Adaptation (2002)

I re-watched Spike Jonze's Adaptation and was surprised about how touching it was, in spite of, or perhaps because of all the goofy and looney twists and turns. Perhaps it was my writer's block that did the emotional work. It's hard to say what the film is about, in the end. Obsession, obviously, and the hard labor of imagination - yes. The line between fiction and reality - that too. It's the story about a desperate screenwriter (and his unscrupulous twin!) and his attempt to render Susan Orlean's book about a ... orchid thug ... into a decent film. He worries about his creative independence while at the same time trying to pacify his producer. Adaptation throws us right into the abyss of imagination, its worming paths and overheated outbursts. Rare flowers in the middle of nowhere are paired with the rare flash of inspiration in the middle of the mind's desert. Exploitation is shown to the other side of fascination, and fascination is damn close to ... really dangerous stuff.

Ah yeah, and then there's the love story, stories, or whatever. The writer has developed a crush on Orlean - we sense disaster right at the beginning. And Orlean - she sort of falls in love with the hickey orchid thug about whom she writes the book. Hold on, there's a crime somewhere, as well - of course. Somehow, Jonze succeeds in balancing all this craziness into a watchable and surprisingly moving film. For me, the part as the screenwriter is one of Nicolas Cage's best performances. He fills it with wit, sadness and a dose of agony. It works. Don't forget Cage also plays the screenwriter's twin and that, too, is brilliant. Adaptation never gets pretentious. It toys with the ideas about fiction without the brow being too wrinkled. It fucks with us and we go along with it to New York apartments and weird swamps - and why not? The best thing about the film is perhaps how it, like other Kaufman/Jonze movies grows and grows and grows until it contains what comes to feel like the entire universe in one single film - while also in a way shrinking to the content of a specific person's mind. This process of ridiculous expansion and ridiculous shrinking is what kept me on board.