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Adaptation (2002)
The Literary
122 N. Neil St.
Champaign, Illinois 61820
(217) 954-1500
Category
Hours
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What happens when a screenwriter tries to adapt a book about orchids and discovers that the real subject is himself? Charlie Kaufman’s wildly inventive adaptation of Susan Orlean's 1998 nonfiction book is transformed into one of the great films about screenwriting — a dizzying hall-of-mirrors comedy that turns writer’s block, artistic anxiety, Hollywood formula, and the very idea of originality into its own raw material. Nicolas Cage gives one of his most remarkable performances as both the painfully neurotic Charlie and his fictional twin Donald, while Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper bring extraordinary depth to characters who gradually become entangled in Kaufman’s increasingly unstable fiction. Spike Jonze directs with a light touch that allows the screenplay’s elaborate games to remain genuinely funny, surprisingly moving, and completely unpredictable. The film constantly threatens to collapse under the weight of its own cleverness, then somehow finds another level. Funny, melancholy, intellectually mischievous, and formally audacious, this s a rare Hollywood movie that turns its own construction into the subject without losing sight of the human beings trapped inside it.
Tickets go on sale Nov. 1
Content Advisory: Strong language, sexual content, nudity, drug use, smoking, alcohol use, violence, death, suicide, and disturbing imagery.
USA 2002 | 114 min | Rated R | Directed by: Spike Jonze | Written by: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox, Maggie Gyllenhaal