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2002: The Year in Movies

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from: Sarah Kerr
to: David Edelstein, A.O. Scott, and Roger Ebert

Dogs of War

Posted Friday, Jan. 3, 2003, at 5:36 PM ET

Who are these people?

Dear gang,

To war, to war, to war we're going to go!

Onward, then, to the Adaptation debate. Let me first say (not too warlike of me, but true) that in reading thumbs-up and thumbs-down reviews and talking to people who've seen it, I think I side somewhat with your logic, David.

So, this film is about "adaptation," in the literary, the genetic, and the behavioral sense of accommodating and rising to life's challenges? Pshaw. As you say, Kaufman just couldn't figure out how to turn Susan Orlean's charming account of a Florida weirdo who stole orchids into a movie. His attempt to connect writing to evolution is strained. The focus on his own travails comes close to being unforgivably selfish. And the third-act twist, which suddenly seems to embrace Hollywood plot clichés after mocking them, is too arbitrary and willful to tell us anything about how "storytelling" works. So, enough with the meta.

As I said, I saw this early and alone, having heard nothing, and the experience was unsurpassably strange. I talked to the screen. I wasn't sure what to think and couldn't imagine that audiences or even other critics would take to it.

But still: I felt neither tricked nor let down. As after an exotic four-course dinner, I vividly preserved a sense memory of distinct emotions and moods:

1) Belly-laughing at Nicolas Cage's early shenanigans, playing both neurotic Charlie (unable to progress in adapting Orlean's book because he's captivated by his own inadequacies) and fictive twin brother Donald, whose happy idiocy (buffoon dancing, fatuous and blithely corrupt work on an awful screenplay called The Three) is an even funnier yang to Charlie's yin.

2) Dread, after it begins to feel that there's nowhere left to go—that continuing to watch this nebbish sweatily overthink everything would be like accidentally lying down in a coffin.

3) Chutzpah shock, beginning with the moment Charlie visits the formulaic screenwriting guru Robert McKee (another figure who exists in real life, deliciously played by Brian Cox with a bellowing certainty that recalls Phil Hartman) and continuing through the unmotivated, deservedly controversial but funny plot twist.

4) At last, realizing near the end that the chasm between the twins is shrinking: poignant bitter-sweetness. Though still an idiot, Donald has proven himself generous enough to deserve Charlie's gratitude. With Donald's generosity as an example, Charlie can begin to realize that all his crippling worry about integrity hasn't just kept him from writing a decent word—it's turned him into a selfish ass and bulldozed his life.

At its best I don't think Adaptation is about Kaufman's cleverness, or meta-wizardry, or even originality versus Hollywood selling out. Writer's block is, at bottom, about inaction versus action, endlessly self-measuring worry versus the flow that comes when you choose to live. The Charlie Kaufman of the film's first half is a pitiable monster; Donald is the moronic angel who helps turn him back into a man. That he does so with hack strategies—obvious structure, low expectations—makes it no less of a rescue.

Kauffman may have failed utterly at adapting Orlean's book. From the evidence, he appears to be a hopeless tangle of a man. But, teamed up again with director Spike Jonze, he's taken another bold stab at forcing a philosophical question—which is more important, art or happiness?—onto the screen. As a comedy. With Nicolas Cage doing a priceless bump and grind. It's good enough for me.

What do you think, Roger and Tony? Does this have anything to do with your experience?

Till soon, everyone. But David, let's get ready to talk about The Triumph of Love on Monday. I'm afraid I found it feeble. And Gangs of New York: a new clichéd, evasive mythology of NY to replace the old one. And Chicago: wonderfully entertaining fun, not so cold as all that, but about half as great as it could have been if the stars could really, really dance. And The Two Towers: Our readers are absolutely right to wonder where we are on this, the juggernaut phenom of the moment. I love much about it and like most of the rest but felt like putting films on my list that a critic might hope to help.

Roger, if we can't speak again this round, farewell and very sorry to lose you.

Best,
Sarah

the movie club
entries
1234567891011121314151617181920
from: Sarah Kerr
to: David Edelstein, A.O. Scott, and Roger Ebert

Dogs of War

Posted Friday, Jan. 3, 2003, at 5:36 PM ET
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Roger Ebert is the Chicago Sun-Times' film critic. David Edelstein is Slate's film critic. You can e-mail him at . Sarah Kerr is Vogue's film critic. A.O. Scott is a film critic at the New York Times.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:

The Movie Club Fray has been busy adding to and subtracting from the critics' lists (additions: Ararat, The Two Towers, Jackass; subtractions: Minority Report, anything that hasn't been in wide release, The Pianist). One item of note: critics should entertain gender-switched hypotheticals at their own peril. Ebert's feminized Igby reminds pnuge of Wish You Were Here; Edelstein's Man-Hours reminds DeaH of American Beauty. jknyc tracks down Ebert's Howard Hawks reference. There is also a smart Spielberg thread—that is, one about narrative and character development and not the omnipresent "bad dad"—here, with seanweitner, simparker and Rachel doing most of the bandying.

Remarks From The Fray:

The reason I felt betrayed by Adaptation's climax was because, just as Mr. Ebert claims, it was thumbing its nose at the members of the audience who didn't understand how "brave" it was. That's a pretty damning criticism from one of the movie's admirers. It's okay to thumb your nose at the start of such a movie--pre-empt criticism, confound expectation, etc. But by the end you should be making a movie for those in the audience who DO understand how brave you are. The best possible ending for this film would have been a true compromise, an actual adaptation by Kaufman; or, on the other hand, as un-McKee an ending as possible, something that Kaufman truly loved. If he was writing the ending for someone who didn't understand the rest of the movie, then it's understandable that I, who liked the rest of the movie, felt so alienated.

Worth it, however, for that gorgeous final time-lapse shot. Most elegant time-lapse photography since Boys Don't Cry.

-- simparker

(To reply, click here.)

"Can you imagine the outcry if Igby had been a teenage girl and her lover the 40-year-old best friend of her father?"

That sounds a lot like David Leland's "Wish You Were Here".

-- pnuge

(To reply, click here.)

Mr. Edelstein says that a man making the same choice as the woman in The Hours would be looked upon as a monstrous coward. It really wasn't too many years ago that Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for playing a man who made just that same choice. His character is seen as liberated for choosing to get high and lust after a rose-covered teen. Mentally, at least, he left his wife and children to live for the first time until he, ironically wasn't alive anymore.

-- DeaH

(To reply, click here.)

The quote about Hawks being enjoyable was in the Sunday NY TIMES Book Review section in a review on Elmore Leonard. [It is; here. The review is by Salon's Charles Taylor and he is citing Robin Wood.—Fray Ed.]

-- jknyc

(To reply, click here.)

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