Adaptation

Director: Spike Jonze
Year:2002
cast: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton
Rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

Adaptation is like a simple, pure, beautiful and mysterious thing that keeps on adding these fascinating layers around itself. Amazing us with insights about this little journey called life. The plot kind of grows on you. It's up to you how much you can take in and digest. It's about ordinary people like you and me, telling their extraordinary story. Strangely the films I've loved lately have been about pathetic losers, about timid but genuine people. Their naked vulnerability kills me. I feel bewitched body and soul.


Something strange but fascinating starts happening in the second act. The philosophical journey turns into this tale of mundane characters. The characters you loved so much disappear into darkness. The character of The Orchid Thief seem neglected in the second half of the film. Maybe that's what happens in life. After all life is no fairy tale. Things change, trying to 'adapt' themselves as Charlie Kauffman would say. This movie is not about the orchid thief and it's hard to tell what it is really about. See, sign of a good film. It sure amazes you with it's effortless charm, innocence. As Ebert says, the movie is wickedly playful in it's construction. It never takes itself seriously. Well, why should I? It does work for sure, it's audacity, it's mistery.