Screenplay brilliance

When it comes to writer’s block, I can think of one film, the Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink, that can be considered a classic. Adaptation, the new collaboration between director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, gets my vote for second best movie on the subject.

Adaptation isn’t only about writer’s block. It attacks those conventionalities that can taint screenwriting, the standard “Hollywoodisms” that can be found in almost every script. It’s also a surprisingly good film about flowers.

Playing two roles, Nicolas Cage hasn’t been this adventurous in years, and this truly is his greatest performance. On one side of the character spectrum, he plays Charlie Kaufman (yes, the actual screenwriter of Adaptation), an overweight, balding, terribly insecure man trying to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief (a real book you can buy in a store right now) into film. He wants to write a film that doesn’t resort to the use of violence, drugs and sex. He doesn’t even want the characters to have epiphanies or accomplish anything. He just wants a great movie about flowers.

Living with him is twin brother Donald, also Cage, playing a fictional character that gets an actual co-screenwriting credit for Adaptation. Donald is a more jovial, outgoing version of Charlie, and he’s decided to take up his bro’s occupation, scriptwriting. Donald goes against all of Charlie’s principles by taking a screenwriting class, following all the basic screenplay formulas and churning out a script in no time. His serial killer screenplay is heralded as genius, netting him a million dollar paycheck while Charlie looks on in horror.

Charlie struggles to stay true to his goals of originality and integrity. He shouts script ideas into handheld recorders, goes many nights without sleep and masturbates constantly. The beauty of this movie is that every nutty idea Charlie blurts out, even the stuff that sounds completely non-filmable, is depicted in the movie at some point. In effect, Charlie’s insane blathering is being made into a movie, and a very funny one at that.

When Charlie becomes entrenched in doubt, he goes to Donald’s recommended seminar, where a grouchy screenwriting guru (a hilarious Brian Cox) encourages students to be somewhat unoriginal. He also berates the notion of voiceovers at a time in the film where we are hearing a particularly pathetic one from Charlie.

Meryl Streep plays Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, and the screenwriter has taken certain liberties with her character. Streep does wonders with a role that is alternately real and cardboard. We, the viewers, get to have fun trying to figure out which aspects of her character are Charlie’s contributions and which are those of Donald. When Susan gets darker in the film’s final act, the question hangs whether it is Donald’s Hollywood sensibility rearing its ugly head, or Charlie “cheating” with conventionalities to wrap up his script and get a paycheck.

In a role with no teeth (literally), Chris Cooper is a psychological windstorm as Laroche, the orchid-poaching weirdo that Charlie is trying to make into a movie hero. Director Spike Jonze proves that Being John Malkovich was just the start of what promises to be a monumental career directing features. I can’t think of anybody currently working in film with sensibilities and techniques that rival Jonze. He’s in a class by himself.

The way the film concludes is, in my eyes, perfection, and open to tons of interpretation. No 2002 film messed with my head the way Adaptation did. It’s a movie that goes a long way toward restoring Cage’s career, and a film that will probably cause a little spike in orchid sales over the next few months.