Adaptation

The Adaptation is a movie about a screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, who has to create a screenplay out of a novel. Kaufman is very impressed by the simplicity and honesty of this book about a rare orchid, and he wants to preserve the integrity of the novel. He does not want to use ridiculous hooks, ambiguous metaphors, or cliché endings in his script to entice people into watching his movies.

Kaufman’s struggle to stay true to the novel directly exemplifies the message the director, Spike Jonze, wants to convey. Jonze believes, like Kaufman, that movies too often rely on hooks and twist endings to draw an audience rather than telling a story that is original, simple, and true to real life. What makes the movie interesting is how Jonze uses characters and events that purposely contradict Kaufman’s and, ultimately, Jonze’s ideas on good script writing. Charlie’s twin brother, Donald, is one example of this. Charlie believes writing is an art form and should be approached with forethought and purpose. However, Donald finds success in using the methods that Charlie is annoyed by and Jonze is warning against. He writes a script for a story that does not make sense, he throws in metaphors that loosely relate to the movie, and he writes an ending to his script that is not consistent with the rest of the story. Charlie represents writers that do their job for the passion and enjoyment of the art while Donald represents the mainstream writers that do so simply for the money and acclaim.

The main problem that frustrates Charlie is how to end the film. The novel ends with no real concrete resolution; it is in no way flashy or exciting. Charlie is against recurring endings. He wrestles with the idea that a movie does not have to have a familiar or overly exciting ending for it to be good. Movies should reflect real life, and Charlie feels that life stories can be simple in the way they develop and end. I feel like Jonze shares the same view and wants the audience to feel the same way and notice when writers are using cheesy endings. Jonze does this by using those exact tactics to end this movie. Adaptation ends with a sex scene, violence and killing, and Charlie’s attitude and personality changing for the better. After hours of being told to stay away from such cliché methods, Jonze abruptly and awkwardly ends the movie with these scenes to show just how unrealistic movies are nowadays. He purposely wants the audience to feel insulted by the ending so we can recognize similar endings in other movies.

I noticed the shift in the movie from trying to keep away from falling into the stereotypical plot scheme and ending to purposely following that stereotype. And I admit I was very turned off once the movie started ending because I was sort of expecting an ending that would end differently. I wanted Charlie to find a conclusion that made him happy rather than him changing to follow the stereotype then becoming happy. The love affair between the autor, Susan Orleans, and the novel’s subject, John LaRoche, the fact that the orchids were really used as a drug, and the swamp death scene all seemed very fantastic and unrealistic. After discussing the movie in class I was less angry about the ending, but I would have enjoyed the movie better if the ending had been consistent with the rest of the movie.