ADAPTATION. (Spike Jonze, 2002) R

Reviewed: January 31st, 2003

Perhaps all you need to know about why Adaptation is the second best film of 2002 can be found in the following evidence: the reason I hadn't gotten around to writing this review in the nearly two month interim between now and when I saw Adaptation for the first time is that I felt I didn't have anything left to say about the film which hadn't already been written. Thus its ironic and perfectly fitting that Adaptation opens with its screenwriter/protagonist (Nicolas Cage, in the year's best performance, male or female, lead or supporting) -- in the midst of a hilarious interior monologue filled with grand self-loathing -- wondering if he has an original thought in his head. Jonze keeps the screen black here and the sequence becomes an immediate distillation of what Adaptation does so brilliantly: give voice to the lyrical joy and intense suffering inherent in the act of creation.

I've decided to concentrate this review solely on Adaptation's third act -- its most problematic and the only reason it's not one of the best films ever made -- because there and only there do I feel I have something to say that might be of use to people who are ambivalent about the movie. (Note: I'm assuming everyone who is reading this soon-to-be spoiler-filled review has seen Adaptation. If you haven't yet, well, what the fuck are you waiting for, jackass?)

Adaptation is ultimately a movie about failure. The fact that this failure happens to be attributed to the movie's aforementioned screenwriter/protagonist (Charlie Kaufman), and more specifically, the fact that this failure happens to be rooted in Charlie Kaufman's inability to write the perfect screenplay, means that by virtue of its very nature, Adaptation cannot be a flawless masterpiece. The third act of Adaptation -- in which the real Charlie Kaufman violates all the Hollywood anti-cliche rules he set for himself at the movie's outset by theoretically allowing his fictional brother Donald Kaufman (credited with co-writing Adaptation's screenplay) to finish his script -- asks us to trade conceptual pleasure for moment-to-moment pleasure, a move that when stretched over any kind of prolonged period of time (in this case ~20 minutes, the most crucial 20 minutes of the movie) is dooming. Thus we can nod our head in recognition and appreciate the idea of what Kaufman's doing from a distance, we can appreciate the clever way he's integrated the reverse of the practice-what-you-preach credo and betrayed his ethics, we can appreciate the sly comment on the instant gratification mass audiences so often seek and the swill they all too often settle for, but we are still left with the inescapable conclusion that the final act is nothing more than that swill itself. The final act is a letdown. It is wholly ridiculous. It betrays wonderfully nuanced characters we've invested so much time into. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, simply bad writing.

And yes, that is the point. Charlie Kaufman has -- in the end -- failed. Charlie Kaufman -- despite writing a mostly genius film and capturing the essence of Susan Orlean's novel "The Orchid Thief" while simultaneously elevating it beyond the best of what it ever could have been in and of itself -- has still not written the perfect adaptation. Despite his valiant efforts, Charlie Kaufman has still not found a way to fully transcend cinema's most troublesome properties.

The first time I saw Adaptation I found it to be cheaply fatalistic. I pictured Charlie Kaufman alone in his bare room, sitting at his typewriter, polishing away his banana-nut muffin as he mutters to himself, "Fuck you all, I lose, I don't care anymore, I give up." Despite the coda with Kaufman seeing Amelia and walking away "filled with hope," I just didn't buy the potential happiness. I found the coda (and everything about the ending, for that matter) to be too damn easy. The second time I saw Adaptation, however, I looked closer for a real, organic glimmer of promise, for a trace of optimism to battle the failure. And I found what I now believe to be, perhaps, the most poignant and telling line in the entire movie. It is when Kaufman says, "Anyway, it's done. And that's something." Maybe all creators' most potent achilles heel is simply just completing the act. Maybe sometimes the greatest victory is not in creating something true and glorious and lasting, but in creating something at all.

[Third viewing: The third act now strikes me as less a betrayal than ever because there's something beautifully sad and nakedly true in the real Kaufman's admission of failure: when Charlie's crying while Donald is telling him "you are what you love, not what loves you" it's like the real Charlie is crying over his inability to work the emotional catharsis in more organically; when Orlean says "I did everything wrong... I want it back before it all got fucked up... I want to be a baby again, I wanna be new, I wanna be new" that's Kaufman telling us he just wants to give up and start the whole fucking screenplay all over again.]

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