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| Nicholas Cage's head is turned into a broken pot for an orchid flower on this wonderful poster for Spike Jonze's Adaptation |
This movie will especially appeal to writers and/or filmmakers, but it will most likely also delight any all all open, intelligent, creative minds.
Famed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman finds it very difficult if not impossible to adapt Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief for the big screen, which he has been hired to do. He spars with his conversely extroverted twin brother Donald Kaufman for advice and finally decides that he has to visit Orlean.
Adaptation is unusual and a meta-film because it is in fact written by Charlie Kaufman (Anomalisa (2015)), who wrote the film like this precisely because he found the task of adapting Susan Orlean's (Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (2011)) 1998 non-fiction novel The Orchid Thief impossible. So the story is partly autobiographical. It is also an inventive work of fiction; among other things the twin brother character Donald is a creation for the film, just as the dramatic developments involving Orlean and the orchid thief are fantasy.
Of course Adaptation is in a way a very narcissistic story, but it is written with such rare wit and writer's insight, and acted so marvelously, - with stellar performances from Nicolas Cage (8mm (1999)), Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia! (2008)) and an Oscar-winning Chris Cooper (Miami Vice (1988), TV-series) among others, - that it achieves true greatness. Marylander master filmmaker Spike Jonze's (Being John Malkovich (1999)) direction of the film, which is only his second, is creative and refreshing, and the 'evolution of life' sequence (by Digital Domain) in the beginning is something that most people who've seen Adaptation also remember from it.
Adaptation is concept-oriented, post-modernist, interested in existentialism and very funny. Brian Cox's (L.I.E. (2001)) part as real-life script guru Robert McKee is especially humorous. Adaptation is the epitome of a must-see.
Related posts:
Spike Jonze: The day after ... The Oscars 2014
Being John Malkovich (1999) - Jonze, Kaufman and Malkovich's great triumph (also with Kaufman on script)
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 19 mil. $
Box office: 32.8 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.72 times its cost)
[Adaptation premiered 3 December (Los Angeles, California) and runs 114 minutes. Adapting the story was an idea already in 1994, when the story Orlean's book is based on played out. Fox 2000 bought the film rights in 1997, before the book was published. Kaufman showed Jonze the script around the time of Being John Malkovich's release, 1999. Cage was paid 5 mil. $ for his performance, and Streep was very interested in playing Orleans, accepting a pay cut to make it happen. McKee suggested Cox to portray himself. Filming took place in California, including Los Angeles, from March - June 2001. The film opened #22 to a 384k $ first weekend in 7 theaters (a solid 54k $ average) in North America, where it peaked at #12 and in 672 theaters (different weeks) and grossed 22.4 mil. $ (68.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Australia with 1.1 mil. $ (3.4 %) and the UK with 0.9 mil. $ (2.7 %). The film was nominated for 4 Oscars: winning for Best Supporting Actor (Cooper); Best Actor (Cage) was lost to Adrien Brody for The Pianist; Supporting Actress (Streep) was lost to Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago, and Adapted Screenplay was lost to Ronald Harwood for The Pianist. The film also won 2/6 Golden Globe nominations, 1/4 BAFTAs noms, won AFI's Movie of the Year award, the Berlin International Film Festival's silver prize, 3 National Board of Review awards and scores of other awards and honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. Jonze returned with 18 video, TV and short projects, before he returned to cinemas with family masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are (2009). Cage returned in Matchstick Men (2003); Streep in The Hours (2002); and Cooper in My House in Umbria (2003, TV movie) and theatrically in Seabiscuit (2003). Adaptation is certified fresh at 91 % with a 8.18/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Adaptation?
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