That
Charlie Kaufman has already had a successful Hollywood career is a bit
of a miracle. The highly esoteric premises for his stories--most
famously, a portal that thrusts people into a fifteen-minute ride in the
sensory perceptions of a famous actor--are not what one associates with
the formula-driven stuff that (most) filmic dreams are made of. But
leave it to this scriptwriter to carve his own path, one distinctly his
and yet one that works within the industry.
Most
of the time. In his latest effort, Adaptation, Kaufman writes a script
about a scriptwriter named Charlie Kaufman. Teaming up once again
with Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze, Kaufman serves up a self-referential
meditation on writing, particularly in Hollywood, as well as a host of
other subjects, including love, loss, and male-pattern baldness.
It sounds so good on paper--much like a script. But, like a script,
what often sounds best in writing works terribly on the screen, and vice-versa.
In fact, no amount of writing saves this film from wrecking itself on its
own self-indulgence. It's really too bad, and as a reviewer, I hate
to critique the work of two of our most promising talents--Kaufman and
Jonze--when they fail. Nonetheless, they do fail. And there's
almost nothing worse than seeing talented folks hide behind their own reputations
when they eke out a real mishmash of a picture.
Adaptation
begins with a series of Kaufman's agitated voiceovers as the credits flash
in stark-white font on a black backdrop. Introducing the voiceover
before the actor is appropriate, 
since
so much of the film is driven by this interior monologue. Then, we
cut to our opening scene, where Kaufman, played by Nicholas Cage, sweats
through a meeting with Valerie, a publishing executive played by Tilda
Swinton. "We think you're great," she tells him, and pitches him
the project which guides the entire film: an adaptation of Susan
Orlean's The Orchid Thief. Little does Charlie know, but the nonfiction
book barely has a plot. It's much more given to Orlean's (played,
in the film, by Meryl Streep) lyrical rhapsodies on orchids; on John Laroche
(played by Chris Cooper), her subject, the orchid thief of the title; and
on the nature of passion itself. The writing is very interesting,
and Kaufman's real-life admiration is apparent in the many passages sprinkled
throughout the film. Nonetheless, the book really doesn't have much
of a story, which makes it a difficult project for a film script, typically
driven by narrative. Hence Charlie's bind: how to turn a great
book into a great screenplay without sacrificing the original. It's
any adaptation's dilemma, though with this original's flimsy plot, it's
especially apparent here.
The
film thus sets itself up from the beginning as a kind of game, wherein
the film we're watching reflects its own genesis. It's a mirror game,
with reflections around every funhouse turn: a real Charlie Kaufman,
a fake one; a real Susan Orlean, a fake one; a real script, a script within
a script, a script within a script within a script, etc. All these
impulses are, I think, good ones, and as a viewer we're no longer really
invested in the characters as characters but as emanations of the writer's
obsessive imagination--even when we're supposedly outside it. So
thorough and convincing is that interior world that we literally feel as
though every moment is filtered through Charlie.
We
can't help but view these characters, then, ironically. We may be
asked to feel sympathy for Charlie, but more often than not, it's tempered
with a greater sense of detachment. We watch his plight uncomfortably,
perhaps--particularly as the missed deadlines begin piling up--but always
with a very ironic, comic edge. Other characters provide this edge
as much as Charlie's own behavior. There's Charlie's brother, Donald,
played also by Cage, who is working on a script rife with the very clichés
Charlie's trying to avoid; there's Charlie's fantasy girl, also the artsy
type, that he never quite consummates things with; there's Charlie's agent,
resident Hollywood jerk; and Robert McKeen (based on the actual screenwriting
guru), an offensive instructor offering pat answers for the difficult questions
that real writers face. None of these characters exist outside the
absurd stereotypes they embody, but those stereotypes work in this mode
of irony. Only Susan Orlean and John Laroche have any amount of character
development, and the chemistry between them is great, whether connecting
with each another in late-night phone conversations or bickering in the
dead Florida heat. Both Streep and Cooper, in fact, are the highlight
of this film, and I would not be surprised to see either of them garner
well-deserved Oscar nominations. Nonetheless, we move so rapidly
among several different plotlines that it's difficult to feel particularly
attached to their fates.
Given
this mode of ironic detachment, it's entirely jarring what happens in the
last half-hour of the film. I won't ruin any plot points here, but
it will suffice to say that the entire narrative suddenly asks us to care
about characters we're barely invested in. Imagine if Being John
Malkovich had asked us to feel sorry for John Malkovich. His poor
head, after all, is infested with roller-coaster personality transplants
for the better part of the film. Yet it's entirely comic when Malkovich,
late in the film, finally finds himself freed of any extra psyches--only
to have about thirty of them dumped back in all at once. Adaptation,
instead, moves into a bizarre turn with melodrama. All of a sudden,
we are supposed to care about Donald, who is suddenly able to articulate
feelings in a way we never knew he could. If that last line sounds
saccharine, try sitting through this sequence in the film. Other
characters are also supposed to garner our sympathy, but none so much as
the hapless Charlie Kaufman. One could argue that all this is simply
another clever turn of the funhouse mirror, wherein the film which makes
fun of clichés finally resorts to them. But it simply doesn't
work. Viewers are likely to leave this movie feeling as though they
missed something, not unlike seeing a very engaging film for the first
time. Unfortunately, while the latter will yield rich insights on
multiple viewings, this one will only provide more frustration.
To
be sure, the irony/sympathy cards can be played together in a satisfying
way. The French New Wave excelled at this narrative skill, giving
us characters who were both absurd and likeable at the same time.
Think of Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, stealing a typewriter
in The 400 Blows; or think also of Anna Karina in My Life to Live, misspelling
words in a cliché-filled love letter, and still garnering our sympathies
for all that. Other films that pull it off would include Woody Allen's
Manhattan and, most recently, Wes Anderson's Rushmore. Anderson's
nostalgia-tinged ending is just the right amount of sympathy for characters
we've spent the better part of the film laughing at--and with. But
when these films fall, they fall hard. Just ask Charlie Kaufman.
Poor
Charlie Kaufman. Poor Spike Jonze. I really do feel sympathy
for them, as I do for any good filmmaker with a failed project. Being
John Malkovich showed that these talents could be some of our best (much
as Jonze's Beastie Boys' "Sabatoge" video did). And this film will
probably do just fine, despite a negative review here and there.
In fact, the reception thus far has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's
no wonder: people are hungry for innovative writers and directors.
But that doesn't mean we should lower the bar. If anything, we're
asked to raise it, even if that means seeing our best talent fall flat
on their faces.
Dave
Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Florida.
Johnson's concentration is in Film Studies.
