Viewed: 13 January 2003
Directed by: Spike Jonze
Listed in: Movies, Cinema

What an amazing movie. I just walked out of the theater 20 minutes ago, so its still fresh in my head. My Excitement over the ending is still undying. I知 just amazed at what it does. Kaufman sets up the whole first hour and a half trying not to make a Hollywood movie and the film feels real but without direction.

He is trying desperately to find this truth, the first real film, he derides everything Hollywood, every convention film is based on and Adaptation follows in this mold in this structure. He sets himself up for failure, and then he fails so brilliantly. Realizing that he cannot have a real film, he drive headlong into Hollywood, he follows the formula perfectly, he derides everything he just said. All in sacrifice for the ending the film.

In the Fenway 13 theater, it seemed I was the only person in on the joke. I was the only one around me laughing when his brother flys through the windshield, I laughed my ass off when LaRoche gets eaten by the Alligator. To those poor people sitting around me, I must have seemed the most insensitive dick. But god-damn it it was so perfect. It ends with fucking Flowers!! They Bloom!!!! So Happy Together plays over the credits!!! This is insane.

I remember sitting in there right before Kaufman痴 brother starts writing the script, thinking to myself, this is very real but not near Being John Malkovich. It was too real, too mediocre. If I wanted this I could stay at home, live my own life. Listen to the voice in my head. Wow Charlie Kaufman is a human like me. How depressing. Now my initial reaction to Being John Malkovich is justified, its the movie I want to make. Hell I could make it, I知 enough like Charlie Kaufman.

So I知 sitting there formulating my own thoughts, never being drawn into the movie, watching it on screen but also watching the people around me, knowing that I知 sitting in a movie theater. In other words the suspension of disbelief never happens, it's real. I知 really in the theater, I知 really watching a movie, the movie is really showing me Charlie Kaufman really struggling with the script. (Given it is spiced up a bit, but it is a movie, not him directly talking into a video camera). Then he gives it all up, follows McKee痴 advice and ends the fucking movie. Hilarious. Brilliant. One of the best films I致e ever seen.