How is a depressed middle aged man like an orchid?

Not in many ways as you might have guessed and, as you will find out if you watch Adaptation.

I don't know why this didn't occur to me before because (at the risk of imitating Napoleon Dynamite) this is pretty much my favourite film of all time. Every time I watch it it yields new insight, its funny and weird and clever and tragic. Don't let Nicholas Cage's goggle-eyed face put you off, he is awesome in this movie, convincingly playing the lead and his twin brother.

The reason it is making it's belated appearance here is the theme of evolution which permeates the film through the story within a story and the visuals, eg in an ellipsis showing the earth's history and the evolution of plants, animals and man culminating in the birth of a child who is Charlie Kaufman, the writer (in real life) and main character in this film.

The title refers at once to the film's plot - a screen writer adapting a book, to the adaptation of living organisms through evolution, and to the adaptation of the characters as their lives change.

In summary the film tells the the story of Charlie Kaufman, the guy who wrote being John Malcovitch, a screen writer who is employed to write a screen play on a book about a guy who illegally collects orchids (I know what you're thinkin... sounds really great).

Determined not to sensationalise the story like so many other Hollywood adaptations Charlie struggles to make headway in the writing of the screen play. We see his torment as his main goal is just to show the beauty and elegance of flowers without resorting to the usual movie elements of sex, drugs and making holes (...in people...with guns).

Metaphor's can be dragged any way you want and as always there is room for interpretation, but I see that John LaRoche (the orchid thief), Suzanne Orlean (the writer of the book, played by Meyrl Streep - who still irritates the shit out of me for reasons I can't articulate) and Charlie Kaufman show different ways of coping with life. Abilities to adapt, if you will.

LaRoche has suffered at the hands of fate when his mother and uncle were killed and his nursery destroyed in a hurricane. He is the most adaptable. The survivor, he isn't bitter or cynical and despite first impressions as a nut job he has wisdom gained through abundant and colourful life experience.

Orlean is sad and lonely, looking at life through a melancholy lens. She cannot adapt and becomes involved with LaRoche probably because she is drawn to his ability to do so. Though successful in her own right she wants to escape her life in New York to find happiness with LaRoche in the swamp, but in the end she can only be happy through getting high off a native american drug extracted from a rare orchid. When laid bare at the end she cries and repeats 'I want to be new, I want to be new', to have a second crack at life because she can't adapt to this one.

Charlie is kind of between the two. Deeply unhappy but trying desperately to adapt in new and ingenious ways he makes many false starts and hits dead ends before deciding to write himself into the movie. At this point he degrades himself calling the idea solipsistic and pathetic because the only thing he can write about is himself.

The fourth, unmentioned but important character is Donald Kaufman, Charlie's twin brother. He is in contrast to all the other characters. Life seems easy for him. He doesn't struggle, he just has a laugh takes things as they come. He is the catalyst for Charlie in the life changing final half hour.

Charlie finds success after reluctantly taking Donald's advice to go to a famous screen writing seminar. Charlie hates himself for doing this, for taking the easy way out, for going down the same road as everyone else, but in doing so he finds that it all comes together. This clip is where Charlie starts to learn how to adapt. Brian Cox is a legend:


All the things he swore never to do then come into the film, sex, drugs, guns, car chases, characters learning profound life lessons (and the voice over narration ceases).

So tying this back to the biological metaphor. It's important to change because ubiquity and similarity cause weakness in species and in coping with life, diversity means that adaptation is possible when things go wrong, but when doing things one way works it's suicide to fight against that all the time. Our phenotype - how we turn out - is a mixture of our environment and our DNA, what you end up with might be totally different from the blueprint.

I could chat shit about this movie all day.
...the ghost orchid represents those things that are wonderful to think about but never exist in reality and as soon as it does exist in reality it's just a disappointment...
...Charlie is ouroboros...
...when one bee and one orchid do what they are supposed to do together it's fascinating  but when this happens to millions of individuals the world lives. Just by doing what they're supposed to everything works...
...if you're still reading this, well done! Go and have a brew!