Adaption

Reviewed by Colin Stewart

In Adaptation Charlie Kaufmann is a screenwriter adapting a novel (The Orchard Thief). Charlie Kaufmann is also the actual screenwriter of the film. Nicolas Cage plays him and also his twin brother Donald in a strange, duplicitous performance. Weird? Yeah! Fans of Being John Malkovich will know what not to expect.
The Cage twins emphasise this dualism. Charlie’s achievements are internal – onanistic daydreams, dialectical supremacy – while Donald is all surface, but happy. Charlie’s cerebralism breeds inaction; Donald’s simplicity pragmatic success – and we are asked: what makes a person contented (or true)? Ironically, it is Donald who delivers the wisest line of the film, questioning the importance we give to what other people think of us.
Adaptation examines the rules Hollywood films follow, implicitly questioning money-motivated ‘art’. This deconstruction is utterly engaging, drawing you in and out of its myriad themes. There are great lines, great conceits, and surprisingly sensitive characterisations.
A further criticism echoes Coppola’s comment that ‘films about films’ fail to engage real life. Of course that is Adaptation’s very point – it is deconstruction – but it brings serious problems to the final third of the film. Here typical Hollywood techniques – action, tension, sex, drugs – are lampooned, but also used; manipulating us into ‘rooting’ for the characters and the ‘what happens next’. That the film exposes these very techniques leaves this ending doubly defeated, both as entertainment or enlightenment: the vicious circle lacks a solution.
Critically Adaptation does not quite match the weight of its themes, flowing a little too close to its enemy (even leaving us with hope of a happy hereafter). By direct comparison with the Coen’s Barton Fink – a devastatingly sombre film – Adaptation is mind-candy. It opens our eyes but sugars the pill; playing the game and re-masking its own deconstruction.