Log In


Film Reviews

Adaptation

Adaptation

  • Rating: Adaptation rated 5
  • Director:
  • Starring: Brian Cox
  • Details: US / 112 minutes / (No Cert).

How do you follow up a movie like Being John Malkovich? That's the question that screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (as played here by Nicolas Cage) is asking himself in Adaptation. Although he's coming off the back of an Oscar nominated film, Kaufman is finding it impossible to start work on his latest project, a screenplay of Susan Orlean's elusive book, The Orchid Thief. His writer's block is made all the more painful by his increasingly fractured social life and his twin (and rather annoying) sibling, Donald (Cage again) who decides to become a screenwriter, albeit one bent in a very commercial direction. Throw in Kaufman's growing interest in the private life of the writer of the Orchid Thief, and her relationship with one of the chief characters of her book and you've got one of the most original movies of the year.
This is a painfully inadequate summarisation of Adaptation, as the second collaboration between director Spike Jones and the real life Charlie Kaufman is simply one of those films that you have to see. The genesis of the screenplay is fact, a document of the troubles that Kaufman had when he tried to adapt The Orchid Thief. Once that is established, the screenwriter delights in blurring the line between fact and fiction, inventing a twin sibling and allowing the narrative to spill into an outlandish but extraordinarily clever direction in the final third. Truth be told, quibbles are few in this beautifully acted film. The only criticism I have is that occasionally Jones and Kaufman have a tendency to admire their own work, and revel a little too easily in their genius. But then again, when you've made a film as beguiling, bewitching and ultimately as brilliant as this, their restraint is quite remarkable. Utterly unmissable.

Review by Garreth Murphy

Your Comments

No Comments have been posted for this article yet - be the first

Write Your Own Comment!

Search

Or search alphabetically:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

DVD Reviews

More DVD

The Descendants
FILM TITLE rated 4

 When a film, especially a low key drama, is hyped up then there can be a certain level of disappointment in some quarters. Thankfully, Alexander Payne's first feature since the superb... [more]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)
FILM TITLE rated 4

 Full disclosure: I have never read the books that this American-financed remake is based upon, nor have I seen the hugely successful Swedish productions that followed it. A classy production... [more]

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
FILM TITLE rated 3

Pixar stalwart Brad Bird makes his live-action feature debut with a franchise that has just had its most underrated installment. JJ Abrams' first film is almost vintage Cameron, and was a much... [more]

Shame
FILM TITLE rated 4

 An unrelenting examination of a fascinating but bleak character, Shame is a dramatical, dense and remarkable film that will astound and disturb in equal measure. While Steve McQueen's sombre... [more]

Your Cinema Listings

Competitions

No competitons currently running