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Adaptation.

2002, Movie, R, 114 mins

Adaptation.: Review

ADAPTATION.
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Not since David Cronenberg attempted Naked Lunch has a filmmaker been faced with a knottier problem of book-to-movie adaptation than Charlie Kaufman. Impressed by his screenplay for BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (1999), Sony Pictures hired Kaufman to turn Susan Orlean's non-fiction best-seller The Orchid Thief into a feature film. The book is a fascinating account of an unusual crime: In 1994, 36-year-old John Laroche was arrested for poaching "ghost orchids" from the Fakahatchee Strand, a state-owned nature preserve deep in the Florida Everglades. But aside from Laroche's less-than-sensational crime, there really isn't much "story" in The Orchid Thief. Its substance lies in numerous digressions, which cover everything from obsessive orchid collecting — "orchidelirium" — to the history of Florida land speculation and Orlean's own personal quest for the meaning of passion. The best result the studio could have hoped for was something along the lines of Clint Eastwood's MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL: The crime becomes the crux of the film, and a parade of eccentric characters with musty Southern accents fill in the background. Kaufman, however, felt a responsibility to remain true to Orlean's beautiful book — no contrived romances, no guns, no life lessons. But after months of false starts, he couldn't find a way into the material. At his wit's end, Kaufman threw caution (and, potentially, his career) to the wind and wrote a script about his inability to find the movie in Orlean's book, an experience he paralleled with Orlean's experiences writing The Orchid Thief. Nicolas Cage, in a brilliant dual performance, plays Kaufman — balding, overweight and wracked by self-doubt — as well as Kaufman's fictitious foil, his twin brother, Donald. Thanks to script guru Robert McKee (played with foul-mouthed hauteur by Brian Cox), Donald is having much better luck with his ludicrous, formulaic serial-killer screenplay than Kaufman is with his high-profile project. Meryl Streep plays Orlean and a superb Chris Cooper is Laroche, the thieving autodidact with no front teeth but a surprising poetic streak. The end result, directed with amazing inventiveness by BEING JOHN MALKOVICH's Spike Jonze, is one of the best movies Hollywood has ever made about itself, an extraordinary meta-narrative that continually questions its own ability to capture human experience, disappointment and uneventful loneliness. It's hilariously funny, but that deliberately ridiculous third act, in which Kaufman delivers all that he promised he wouldn't, suggests something deeply depressing and gives the title its true meaning: The only organisms that survive are the ones that learn to adapt to their environment, be it the Fakahatchee Strand or Hollywood. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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