenplays for "Being John Malkovich" (1999) and "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" (2003) nearly drove himself insane attempting to adapt Susan Orlean’s beautiful book The Orchid Thief, into a film. After five months of the attempt, Kaufman created instead a movie about his experience: a fictionalized Charlie Kaufman trying to adapt the same book into a film.

The result is a movie that blurs distinctions between fact and fiction, serving as an extended commentary on the creative process and the choices writers must make between integrity and "commercial success." Anyone who struggles to write will identify with Charlie Kaufman’s self-analysis, self-loathing, and general neurosis.

The fictional Kaufman is a "serious" filmmaker struggling to render an unfilmable book into a movie without resorting to the usual chase scenes, cheap romances, or characters "learning profound life lessons." In a wonderful bit of irony, "Adaptation" manages to sneak all three payoffs to us without for a moment resembling the usual Hollywood schlock.

Nicolas Cage seamlessly portrays both Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald. Cage gets deeply enough into the opposing personalities of these characters that I quickly found myself forgetting he was playing two people and accepted his portrayals at face value. Cage’s Donald Kaufman is everything Charlie despises: intellectually shallow, facile with women, unreflective. He has come to Hollywood to sponge off his genius brother and to write a formula thriller movie that will make him rich. And he succeeds.

Meanwhile, the intelligent and idealistic Charlie struggles with writer’s block and a sweaty shyness around women. He desperately wants to turn The Orchid Thief into a film but lacks the social confidence even to meet its author. Even so, he develops a crush on her as he fantasizes about her book jacket photo.

Meryl Streep, a woman of a thousand subtle emotions, portrays Orlean, an author who falls in love with the scruffy orchid poacher (played by Chris Cooper). Laroche is passionate about orchids and Orlean yearns to become passionate about something.

To be sure, Laroche’s passions are short-lived. In one scene he tells Orleans that for years his passion was butterflies. Then one day he dropped butterflies in favor of orchids. After orchids he turns to Internet pornography. Always he is consumed completely by his passion du jour, and that intensity seduces Orlean.

About two-thirds of the way through the movie, the story takes a couple of completely surprising turns, but I will not spoil the experience for the viewer by revealing what those turns are. As it is, I have probably told you enough only to confuse you. Don’t be put off; if you like movies that tease your mind while essaying on integrity, passion, and the sweet torture of the creative process, you should adapt well to this film.

—Dave Greiser tries to adapt with integrity to the demands of his own life in Souderton, Pennsylvania. He is on the pastoral team at Souderton Mennonite Church and teaches preaching part-time at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.