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Adaptation shows Spike Jonze is not known for being the most straight-forward director. I hugely enjoyed his previous main feature, Being John Malkovich, although it wasn’t perfect.
Then when you watch his latest work, Adaptation, it’s one thing to know you’re trying to follow a film that shows Nicolas Cage playing twin brothers with different personalities and with plotlines that play out in different periods of time, but it’s another to get to grips with the fact that the main twin, Charlie Kaufman, was the screenwriter for the aforementioned film about Malkovich, so that it’s also trying to blend reality into the mix and that parts of his one are filmed on the set of that one. Confused? It’s a mindbending notion that Tarantino would be proud to pull off.
Charlie is a neurotic 40-year-old who’s losing track of himself and his direction. He desperately needs a girlfriend, feeling that’ll be the answer to all his problems, yet he just doesn’t have the courage to strike home with Amelia (Cara Seymour, a younger-looking Ellen Barkin) and later moves on to waitress Alice (Judy Greer) because she shares his passion for orchids.
Yes, orchids. Why orchids? He’s trying to write the screenplay for a movie about flowers, because, (a), he’s translating Susan Orlean’s (Meryl Streep, below) novel “The Orchid Thief” for the big screen and because, (b), there’s never been a movie about flowers before. “What about Flowers for Algernon?”, chips in his brother Donald. “It’s not about flowers and it’s not a movie”, replies Charlie. Donald confesses that he never saw it anyway.
Flashback three years prior to this – and chopping and changing regularly – and we see Susan Orlean as a New Yorker journalist doing her preparation for the book by following the ‘thief’ John Laroche (Chris Cooper, below) about and learning what makes him tick and what his passions are, since it’s not just orchids that’s seen his life through, but many other things stretching back to turtles when he was a child, and later, fish, but he always made a clean break before moving on to the next thing, so was he passionate about his hobby?
Passionate – the very thing Susan wishes she could be about something, yet she’s not sure what John thinks about that emotion. Obsession also kicks in with the other two principal characters, Donald, who’s trying to write his own movie that has all the making of a formulaic Hollywood nonsense blockbuster and Charlie with his neuroses and impossible attempts to adapt the book into a screenplay, just as adaptation is an important part of life and how difficult that is to get right sometimes.
To go into it further would rob the viewer of the surprises held within, but rest assured this is an even better film than Being John Malkovich, perhaps one that’s better for being more realistic in the twists and turns presented. There’s also adequate support from Tilda Swinton as the agent who wants to turn Susan’s book into a film, Brian Cox as screenwriting lecturer Robert McKee and Secretary’s Maggie Gyllenhaal as Donald’s girlfriend and make-up artist Caroline.
There’s a couple of interesting parallels here too. Cox and the excellent Chris Cooper both also featured in The Bourne Identity, yet don’t get any screen time together here. Also, Meryl Streep’s husband is played by Curtis Hanson, not normally one for acting, but who directed Streep in The River Wild and went on to direct 8 Mile and L.A. Confidential.
Finally, a worthy mention goes to Cage, himself, for finding an actor he can bounce off in such a perfect and seamless fashion – himself! The two brothers work so well together, despite being played by the same actor. Some trick CGI is used in a scene or two to blend them in like that, but that doesn’t become the emphasis of the point when there’s such a unique chemistry!
There’s no problems with either the sound of the picture. The film is presented in an anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio with zero flaws, but also has nothing to make it particularly stand out, but then it’s a drama that’s not meant to.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound comes in English and Italian flavours and, again for a drama, doesn’t come across particularly striking but does the job, only shouting out in a shock car crash scene.
What is surprising is the total lack of any decent supplemental material. Basic filmgraphies for main cast members, plus trailers for this film, Maid in Manhattan and Sunshine State, do not extras make. In the old days I might’ve awarded one star for such a paltry effort, but DVDs have been around since April 1998 in the UK and Columbia were one of the first companies to release a few discs in that early soft-launch period so not to bother over five years on is shameful.
The main menu is largely static with some subtle animation, plus a looped piece of music, there are subtitles in English, Italian and Hindi, with the main feature being divided once again into 28 chapters.
Adaptation is out now on Blu-ray, Amazon Video and DVD.
|
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
9 8 6 0 |
| OVERALL | 6 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 110 minutes
Studio: Columbia TriStar
Year: 2002
Released: August 4th 2003
Cat.no: CDR 32707
Region(s): 2, PAL
Chapters: 28
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English, Italian
Subtitles: English, Hindi, Italian
Widescreen: 1.85:1
16:9-Enhanced: Yes
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD9
Director: Spike Jonze
Producers: Jonathan Demme, Vincent Landay, Edward Saxon
Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Donald Kaufman
Music: Carter Burwell
Cast:
Charlie Kaufman / Donald Kaufman: Nicolas Cage
Susan Orlean: Meryl Streep
John Laroche: Chris Cooper
Amelia Kavan: Cara Seymour
Valerie Wood: Tilda Swinton
Marty Bowen: Ron Livingston
Robert McKee: Brian Cox
Caroline Cunningham: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Ranger Steve Neely: Stephen Tobolowsky
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.