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I
literally jumped out of my seat with joy…
The
last time I felt that way during a movie – equally bizarrely
– was when I found myself tearing up over one of Anne V.
Coates’ subtle but breathtaking cuts in Erin Brockovich.
Here, in a screening of Adaptation, that moment
came when Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay took one of
the most unexpected and deeply brilliant twists ever put on
a page to be put on film.
To use a sports metaphor, it was like that crack of
the bat at the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game of
the World Series that you know means that the ball is going
out of the park. The
moment comes at the second-third act break and the entire
third act felt like that time while the ball is in the air…
“Go out… go out… come on… get out… go, baby, go…
Of
course, things happen. Balls
go foul. Players make impossible catches. And that could have happened to Kaufman and
director Spike Jonze and his band of merry (wo)men. But it didn’t. Kaufman and Jonze ride this bucking bronco to the very end and into
movie history.
I
am almost afraid of damning this film with excess praise,
but I have to say, not only is Adaptation the best
American film of 2002… and I’m not sure that anything else
even comes close… but this screenplay may be the best screenplay
ever written… period. All
time.
There
are lost of great screenplays and the standard I am using
is my own. The first big hurdle is perfection… and I can’t think of a single
word or moment that I would change here.
But what takes this screenplay higher for me is that
Kaufman uses all the rules of structure, while breaking all
the rules of structure, while never telling the audience how
clever he is. For
them, it’s just a movie.
But this is far more than a great story well told.
I don’t even know that this is really a great story
in the high-minded way we think of great stories.
It is more. It
is a true masterpiece. This is a small, intimate film with moments that for movie lovers will have all
the impact of the great moments of the great epics of film
history.
It
is quite frustrating to hold my tongue (fingers?) about specific
moments. But the greater the work, the greater the joy of experiencing it
for yourself, fresh and mysterious and yours to process in
the way you process. I
can only hope that no one else will thoughtlessly ruin anyone’s
experience of discovery with this film.
The
safe take is that the film is based on the Susan Orlean
New Yorker story and book, The Orchid Thief,
which tells the true story of John Laroche, orchid
thief and singular human being.
But the film also tells the story of Charles Kaufman
(aka Charlie), screenwriter, self-loather and deeply sad human
being. What Kaufman manages to do so brilliantly is
to tell both stories in a thoughtful, engaging, unforgiving
way. But make no mistake, while many of the details
of The Orchid Thief are not to be found in Adaptation,
the heart of that book is there and beating fiercely. Every time Kaufman seems to have taken a wrong step, he brings us
back onto the road, with a clearer vision than you had before.
The
performances are, simply, spectacular.
The only really showy role in the movie belong to Nic
Cage, who plays Charlie Kaufman and his brother Donald…
a brother that does not exist in real life, but who receives
a shared screenwriting credit nonetheless. With his pate shining through his thinning hair and looking heavier
than normal, Cage hits every note just right.
One
of Jonze’s strengths as a director here is that he has brought
together an ensemble of great actors and his camera is not
shy about letting their faces tell the story. Another amazing moment in this film is when
Cara Seymour, playing a potential love interest named
Amelia, is smiling and seductive and just a moment later,
frustrated, she seems to have the same look on her face… but
you can see that the entire world has changed for her. It is a magical moment that Jonze had the skill
and patience to let occur without words.
As the movie progresses, Meryl Streep gets a
number of those kinds of moments, as does Cage.
This is beautiful work that should not be undervalued.
Jonze is showing the patience, in a comedy, to stay
with his characters in the way that makes Michael Mann
one of our very best dramatic directors.
And
while we are on the subject of beauty… Adaptation has
one of the most compelling casts of women every put in the
same film. One of
the themes of the film is that what matters is what we love,
not whether we are loved back.
Jonze and Kaufman and casting directors Justine
Baddeley & Kim Davis-Wagner have a taste in
women that could not be much closer to my own. And though they will never know me, much less
love me, I feel love for each of them… which you feel through
the film that Kaufman, man and character, must feel for each
of these extraordinary women.
Meryl Streep leads the way, looking her age
and beautiful and sexy. In
small supporting roles, Judy Greer and Maggie Gyllenhaal
and Tilda Swinton are each just right.
And
the previously mentioned Cara Seymour is astounding,
really. Not just because
she is shy and sexy and so vulnerable in her scenes with Kaufman/Cage.
But because this is the same actress who played the
street hooker in American Psycho and David Morse’s
shrewish wife in Dancer in The Dark. (Funny, she didn’t look shrewish!) In those films, she looked hard and angry.
Here, she is a beautiful, real-looking, sexy, grown-up
woman with the soft face of an angel. And while I credit her for her performance,
I must give a big hand to Jonze for finding this performance
in this woman. Just
lovely. Women should be fighting to work with this
director and not just because he makes hits.
I’m
1000 words in and I haven’t even mentioned Chris Cooper.
He is, as usual, perfect.
He might have the hardest role in the movie.
He plays a guy who is completely unappealing and has
to become intoxicating… without ever changing.
It’s one of my favorite Cooper roles because he gets
to have a little more fun here than usual.
Instead of playing “the uptight guy,” he gets to play
the guy who lives in a small world that somehow has infinite
boundaries.
Jonze’s
other great strength is his ability with landscapes and the
performances he gets from non-humans.
Digital Domain does some great work for Jonze here,
but it is Jonze’s sense of touch that makes it work so well.
Never has pollination been so sexy.
After all, Kaufman is trying to write a movie about
flowers… never been done… until now.
This
film does face a real challenge when it comes to Oscar.
The third act twists could turn some of the Academy
audience off. This is where I come back to yesterday’s column.
If America’s critics cannot get Adaptation into
that Top Five… if we cannot help Academy members understand
what they might otherwise write off as “weird”… if we can
not get a film this good at least nominated… then what good
are we. This is a film that calls for advocacy. And by asking for it, I fear that some will
react against it out of nothing but spite.
But we all search for that movie grail every week and
we find plastic cups littering an increasingly sticky floor.
Adaptation is a true original.
A gift. We
must appreciate it.
For
my part, I will write in greater detail about the structure
of the film in the future. It’s too early now and there is no point.
But I’d love to come up with one strong paragraph explaining
the genius of the third act… before people have a chance to
look the other way. It’s
one of my frustrations as a critic that I will have a conversation
with someone about a film after the fact, and the explanation
of one little fact or moment changes their entire perception
of the film. This
happened just days ago with a very smart person who just didn’t
put together the last ten minutes of The Ring, and
how that ten minutes makes the entire rest of the movie make
sense. It is one of
the things about that movie that I really like. But once we discussed it, he felt a little
better about the film. A
simple map of this film would do wonders for the Oscar campaign. There are many films for which I will root. But the success of this film would make me
proud of the Academy, much as the Best Picture nominations
for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Traffic
did a couple of years ago.
There
are still a few potential contenders to the Hall of Fame still
to come this year. But as of now, the two truly great films of
2002 to date are complex, demanding, funny, sad, horrible
works of true genius. The other film is City of God, which
is a completely different experience, but also shows a remarkable
degree of storytelling mastery.
Adaptation… oy… I can’t think of a single writer
and director team (this disqualifies co-directors and writer-directors),
since Robert Bolt and David Lean, whose combined
efforts seem so symbiotic… so singular. And they are just getting started! This is Jonze’s second feature and Kaufman’s
third produced screenplay.
This
film is why I love film.
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