Adaptation: writing and story review

       Adaptation the movie directed by Spike Jonze was based off of a book called The Orchid Thief written by Susan Orlean. What was quite interesting about this movie was that it seemed to be more of a comedy but going further and further into the story it gets a little funky and twisted almost becomes a thriller. 

       This movie was based off of true events meaning that all the main characters Charlie Kaufman, John Laroche, and Susan Orlean were actual people. Charlie Kaufman was the actual screenplay writer for Adaptation. The whole point of Kaufman's writing was to not hollywood-ize it. He wanted the movie to be genuine and not have all the typical things you would expect to see with hollywood like drugs, sex, crazy action murder. Throughout the movie Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage) explained that he didn't want his character to succeed in the end, which by the end he ends up submitting his screenplay that is not typical hollywood writing style.

        This Film also has a lot of wordy dialogue or voice-overs. This movie is definitely Diegesis because at some points the Charlie is reliable and sometimes he is not telling the story. We hear a lot of Charlie Kaufman's inner monologues going on in his head. By doing this kind of wordy dialogue it helps the audience get a grasp on what is going on and understand Charlie's thoughts. 

        The question is who is telling the story? In the movie we are introduced to Charlie Kaufman as well as what looks to be his twin Donald Kaufman (also played by Nicolas Cage). The only two characters we hear the thoughts of is Charlie and Susan Orlean (played by Meryl Streep). But we can assume Kaufman is the narrator of the story although the audience wouldn't grasp the story as much without the bits of narration on The Orchid Thief without Susan Orlean. 

        Throughout the movie we go back and forth through flashbacks to Susan's experiences writing The Orchid Thief which gives the story more of an impact on what Susan and John's relationship developed into. However the movie gives the ending a twist to the unexpected sexual relationship between Susan and John. In some research, it was discovered that the real Susan Orlean was not comfortable with her character being exposed like that. She had said "It wasn't even the idea that the character had unsavory habits, it was more that I was uncomfortable with just having my name being in the movie". Another interesting thing to think about is who is Donald Kaufman? Researching, it was discovered that Donald Kaufman was a fictional character created for the film which can make us question if Donald was really Charlie's twin or just Charlie's inner thoughts shown physically or like his alter ego.

        This movie has quite a twisted ending that we question everything that we had already tried to understand about the movie. Pretty amazing right?