Over the course of the past decade Charlie Kaufman emerged as one of the definitive voices in American cinema. Each page of a Kaufman script has more imagination and ambition than most films can accomplish altogether. It is easy to forget that he never directed a film until 2008’s Synecdoche, New York, and before that his main collaborators were music video directors Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze. In this column I will review the Kaufman films directed by Jonze, who himself went on to write and direct the terrific Where the Wild Things Are.
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Being John Malkovich (1999)
Rarely has there been a writing debut so comprehensively assured as Being John Malkovich, a movie that bounces between absurdist humor and metaphysical statement seemingly from line to line. Equally as impressive is Spike Jonze’s ability to handle this seemingly impenetrable material. Kaufman spends each of his scripts spinning around and around inside the human mind, somehow avoids crashing, and comes out with an entirely memorable and absorbing film.
John Cusack plays a puppeteer named Craig Schwartz who is starting to get fed up with his unsuccessful livelihood. He is married to Lotte, as played by Cameron Diaz. Eventually Craig decides to get a job at LesterCorp, sitting on the 7½ floor. The marriage between Craig and Lotte has a strong undertone of dissatisfaction, and when Craig meets Maxine (Catherine Keener) at work he immediately is attracted. She, however, is not so interested. That is until his next discovery: a portal in the office which leads into the mind of actor John Malkovich. That person can feel what Malkovich feels, see what Malkovich sees, and hear what Malkovich hears. Once you are done, you are dumped in a ditch next to the New Jersey Turnpike. Following? Good.
Craig emerges with an entire different view of life and consciousness. He has inhabited another human body! Most films present such outlandish and extraordinary events and exploit them for cheap laughs or thrills. Here each character realizes the significance of what has just happened. Craig and Maxine allow people to buy trips into the portal, and to each user this presents endless opportunity and reveals their true desires, as sometimes one has to step outside themselves to do. Lotte discovers that in fact she desires to be a man and to be the lover of Maxine, and Maxine is also attracted to Lotte… but only when she is Malkovich. The most memorable sequence comes when Malkovich himself enters the portal, when we enter the land of “Malkovich, Malkovich.”
Being John Malkovich is no less than a brilliant film. It questions exactly what makes us who we are. Is it our bodies? Is it our minds? Our personalities? Throw all the heady stuff out the window and you still have an incredibly compelling and quite humorous invention. This film is a revelation, and to say much more would only ruin the numerous and thrilling surprises, and with this film the Kaufman revolution was beginning. He and Jonze arrived to show us all what can be done with the medium.
Rating:
(out of 4)-------------
Adaptation (2002)
What does a screenwriter do when presented with source material that is impossible to adapt? Write himself into the screenplay, of course. That’s exactly what Charlie Kaufman does in Adaptation, and it doesn’t stop there. He writes himself writing himself into a screenplay. If Being John Malkovich gives us a world of “Malkovich, Malkovich”, Adaptation is like a feature length trip in the world of “Kaufman, Kaufman”. Several forms of entertainment have depicted the challenges and pressures faced by creative writers. Few make you feel it as deeply and thoroughly as Adaptation.
Kaufman is played by Nicolas Cage, who has just broken through with his screenplay for Being John Malkovich, and has been hired to adapt the nonfiction book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Kaufman is unable to find a story within the book, though he likes what he read. He doesn’t want to change the material or make it too Hollywood, but instead wants to make it feel like real life. In the midst of his endless writers’ block he eventually meets Susan, and the plot gets a whole lot more interesting.
Meanwhile, Kaufman’s fictional brother Donald also looks to get into the screenwriting business with his serial killer film The 3. It’s incredibly clichéd, but Kaufman does not write his fake brother as a moron who doesn’t understand the nuances of film. He knows what makes him happy, and as such he comes off as a much nicer man. He doesn’t insult Charlie or act high-and-mighty around him, but instead supports him through his convoluted and eventually self-important script. Oh, did I mention Donald Kaufman is also played by Nicolas Cage? He truly deserves the Oscar nomination he received, because there is barely a moment when you get the two brothers confused. Adaptation provides one of the best performances Nicolas Cage has ever turned in.
Adaptation is not simply a meta film, it is so meta it nearly folds in on itself. It is a film about its own creation, and as such it makes you think it will stay firmly planted in reality. Instead it goes off in a totally absurd direction and yet you buy it the whole way. It looks at the process of creation, whether fictional or otherwise, and the whole time sticking a knife in the back of the conformist modern Hollywood. Famed writing instructor Robert McKee even is shown as played by Brian Cox. He is portrayed as a sort of screenwriting God, even though he tells all of his students to write everything based on Casablanca and nothing but Casablanca. With Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze make a strong case that following the McKee manifesto will make you but a screenwriting robot. Real brilliance is found when one looks inside themselves and creates what is uniquely theirs, and sometimes it isn’t what’s considered ‘normal’.
This stands as one of Kaufman’s lighter films, though it holds all the usual touches he and Jonze provide. It doesn’t cut as deep into the nature of life as most Kaufman screenplays, and as such it SEEMS small, even though it has more ideas than 80 percent of films added together. After Adaptation, Jonze didn’t make another film until last year’s Where the Wild Things Are, and he continues to prove that he needs to keep making movies. In between film projects he does music videos and the like, but he is a true powerhouse when given the camera. Kaufman, meanwhile, continues to be as distinct a voice as cinema has ever produced, right up to his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, which truly reeks of a writer completely pouring out his soul. He doesn’t stop until he has written a screenplay that goes as deep as it possibly can, and when he knows he has created a film like none other. There is routine, and then there is Charlie Kaufman.
Rating:
(out of 4)
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