2. Adaptation (2002)
Drama/Comedy to Thriller Drama, comedy, tragedy, metafilm, biopic...there's a lot thrown into Spike Jonze's film about a screenwriter struggling to adapt a novel. Not least because Nicolas Cage is playing the real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (who, naturally, wrote this film) as well as his fictional twin brother Donald. And while the author whose novel is being adapted (Meryl Streep) is falling in love with its subject (Chris Cooper), Kaufman is obsessing over her, his own failures and his brother's successes. As a result, he finds himself unconsciously writing himself into the adaptation. It's fair to say that at no point in this film can you see where it is headed. Perhaps Charlie's neuroses will get the better of him and he'll end up going off the rails? Perhaps he'll kill his brother in a jealous rage? After all, while he eschews Hollywood cliché, Donald has made a fortune selling an asinine thriller that even he doesn't quite understand. Or perhaps the adaptation will be a smash success and he'll finally get the recognition and plaudits he so deserves? It's worth reminding ourselves here that, while the film is just a little self-indulgent, the real-life Kaufman would never pick a happy ending like that. Both the above author and subject are representations of real people; Susan Orlean and John Laroche, respectively. Yet you can see just why Laroche was less than complimentary about the way he was portrayed. Skulking around the Florida marshes with a shotgun in your hands isn't necessarily guaranteed to ensure you're remembered fondly. And yet that's precisely how the film ends. Donald and Charlie are running (well, wading) for their lives, with Orlean and Laroche in pursuit. But, given the metaphysical mind-games and stories-within-stories of the preceding hour, isn't a cat and mouse finale a little...conventional? Well, yes. But, of course, that may well be the point. We'll just have to hope that Kaufman (both of them?) wanted us to get the joke.