"I've written myself inside my screenplay."

Adaptation (2002) by Spike Jonze 

From a book by Susan Orlean: The Orchid Thief

Other films directed by Spiko Jonze: Being John Malkovich (1999), Where the Wild Thing Are (2009)

COMMENTS:

Beautiful film showing the different perspectives from people undergoing creation. The movie shows is divded mainly into two simultaneous parts: (1) Charlie, who is screenwriting the book "The Orchid Thief", and (2) Susan who is on the process of writing the book.

We learn from Charlie the difficulty and the pains attached to creating something that would be appreciated from the public's eye. This also reflects his personality; how he is extremely self-conscious, self-loathing and is deeply lonely. He tries to compensate on his insecurity by drowning himself in work.

For Susan's part, she tries to learn more about orchids for her writing by spending time and interviews with the orchid expert, Laroche. The latter is an odd character, that anyone could easily poke fun of at a certain look. Our prejudices are attacked in this part as there is a more heartfelt and intimate story behind the characters.

The narration inside Charlie and Susan’s mind where they undergo reflection is the human element. They slowly learn to adapt to their studies, and to know that there is more to life than what the outside goal is. People have their own stories and they are beautiful and sad, and we can only learn them if we start to listen.

Chris Cooper did a phenomenal job, Meryl Streep was adorable as always, and Nicholas Cage was really convincing. The overall, I believe did pretty well.

Quotables:

I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants.. I suppose I do have one unembarassed passions... I want to know how it feels like to care about something passionately.

-          Susan Orlean

I think people were really spending time with me because they are lonely

-          John Laroche