NOTES ON SPIKE JONZE'S ADAPTATION (2002)

In his cinematic treatment of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, Spike Jonze makes an effective analogy between the process of script adaptation and adaptation in its biological form. The screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman essentially writes himself into the film both as a character and as the creator of an elaborate master design that includes screen credits and final envoi. As well, Kaufman undergoes a striking mutation of his own. Nicholas Cage plays Kaufman as two brothers, Charlie and Donald. As an aspiring screen writer Donald produces the companion piece to Adaptation( 2002), Three a psychological thriller about a serial killer. Appearing to ramble through the multiple layers of adaptation, Charlie extends his image of a life force that engages all around him. Despite the apparent digressions, Charlie is threading together a taut web. The timid Charlie uses his own character as a mask to extend this all-encompassing vision.

Charlie Kaufaman's sexual musing include the formidable Susan Orlean surrendering herself to him. When the camera shows her hands on his chest, this image blurs the sexual fantasy with the viewer's desire to "see it all". The literate, confident Susan Orlean simply bears witness to his prowess. Even if he is paralysed into not being able to talk to her, she still appears in his bedroom in full form and easily satisfies the audience's curiosity. The paralysis then is self-serving. It permits Charlie to strip the character down to her naked appetite, and Charlie gloats over her desperate effort at seeking her satisfaction. Similarly, Kaufman's characterization of Robert McKee makes short work of the gruff, pedantic script guru. Nevertheless, a hopeless Charlie Kaufman turns to McKee to help him out of his writer's block dilemma. Their meeting provides one of the more dramatic moments of the film. The writer's problem forces Charlie to engage the more passionate elements in his own script. The contrasts with Donald's script for Three only highlight the hidden aggressions already lurking in the initial portrayal.

The script exposes Susan Orlean's unfulfilled passion as if to make its satisfaction key to our understanding of her character. A slightly dazed Seminole softens her up with some off-hand complements. "I can see your sadness. It's lovely. " Her desires exceed the well-ordered world of her tasteful Manhattan apartment, and it is only a matter of time before she will follow in her pursuit of Laroche. Her demise is somewhat programmatic. But there is a sentimental scene where she and Laroche create a dial tone in harmony. She has already fallen victim to the rather ecstatic qualities of Laroche' search. This is Donald's opening. He becomes the detective of his script and proceeds to break her down. The brothers' voyeuristic tracking of her to the Everglades seems almost justified by her shenanigans. She is condemned for not following Donald's terms of "honesty". His judgement follows in form the self-analysis that Charlie has practiced during the opening credits of the film. "Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence?" Once cornered by the inquisitive Charlie, her only resource is to attack. Driven deeper into despair, her blank stare suggests that she has given into the zombie like obsession and truly is overcome by her passion. "YOU LOSER. You've ruined my life, YOU FAT FUCK." Kaufman easily fends off her insult: " FUCK YOU LADY. You're just a lonely, old, and pathetic DRUG ADDICT." His sentence is irrevocable. The audience has already enjoyed the fantasy and can end the contact unscathed.

Adaptation describes the organism's clumsy attempt to impress its vision on the environment, all the while, the surrounding environment seems to immerse the self in its own morass. The past seems to literally haunt Charlie as a perturbed Charles Darwin lunges at him in a dream. This is a far cry from the more serious Darwin searching for the primordial "life force" that seems to guide all evolution. Kaufman carries on this biological mysticism in the quote from Donald Kaufman's Three : We're all one thing, Lieutenant. That's what I've come to realize. Life cells in a body. 'Cept we can't see the body. The way fish can't see the body. So we envy each other. Hate each other. Hate each other. Is that silly. A heart cell hating a lung cell." The harmonious image of nature carried on that same coincidence between Susan and Laroched when they sing the dial tone. But Donald's play is about a bizarre mutation of nature the serial killer. Moreover, the killer makes the victims digest themselves. Donald's imaginative world captures Charlie's effort to assimilate all around him into his script, to gobble them up.

Like so many films, Adaptation relies on a convention that distinguishes the "fantasy" of Charlie's romantic interlude with Susan from the "reality" of his verbal paralysis in her presence (the elevator scene). An audience seems somewhat comfortable with this perspective as it helps sort out the muddle of competing versions of the same scene. Often, such realities threatens the viewer with a reminder of the his same paralytic moments in his experience. At the same time, the film reassures the audience with a romantic resolution: the self-confident self will make his way. The saccharin jubilance of the Turtles' song echoes this: "No mater how we toss the dice it's meant to be. The only one for me is you and you for me, so happy together." How else can the viewer explain the final assent of Amelia? Amidst the chaos of the multi-layered flashbacks, these simple verities emerge as if to suggest their motivation lies at the heart of these chaotic maelstroms. Particularly as an adaptation of Orlean's book, the film steps into the more and more far-fetched.From the distillation of a drug from the ghost orchids to the eventual murderous impulse of Susan Orlean , Kaufman is extending way beyond the believability of the original text. The brother Donald seems a staple of the story, but his presence sets in a chain of events that engenders the rage of Orlean and Laroche. The brother's existence in the script adaptation is, therefore, entirely justified by the imaginative "supplement" to the original work. Charlie's emotional "epiphany" is a product of his interaction with this fictional brother. Hunted down in the swamp, his tears of fear and desperation link him insolubly with his brother. These emotions also confirm the audience's expectations for the character's transformation, his expression of humanity. Here, he extends beyond the auto-erotic fascination that dominated his experience.

The audience is grossly complicit in this process. Susan Orlean's passionate sighs coincide with Charlie's. More particularly, the actress Streep submits to the characterization. The slightly open robe conceals in its protected fashion. The pornography of celebrity goes hand in hand with the platitudes about the self and reality. Celebrity appears remote, but it captures the immediacy of desire. Susan Orlean will surrender a secure order for the directionless chaos of the swamp. An intentionally-posed Orlean contrasts with the disheveled Laroche trying to engage his compass. The adventure is charged by the tension of her bedroom chambers that are entirely lacking in passion in contrast with with the sprawling, humid, constantly evolving world the swamp. The order is maintained by just such a rendering of chaos. Deviance becomes the style of acting through the moral platitudes. Laroche is the perfect surrogate in this enactment. He is entirely imbued with these chaotic energies. "I'm the smartest man I know." In court, he expands upon this observation with a listing of his publications. The "genius" gets hopelessly lost in his adopted habitat, the swamp. And he picks Orlean as his accomplice, her emotions entirely transparent to Donald Kaufman. He even puts her picture on his pornographic web site. This counterposes with the details of their coupling in the back of Laroche's van. In a subsequent scene she stares romantically at him while he is engaged in his work in the greenhouse. This is the dance that Laroche has described:

"And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way."

It culminates the previous revelation about her sadness. The chaotic resolves in a strict order. Laroche has oriented her towards the grand design, the script of life.

Life seems to emerge from this tropical laboratory; the swamp appeals for a return. There, Laroche is collapsed in the mud as he wipes his hands on his pants. Herein lies the expression of his passion that eludes her. "I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know how it feels to care about something passionately." She returns to bury herself in that wonder. But Kaufman will not allow her transcendence. Her ethereal longing is reduced to the tawdry and addicted. He has skewed the resolution to provide dominance for the script's insights.