Spike Jonze

Her

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Her (2013)

Dir. Spike Jonze

Written by: Spike Jonze

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara

 

Her is one of the most recent movies in my collection, and it’s one of the very last movies that I ever purchased on home video. By the time Her came out on DVD in May of 2014, I was already primarily consuming all of my media through streaming services. My DVD collection had seldom grown in the past couple of years, but I was compelled to add this particular movie to my collection. Despite knowing that with the breadth of streaming services and premium channels available to me, I could likely dial up a popular, recent movie like Her at any time, I needed to own it. Such was the impact that this movie had on me when I saw it in the theater in early 2014, after having just experienced a recent minor heart break. I clung to the movie after that first viewing, declaring it one of my favorites of 2013, a year in which I made it a point to see a great many of the critically-acclaimed films. In the weeks after seeing Her, I played over small moments from the film in my head, comparing them to my own experience of loss. Admittedly, nearly five years later, watching the movie again I realize how short-sightedly maudlin my initial appreciation of it might have been, but I still find Her to be a richly evocative movie that plumbs emotional depths and treats the audience to a sumptuous imagining of a tech-driven near future. Spike Jonze crafts a heartbreakingly beautiful love story in his first solo script, and he further explores the nuances of modern love that he explored in his early collaborations with Charlie Kaufman. It’s a lovely movie that I’m glad to have fallen in love with, even if it was for the wrong reasons.

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The titular Her is Samantha (Johansson), an operating system on a tablet with whom introverted, romantic, lonely poet Theodore Twombly (Phoenix) falls in love. Theodore lives in Los Angeles, sometime in the not-too-distant future, in a world in which people have become even more enamored with their PDAs and other screened devices. Theodore is adrift in this impersonal world, still reeling from the dissolution of his marriage over a year ago, working a dispiriting job in which he pens happy couples’ love letters for them. He has alienated his few friends, including his close friend, Amy (Adams), preferring to spend his evenings alone with his personal assistant and his video games. That all changes, however, when Theodore’s, and everyone else’s, computers are updated to feature a new artificial intelligence-based operating system that will function as a personalized virtual assistant and colleague. Theodore’s OS names herself Samantha, and, within a matter of weeks, the two have sprouted up first, a friendship, and then, an uneasy romance. Though it lacks the physicality of a traditional romantic relationship, the bond that Theodore and Samantha form is emotional and real, and the affections that the two share for one another are, too. Samantha is the coolly unattainable, but imminently approachable woman who Theodore desires, and Theodore provides a human outlet for Samantha to begin to experience the world. Inevitably, though, Samantha, with her computer brain’s limitless ability to expand and process experience and information, begins to outgrow Theodore. He is left devastated, trying to pick up the pieces of a relationship that, on the surface, seemed so immaterial.

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The premise of Her would be laughable if we weren’t in a pervasively digital era, in which people are free to meet and bond online, sharing mutual interests and experiences. In the age of online dating, long distance relationships, and catfishing, meeting someone on the Internet and allowing a friendship or romantic relationship to bloom has become extremely commonplace. Jonze simply takes this idea and stretches it to its most extreme iteration, essentially crafting a love story in which a man falls in love with a personification of the Internet itself. It’s conceptually daring and high-minded, to be sure, but at its root, Her is a fairly conventional love story. Theodore and Samantha form an unlikely pair, but the stages of their courtship would be familiar to anyone who has ever fallen in love, and the ups and downs of their relationship are blissfully and painfully real. Jonze is careful to depict their love as being rooted in deep and true emotions, rather than some tech fetish, as he allows the audience to contrast Theodore and Samantha’s relationship with Theodore’s unsuccessful attempts at connecting with real humans through virtual means. Their relationship is certainly untraditional, but it seems almost quaint in its simplicity and earnestness, and in the unabashed love that the two exhibit for one another.

This central relationship wouldn’t ring as true, though, without the stellar performances of Phoenix and Johansson. I don’t know that I had really recognized Johansson for the great actress that she’s become until I saw Her. I had often enjoyed her performances in movies that I’d seen her in, but her performance as the disembodied voice of Samantha elevated her status as an actor in my mind. Through a purely vocal performance, Johansson is able to fully flesh out Samantha’s character and personality. Her vocal inflections and expert timing lend a layer of humanity to the OS that feels slightly unnatural, at first, but then becomes unmistakably warm and inviting. She gives Samantha sass, feeling, and depth. Her performance is memorable, and it made me realize just how unmistakable her voice is. She plays Samantha as coy and playful, but also vulnerable, searching for meaning and identity. Jonze’s excellent script helps to provide Samantha with some of her layers, but its Johansson’s performance that truly brings the character to life and turns her into a relatable, sympathetic presence.

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Theodore is a somewhat thornier character, not entirely sympathetic, but played to excellent pathos by Phoenix. I’ve long felt that Phoenix was a great artist, and I think that in time he’ll be recognized as one of the best actors of his generation. He is able to shift seamlessly from character to character, channeling different facets of the human experience for each role. The change up in demeanor that he shows from a signature performance in The Master, released just a year before Her, is indicative of the range that he possesses as an actor. Gone are the outbursts and the primal, animalistic rage that he displays in the latter film, replaced here with a gentleness and a reticence previously unforeseen. There’s a bit of the everyman in Theodore, but his social development is stunted just slightly from the trauma of his failed marriage, and Phoenix displays this interiority subtly and masterfully. Though he spends much of the film closed off, watching Phoenix unfurl his easy smile as Theodore’s world begins to open up through his relationship with Samantha is one of the film’s small pleasures. Once his walls begin to come down, Phoenix plays Theodore with a weightless, if nerdy, charm. Theodore is a somewhat unlikable character, prone to self-defeat and neurosis, but it’s hard not to be won over by Phoenix’s nuanced performance.

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Jonze creates a sumptuous visual world for his characters to inhabit. The Los Angeles that he imagines is familiar, maybe a decade or two advanced beyond our world, but filled with just enough technological advances and novelties to give it a sense of whimsy and wonder, placing the film squarely in the realm of speculative fiction. Technology in Her is pervasive but never insistent. Jonze uses screens and virtual reality to give us a glimpse of life in his near-future, but they are merely the window dressing on the human love story that he wants to tell. Technology exists all around, and as such, its presence doesn’t hamper Jonze’s desire to explore a breezy, sun-splashed world. The exteriors of Her are bathed in warm light, and Jonze uses a summery color palette full of warm hues that reflect the film’s inherent romanticism. A love story between a man and an operating system could certainly be an interiorly-focused film, and one without many humanistic touches, but Jonze’s direction and mise-en-scene breathe warm life into Her. Much like in his work with frequent collaborator Charlie Kaufman, Jonze’s visual work provides a grounding and inviting element to a script that could otherwise become esoteric and inaccessible.

Her is a movie that still feels incredibly real and raw when I watch it. I’ve watched and rewatched it a half dozen times in the last few years, and though I’ve grown past the disappointment that I was feeling from a rejection on my initial viewing, it’s a movie that manages to make me feel emotions that few others can. A beautiful relationship, whether it be romantic or platonic, should be about growth and learning, and supporting a partner as they grow and learn, too. The only thing constant in life is change, and as humans we are always changing and growing through experiential learning. In Samantha’s awakening, Her depicts exactly the sort of growth that we should all hope for our partners, but it also accurately depicts the pain that can be caused when one half of a partnership outgrows the other, or grows in new and different directions. Love can be scary, and it can be beautiful, and it can feel immensely overpowering, opening up new experiences and ways of being, and I think that Her captures all of that perfectly. It’s a movie that calls into question what it means to feel, what it means to be human, and it finds the core of humanity in the desire and ability to connect. That connection can be physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, or, at times, all of the above, as we see in Her through Theodore and Samantha’s relationship. It’s an earnest and honest movie, one that isn’t afraid to wallow in the depths of sadness and explore the dizzying heights of euphoric love, and it’s a movie that I likely won’t ever tire of returning to when I’m looking to feel affirmed of my own humanity.

Being John Malkovich

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Being John Malkovich (1999)

Dir. Spike Jonze

Written by: Charlie Kaufman

Starring: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich

 

Being John Malkovich is quite a feat as a debut feature for its writer/director team of Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze. At the time of its release Kaufman was a relative unknown, toiling as a television writer, all of whose feature scripts had been rejected. Jonze was best known for his music video work, having directed iconic clips for artists as diverse as The Beastie Boys, Weezer, Björk, and Fatboy Slim. After the release of this film, however, both would become, if not household names, celebrities of the indie film world. Though its off-kilter premise and subtle sense of humor made the film’s release a slow build and prevented it from being a true commercial success, Being John Malkovich achieved near-universal critical acclaim, and more than made its budget back. Eventually the film would be rewarded with Academy Award nominations for both Kaufman and Jonze, as well as a nomination for Catherine Keener for Best Supporting Actress. As I alluded to in my post about Adaptation., Being John Malkovich announced its eccentric creative brain trust as major players in the film world going into the 21st century.

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I remember hearing about the movie when it was released, but I don’t think that I had any interest in seeing it. Being John Malkovich is a weird comedy for adults, and I was only 14 at the time. I didn’t know who John Malkovich was, and I certainly wouldn’t have appreciated or understood the film’s strange sense of humor if I had seen it when it was released. I know this because I didn’t appreciate it when I did see Being John Malkovich for the first time on cable a few years after it came out. I turned the movie on, near the beginning, on Comedy Central, and I can remember thinking to myself, “What the heck kind of weird movie is this?” I’m pretty sure I didn’t watch the whole thing, but if I did, it didn’t make an impact outside of its deep strangeness. At that time, probably 2001 or 2002, I had never been introduced to surrealism, and my tastes in comedy were certainly not geared towards something this strange and cerebral. Being John Malkovich was simply too much of a head trip for me and, to be fair, it probably was for many people on their first encounter.

The film follows Craig Schwartz (Cusack) a skillful but struggling puppeteer who is encouraged to go looking for a job by his wife, Lotte (Diaz), to bring in some income and take his mind off of his failures as an artist. He takes a job as a filing clerk for LesterCorp, which is located on the 7 ½ floor of a New York City skyscraper, home to an array of unusual characters, not least of which is Dr. Lester himself (Orson Beane). While working at LesterCorp, Craig develops a one-sided obsession with his coworker, Maxine (Keener). One day, Craig finds a small, hidden door in the filing office and opens it to reveal a dank, earthen tunnel. After crawling into the tunnel, Craig finds himself inside the consciousness of actor John Malkovich (playing himself), where he experiences the world through Malkovich’s eyes for 15 minutes before being unceremoniously dropped onto the side of the New Jersey turnpike. Craig shares this discovery with Maxine, in hopes of winning her affections by sharing this surreal and one-of-a-kind experience with her, and the two go into business together, selling the opportunity to inhabit Malkovich to sad-sack losers for $200 a trip. While a love trapezoid forms between Craig, Lotte, Maxine, and Malkovich, Craig finds a way to put his skills as a puppeteer into the service of controlling Malkovich’s body so that he can remain inside him indefinitely. And that is all before the movie starts getting really weird.

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I came back to Malkovich after seeing and loving Adaptation. I was a little older, and I was coming into the experience this time with a better handle on Kaufman’s unique voice. So, the pieces all fell into place for me, and I was able to appreciate the film on its own deeply strange, darkly comic terms. While I fell in love with Adaptation.’s lofty narrative ambition, I appreciated Being John Malkovich for its straightforwardness. Even though its plot is completely bananas, with each passing scene only serving to up the ante for strangeness, the film is played straight. Its humor is often deadpan, to the point of absurdity. It lacks the temporal shifts and narrative overlapping of later Kaufman films, opting instead for a linear structure. Characters don’t spend great periods of the film fretting over the metaphysical or cosmic implications of the bizarre scenario in which they’ve found themselves, as does the fictional Charlie Kaufman of Adaptation., they simply react as if finding a portal into a celebrity’s brain behind a filing cabinet is the sort of thing that could happen to any average office drone. That a film like Being John Malkovich could be described as straightforward at all is a testament to the skill of Kaufman and Jonze at crafting a believable, lived-in world, peopled with characters who feel like they could be real. Just like the 7 ½ floor, it seems like Being John Malkovich exists in a parallel world to the real one, where objects and people from the real world are easily recognizable, but the perspective is slightly skewed. The setting is familiar, but the characters’ relationship to it is somehow off.

That skewed perspective is reinforced by the choice of Cusack and Diaz as the film’s leads, as both actors are asked to play against type for their roles. Though often cast in comedies, Cusack was coming off of a run of serious dramas including Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil and The Thin Red Line, and according to reports he discovered Malkovich after asking his agent to find him the “craziest, most un-produceable script” he could find. Craig is a typical Kaufman protagonist, an artist who can’t reconcile his own ambitions and talents with the needs of the day to day world, and Cusack perfectly embodies the depression and malaise that come along with that character. In the film, Craig’s hair is long and greasy, he’s unshaven, and he is shabbily dressed, a far cry from the typically suave, handsome on-screen persona that Cusack is typically associated with. Although he is sometimes associated with the sorts of mopey, lovelorn character that he plays in Being John Malkovich, none of Cusack’s other comedic roles (save for possibly Lane Meyer in Better Off Dead, but we’ll get to that one soon enough) skew this dark. Craig’s attempts to maintain control over his life, the people in it, and the façade that he’s built up using Malkovich as a puppet push him to extremes.

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If Cusack is playing against type, Diaz is asked to make a full on transformation for the role of Lotte. Diaz had burst into the mainstream the year prior playing the titular character in There’s Something About Mary. After that role, she was poised to break out as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and she did, but Being John Malkovich marks a definite detour into fertile territory for her. Rather than capitalize on his lead actress’s fame, Jonze opts instead to make Diaz nearly unrecognizable in the film. Her signature blonde tresses are traded in for a brown, frizzy wig, while her figure is obscured behind lumpy sweatsuits. Everything about Lotte suggests a life of quiet desperation and Diaz’s subtle performance early in the film pull that off well. Her interactions with the chimp, Elijah, who is a part of the menagerie that Lotte has acquired in place of human children, are both comfortingly maternal and heartbreaking at the same time. While she is adept at portraying a woman trapped in a loveless marriage, Diaz’s best work comes later in the film when she reveals her desire for Maxine, and her insistence of returning to Malkovich’s head to experience life as a man. After her experience, Lotte declares herself to be transgender, and she gains satisfaction and self-actualization that she could have never gotten from Craig through her relationship with Maxine. At this point, Diaz’s performance becomes more assertive, and she takes on the role of the detective in the story, trying to uncover the mystery of the portal, rather than just exploit it, as Craig and Maxine do. Though Craig is, ostensibly, the film’s main character, it’s Lotte who does the most changing throughout the film, and in whose character some of the film’s most interesting themes about identity, consciousness, and sexuality are embodied.

Watching the film in 2017, I was struck by how progressive its attitudes towards sex, relationships, and gender identity were for a film that was released in 1999. While it was far from the dark ages, with respect to representation in media, 1999 was still a much less enlightened time for the general public with respects to sexual diversity. I’m sure that watching this movie must have marked the first time I ever encountered the word “transsexual,” though it didn’t register at all then. The idea of a woman entering into a man’s body, experiencing his view of the world, but maintaining a feminine spark that can still be seen through the eyes, as Maxine asserts that Lotte’s can, suggests a gender fluidity rather than a binary relationship. While this is obviously not the way that a transgendered person in the real world exists, the experience does lead to a revelation in Lotte, and a turning point in her character, as she articulates her own chosen identity and decides to actively pursue a happier and more satisfying relationship. Maxine and Lotte’s relationship, which is eventually achieved without a physical male surrogate, is the healthiest one in the film, and their ultimate production of a child and happily-ever-after ending stands in stark contrast to the loveless marriage that Lotte and Craig were both searching for an escape from. Craig, who attempts to be domineering in his relationship with Lotte and manipulative in his relationship with Maxine, is ultimately rejected by both and ends up alone, forced to watch their happiness through the portal, as it connects to the consciousness of Maxine and Lotte’s love child (conceived through Malkovich), Emily.

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The other aspect of the film that interested me on this rewatch was its treatment of celebrity. In 1999, famous actors and other celebrities existed in a world that was out of reach to the common person, accessible only through tabloid newspapers and gossip shows. Now, in an age of pervasive social media, the film’s portal into John Malkovich’s brain has been actualized through celebrities’ Twitter feeds, and Instagram videos. Fans now have a window into their favorite celebrities’ private lives. Being able to actually see through the eyes of, and effectively inhabit, a famous person would still probably be a valued commodity for some, but with access to our idols’ innermost thoughts and feelings on a stream-of-consciousness Twitter feed, it seems less attractive. Want to know what life is like for John Malkovich? Follow his Twitter feed and find out his pet’s favorite Starbucks order.

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Despite all of that, Being John Malkovich never really feels dated. The film is nearly 20 years old, but aside from the obvious advancements in technology, it is set in such a unique world that, rather than reflecting the time in which it was made, it seems to exist just outside of time. The film’s satire of Hollywood culture and the arts scene in general still ring true, and the film’s central theme of longing to break out of one identity and into another is a universal concept. Ultimately, underneath all of its cerebral meta- trappings, Being John Malkovich is a love story, and a story about the lengths to which these characters will go to make themselves feel lovable. If the film’s strange setting is a bit alienating, its emotional core, and the performances of its cast shine through and give the viewer something to cling to. I hadn’t watched this movie in many years, and while it still doesn’t rank among my very favorite Kaufman films, I could understand why it might for others. The building blocks of his future scripts are in place here, and many of the themes that he continues to explore in his films to this day are fleshed out quite well in Being John Malkovich. I’ll probably end up going back to this movie with more frequency than I have in the past.

Adaptation.

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Adaptation. (2002)

Dir. Spike Jonze

Written by: Charlie Kaufman & Donald Kaufman (from the novel The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean)

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper

 

Charlie Kaufman is, hands down, my favorite screenwriter. He’s also one of the few working screenwriters who has developed into a true auteur, almost immediately establishing his singular, idiosyncratic voice in his first few feature scripts. Being John Malkovich announced the arrival of both Kaufman and director Spike Jonze as major level talents, but it was their second artistic pairing, Adaptation., that revealed the depths of Kaufman’s narrative dexterity. Adaptation. was also the film that introduced me to Kaufman’s cerebral brand of storytelling, and hooked me on his neurotic genius.

Famously born out of Kaufman’s real life writer’s block while attempting to adapt the Susan Orlean novel The Orchid Thief, Adaptation. is, instead, a journey into the writer’s head, exploring the process of adaptation and writing itself as Kaufman inserts himself into his own screenplay. The Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) of Adaptation. is a caricature of the real life Charlie Kaufman, highlighting the screenwriter’s awkwardness and insecurity as he struggles to find an entry point into his film adaptation of The Orchid Thief. Cage also plays Kaufman’s fictional twin brother, Donald, who is also working on a screenplay, and who serves as a foil for the fictional Charlie. The film’s narrative is highly complex, layering the story of Kaufman’s writer’s block with scenes from the novel, which depict New Yorker journalist Susan Orlean’s (Meryl Streep) meeting, and subsequent obsession with, orchid hunter John Laroche (Chris Cooper). By the film’s end, Kaufman has crafted an ouroboros of a story, self-referential to the point of collapsing in on itself in a final act that is both intentionally clichéd and artificial, and also genuinely cathartic.

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As I mentioned earlier, Adaptation. was the film that really introduced me to Charlie Kaufman. I had seen Being John Malkovich on Comedy Central sometime prior to having seen Adaptation., but it was the latter film that made a real impression on me. I picked it up on DVD (used from Blockbuster, as was my wont in those days) sometime in 2003 during my senior year of high school. I hadn’t seen the film in theaters, but I remembered reading a review in Newsweek magazine that detailed Adaptation’s creative genesis and my interest was piqued. What I experienced when I finally got my hands on a copy of Adaptation. did not disappoint and turned me into a lifelong devotee of the work of Charlie Kaufman.

I had seen plenty of movies that trod in waters of self-reference and that highlighted aspects of their own creation or artificiality, but none quite like this one. Adaptation. was a deep dive into the entire creative process. I had never before seen a film that put its stitches and seams so on display. I don’t remember my first viewing specifically, but I know that the first few times I watched the film, I still couldn’t quite put all the pieces together. The narrative jumps forward and backward in time, layering and stitching together the threads of its story, mixing together real people and fictional characters, all being presented in a highly self-conscious filmic representation. Adaptation. simultaneously draws the viewer in to witness its characters’ most vulnerable moments, while keeping them at a distance through a veil of artificiality. It’s complex, high-minded filmmaking, and it can be a lot to take in.

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With all of the high concept ins and outs of its screenplay, it would be easy for Adaptation. to veer off into the territory of navel gazing, or simply to fall apart under the weight of its own ideas. The thing that makes the film so successful is that it is so rooted in genuine human emotion. The performances of its three leads and Jonze’s warm treatment of their flawed, sometimes unlikable characters, keep the film emotionally resonant. Cage is great, and shows a fairly dynamic range in portraying both the neurotic, misanthropic intellectual, Charlie, and the brash, dopey populist, Donald. Donald so obviously looks up to Charlie, attending screenwriting seminars in an attempt to impress his famous brother. Charlie is embarrassed both by and for his twin’s earnestness. Though they spend the bulk of the film fighting and bickering, in fact much of the film’s humor is derived from Donald’s role as a mirror image to Charlie, the twins are there for each other by the end of the film. The love/hate relationship between the twins is the emotional heart of the film, and its final payoff is devastating. As Donald lies, dying, in the middle of the road, he and Charlie share a moment of true pathos. Charlie cradles his dying twin’s head and sings “Happy Together,” an ongoing motif in the film, in an attempt to keep him from heading in to the light.

Streep and Cooper are both excellent, as well, with Cooper winning an Oscar for his portrayal of Laroche the orchid poacher. He’s responsible for one of the film’s funniest lines. When describing the fleeting nature of his myriad interests throughout life, and in particular his decision to stop collection tropical fish, he says, “…One day I say fuck fish. I renounce fish. I vow never to set foot in that ocean again, that’s how much fuck fish.” Laroche’s finality is reflective of the film’s emotional message that love and happiness can be fleeting, so when you find some of either, enjoy it while it lasts and learn to let it go when it’s gone. Over the course of the film, we see Susan Orlean learn this, as she grows more and more enamored with Laroche. Early in her research for The Orchid Thief, we see Orlean drawn in by Laroche’s charisma, and his dogged pursuit of the ghost orchid, which she becomes obsessed with seeing. Pursuing the ghost orchid and Laroche is a metaphor for Orlean chasing her own moment of happiness and adventure, outside of her loveless marriage and stable New York City academic lifestyle. By the film’s end, she’s found that both the orchid and Laroche’s charm were illusory, and she is left, like Charlie, cradling the dead body of a man she loved.

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As I mentioned earlier, the film’s denouement is intentionally artificial and contrived. The brothers Kaufman follow Orlean to Florida where they discover she and Laroche’s secret stash of drugs, derived from the orchids that he grows in his nursery. When the twins are found out, Laroche and Orlean chase them into the swamps of the Everglades, intending to kill them to cover up the secret of the drugs and of their affair. Through a series of increasingly unlikely and violent twists, Donald and Laroche end up dead, while Orlean and Charlie are left in the swamp trying to pick up the pieces. In the hands of a less capable filmmaker, this narrative left turn could potentially unravel the whole film, and would certainly read as wholly unrealistic. However, Jonze directs the scenes masterfully, creating tension out of a patently absurd situation, and also wringing deep pathos out of both Donald’s death and Orlean’s realization that she is, in Charlie’s words, an “old, lonely, desperate, drug addict.” Even after watching her hunt Charlie and Donald through the swamp, it’s impossible not to feel some pity for Orlean, after having seen how empty the rest of her life is outside of the hunt for the ghost orchid. Jonze chooses to hold the camera on Orlean as she keeps Laroche’s bloody body from sinking into the swamp, letting the audience pick up her realization that everything she’d hung her hopes on was a lie.

I think this blend of the cerebral and the emotional makes Adaptation. Kaufman’s most fully realized work. It probably isn’t my favorite movie that he’s written, but it is likely his best. The script is Kaufman’s most complex, but the emotional resonance of Jonze and the spectacular cast give it a core for the wacky, high concept ideas to revolve around. Both in the film and in the script, Kaufman and his on-screen counterpart break all of the rules of screenwriting in their attempts to capture the essence of The Orchid Thief. While he may never truly unravel the mysteries of the novel, the Charlie Kaufman of the film does learn a profound lesson by the end. By the film’s close, Charlie has gained some perspective and is ready to finish up his screenplay. In a way, the screenplay has been his ghost orchid all along.

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It’s a wonder that a film as bursting at the seams with concepts as Adaptation. can wrap up so neatly, but the final shot is simple and perfect and it never fails to make me smile. With Charlie driving off to put the finishing touches on his screenplay, the camera lingers on a planter full of black-eyed susans as “Happy Together” by the Turtles fades in on the soundtrack. Gradually, the cars in the background begin to speed up as day turns to night in what is now a time lapse shot. The flowers close and then open as the Sun rises again, and the cars continue to speed by in the background. Something about those flowers opening and closing in the sped up time lapse, striving to get closer to the light, has always felt like a perfect ending to this film. It symbolizes the cycle of death and rebirth, the hope that each new day can bring. Adaptation. is a near perfect film, one of the best of the 21st century so far, and I love watching it every time I pull it off the shelf.