Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. (2002) breaks the mold of adapted films. Loosely based on Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, the film focuses instead on the screenwriter’s journey to adaptation. Along the way, the film isn’t afraid to reference and make fun of itself. The story itself becomes almost a story within a story (within another story?) in that Charlie Kaufman writes about his own experiences in adaptation, and the film’s Charlie Kaufman writes about his experiences in adaptation. If you think about it for too long, your brain starts to hurt.
The film also uses overused techniques in an effort to make fun of the movie industry as a whole. At a low point, Charlie attends Bob’s writing session in New York, and Bob instructs his students: “God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.” Adaptation. uses voiceovers in various parts of the movie, including Charlie’s final voiceover, when Charlie muses that Bob wouldn’t like him using a voiceover.
At the same writing seminar, Bob criticizes Charlie’s static writing. Charlie thinks that writing should imitate life, and life just isn’t all that exciting. Bob counters Charlie’s view of life, saying that characters must grow and change. And, if nothing else, “wow them in the end” and make the last half exciting. In a fitting manner, Adaptation. starts off slow and, after Bob’s advice, picks up at a breakneck pace. Charlie and his twin brother Donald follows Susan to Florida and finds himself being chased by a drugged Susan and John. The second half is so drastically different than the first half that it raises the idea that it was all in Charlie’s head. Either way, the film provides commentary that audiences aren’t satisfied without flash and pizazz. In Adaptation‘s own circular way, it uses stereotypes to subvert stereotypes. Though the film is technically an adaptation, its technique is truly original.