Review of Adaptation

Charlie Kaufman has made a career out of writing surrealist, reflexive screenplays, and by now he pretty much owns the genre that has spawned such mimicry as Stranger Than Fiction and Science of Sleep. Kaufman remains the master, and it is a mastery no better epitomized than by his 2002 work Adaptation. If you thought it's hard to write a movie about flowers, you're not alone, and Kaufman had little in the way of a springboard to work off of, seeing as there's never been a movie written about flowers. ("Flowers for Algernon," suggests dull but sincere twin brother Donald. "That's not a movie," replies Charlie, "and it's not about flowers.) Precedential paucity proved no obstacle, hardly surprising for the most original writer in Hollywood. Kaufman simply wrote himself into the script, focusing on his own struggles in trying to adapt Susan Orlean's book "The Orchid Thief." Solipsistic is how Charlie, played by Oscar-nominated Nic Cage, describes the idea when it first occurs to him. Maybe so, but Kaufman pulls it off easily, helped by Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper, who also got Oscar nominations. After Being John Malkovich, Kaufman suffered no creativity slump, hammering out Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in a span of five years. I recommend Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine. Four stars.