I've been struggling to come up with as bizarre an analogy as possible to explain the viewing experience that is Charlie Kaufman's ADAPTATION. Why? you might ask. Thing is, the conventional explanations just don't work with this movie.

And I think I found one.

It's like if street magician David Blaine walks up to you and, without touching you, makes $10 disappear from your wallet. It's a helluva trick, but I'm not sure I wouldn't rather have the money.

What Charlie Kaufman does is a mean trick indeed, and this movie is very clearly the work of an inspired -- if very warped -- genius. He starts with a nice little book on plants. It's nice, but it's competely lacking in plot. So he proceeds to explain why it wouldn't make a good movie, and point of the things he would have to do to it to turn it into a movie. These things, he adds, are all anathema to him and his career up to this point, not to mention anathema to the source material. This conflict so bothers him that it results in an external manifestation of the split going on in him. (Check the movie's credits.)

Then what he does is chronicle his own torment and personality crisis in the script. In doing so, however, he manages to find a thematic connection between his own pesonal struggle as a Hollywood screenwriter and the book he is adapting. The resulting adaptation bears little resemblance to the book, yet finds an entirely new thematic level in the book, one certainly not even intended by the book's author.

The resolution of the conflict -- admittedly, the conflict he himself created -- is to then do the very things he didn't want to do but recognized were necessary to turn the book into a movie.

Confused yet? Don't be. The movie is really a lot more convoluted that I have explained here, but the last act crystalizes in such a way to make you forgive the twists, turns and multiple layers of reality in the preceeding two acts. (I doubt very much Kaufman things in terms of three acts, but they are there nonetheless.)

The third act, however, is filled with all the overused plot devices and Hollywood clichés that he didn't want to use. He knew they were necessary in order to make a watchable movie. Otherwise, it would have been a nice little documentary. It's all done well. More than that, it's done in a way to make it seem halfway organic. And to go even further (and here's where the genius really shows), he found a way to do the things he found abhorrent about his job and do it in such a way as to transcend the material. In short, he adapted.

On it's most basic level, it's sublime irony. But it's more than that. He made the material better, made it deeper, richer, more meaningful. It's been said that one element of genius is being able to see how seemingly random items or phenomena are connected on a higher level. Another mark of genius is being able to make that abstract connection seem obvious to all.

Who would have expected such a close bond between a Florida orchid thief, a New York magazine writer, and the life of a Hollywood screenwriter? Not me, but it's all crystal clear now.

My problem is that, to make it clear -- to witness this genius at work -- I had to watch a third act full of nothing but overused plot devices and Hollywood clichés.

It was a great trick. I'm just not sure it was worth it.

RED
Ora et labora