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Post by dirtypillows on May 15, 2020 21:13:26 GMT
I watched this today. It's just as muddled and confusing as when I first saw it 18 years ago. At least it was muddled and confusing for me.
Twin brothers date two women. One of the brothers is a writer. Meryl Streep plays a snobby journalist who eventually becomes attracted to her subject, who is looking for a rare orchid.
The dialogue was annoying in the same way that Paddy Chayefsky was annoying. Pretentious. And why did Meryl Streep want to kill Nicholas Cage?
I did not get this movie at all.
Please help me out here.
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Post by moviemouth on May 15, 2020 23:09:24 GMT
Meryl Streep wants to kill Nicolas Cage because she is paranoid about people finding out that she was getting high and sleeping with Chris Cooper and what that would do to her reputation. The movie goes full blown crazy at that point and is almost a movie within a movie. The movie is already half a fake autobiography written by Charlie Kauffman. It is a very clever movie imo.
The movie is essentially a fake account of the making of itself. The main character (the writer of Adaptation.) is hired to write a movie of a book that is almost impossible to make into a movie and so the main character has writer's block and is lonely and unhappy and jealous of his fictional twin brother who is writing a book about a killer with multiple personality disorder (the fact that his brother's extremely cliche sounding book gets high praise is hilarious and annoys Charlie even more). The only way around this is to write himself into the story to adapt the book that Meryl Streep's character wrote and at the end his twin brother is killed and he evolves and takes the first positive step forward at the end of the movie. The movie is about evolution and adaptation in all it's forms.
There are so many layers to the movie that it is very hard to explain without taking notes while watching the movie.
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Post by dirtypillows on May 16, 2020 0:01:50 GMT
Meryl Streep wants to kill Nicolas Cage because she was paranoid about people finding out that she was getting high and sleeping with Chris Cooper and what that would do to her reputation. The movie goes full blown crazy at that point and is almost a movie within a movie. The movie is already half a fake autobiography written by Charlie Kauffman. It is a very clever movie imo. The movie is essentially a fake account of the making of itself. The main character (the writer of Adaptation.) is hired to write a movie of a book that is almost impossible to make into a movie and so the main character has writer's block and is lonely and unhappy and jealous of his fictional twin brother who is writing a book about a killer with multiple personality disorder (the fact that his brother's extremely cliche sounding book gets high praise is hilarious and annoys Charlie even more). The only way around this is to write himself into the story to adapt the book that Meryl Streep's character wrote and at the end his twin brother is killed and he evolves and takes the first positive step forward at the end of the movie. The movie is about evolution and adaptation in all it's forms. There are so many layers to the movie that it is very hard to explain without taking notes while watching the movie. I agree with that last part. |
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Post by Fox in the Snow on May 16, 2020 1:56:36 GMT
I was a little confused the first time I watched it, but I still enjoyed it. Another couple of views and I got my head around it. moviemouth 's description above is about as clear and succinct as I've seen. It's very clever and very meta, but also comes off as wilfully obscure which I guess can be off-putting if you're not on board with it. Have you seen Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, that's arguably even more dense and opaque. |
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Post by dirtypillows on May 16, 2020 2:16:44 GMT
I was a little confused the first time I watched it, but I still enjoyed it. Another couple of views and I got my head around it. moviemouth 's description above is about as clear and succinct as I've seen. It's very clever and very meta, but also comes off as wilfully obscure which I guess can be off-putting if you're not on board with it. Have you seen Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, that's arguably even more dense and opaque. Very "meta", yes. I don't like my movies to be too "meta". "Meta" I can do without. |
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Post by dirtypillows on May 16, 2020 2:18:20 GMT
Meryl Streep wants to kill Nicolas Cage because she is paranoid about people finding out that she was getting high and sleeping with Chris Cooper and what that would do to her reputation. The movie goes full blown crazy at that point and is almost a movie within a movie. The movie is already half a fake autobiography written by Charlie Kauffman. It is a very clever movie imo. The movie is essentially a fake account of the making of itself. The main character (the writer of Adaptation.) is hired to write a movie of a book that is almost impossible to make into a movie and so the main character has writer's block and is lonely and unhappy and jealous of his fictional twin brother who is writing a book about a killer with multiple personality disorder (the fact that his brother's extremely cliche sounding book gets high praise is hilarious and annoys Charlie even more). The only way around this is to write himself into the story to adapt the book that Meryl Streep's character wrote and at the end his twin brother is killed and he evolves and takes the first positive step forward at the end of the movie. The movie is about evolution and adaptation in all it's forms. There are so many layers to the movie that it is very hard to explain without taking notes while watching the movie. Thank you, Movieman, for your detailed and relatively lucid explanation for a super confusing movie. Maybe I will try watching it again. |
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Post by Vits on Aug 28, 2020 17:11:10 GMT
9/10
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Post by jonesjxd on Aug 29, 2020 12:00:42 GMT
It's been years since I've seen it, but it's a movie for writers more than anything. It's a movie about having writers block, striving to do something that hasn't been done before and making every mistake along the way. Charlie Kauffman the real person is personifying the two sides of his personality and professional inclinations as two twin brothers. Charlie (the character) is his smug outsider side, he wants everything to be perfect and beautiful and next level, to make up for the fact he's overweight, sloppy, incapable of fitting in, struggles with relationships, and lacks confidence in the business. Donald is the side of him that's accepting of all his downfalls, trusts his instincts, knows what he wants and how to get it, and more importantly, knows what the movie business and audiences want. Charlie is writing the first half of the movie, all of the things with the sex affairs, drug dealing, and violence is being written by Donald.
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