Adaptation
Director: Spike Jonze
Country: USA
Release: 2002
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is hired to adapt The Orchid Thief, a book by a female New Yorker staff writer about a colorful, strange, self proclaimed genius and botanist who poaches exotic blooms in the Florida Everglades. The screenwriter is portrayed as a timid, self-deprecating man who is better at observing and fantasizing about life than actually participating in it. His twin brother Donald comes to stay with him, and decides that he wants to be a screenwriter too. Donald is more outgoing, a little oblivious, potentially obnoxious, but fearless in his approach to life – he knows what he likes and goes for it without any thought to consequences. His writing reflects this and he produces a commercially successful thriller of a script, which garners him attention. Charlie, in the meantime is having trouble with his adaptation –it seems to be going nowhere, because nothing really happens in the book which lends itself to any sort of narrative. Charlie confers with another veteran screenwriter who assures him that an untold number of things are always happening in life every day, and that if nothing happens in the story he is adapting, it is because things were left out of the book by the author. So Charlie, with the help of his brother, decides to figure out what the original author had not included. What they discover is a plot of bizarre twists and shocking revelations. The pace of the movie is very slow at first, even tedious – but then this reflects the story line of how Charlie’s work on the adaptation is slow and plodding. When the brothers pursue the secrets behind the story, the movie progresses at break-neck speed towards its final resolution. Adaptation is a strange story that ultimately satisfies and in the end, is well worth the effort.
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