Adaptation

Adaptation (2002) - IMDB

Charlie Kaufman writes the way he lives... With Great Difficulty. His Twin Brother Donald lives the way he writes... with foolish abandon. Susan writes about life... But can't live it. John's life is a book... Waiting to be adapted. One story... Four Lives... A million ways it can end.

It’s not a story about books. It’s about creation. After getting into the mind of John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman tries to tell the story of his own mind. His own creativity. And comes up with a movie that tells the story of its own creation.

Nicholas Cage recuperates from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin to star in Adaptation where he plays the screenwriter of the same film. What kind of a story would that be, u ask? One that’s smart, inventive and indescribable.

Anyone who has wanted to write and to express themselves on paper has felt frustration. Charlie Kaufman in this movie is such a frustrated screenwriter (He is also overweight, balding and wishes he was someone else). He is trying hard to adapt a non-fiction book... but his efforts seem to go nowhere. He thinks about the book, the writer of the book (played beautifully by Meryl Streep) and tries to delve into her mind – into her creative thought process. This leads to a non-linear story-telling process that engages and absorbs. He mocks the various clichés that screenwriters use to engage viewers and then ingeniously uses these very situations to make a movie that is anything but clichéd.

This is one movie that has made me think like no movie ever has. Among all the wrong starts, the ramblings and whacking off... there are so many subtle jokes, wise-cracks and self-references that you’re blown away by the originality and genius of Charlie Kaufman.

Sure, we’d like to be original. But, most of the time we can’t help but sensationalize the story. And play into pretensions.

Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicholas Cage): I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases or characters learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that, it just isn't.

And when you find that that's exactly how the movie ends... don’t think that it’s a clever movie that ends in an out-of-place, silly mess. That’s the intention. The parody.

The movie weaves between fiction and reality, innovation and repetition... as Charlie Kaufman suffers from intermittent out-of-body experiences and writes himself into a script that is supposed to adapt a book that has nothing to do with him in the first place. It can only get twistier and undeniably cleverer.

The last act makes the film. Wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit.

Kaufman wows and how!