Adaptation

I watched this movie last night and I've gotta say, 👍
it’s actually pretty cool and interesting.
That last third of the film everyone keeps complaining about? To me, it doesn't feel like a bad ending at all—it feels like a total admission of defeat!!!
Charlie has Donald inside him, this fictional brother who's part of his soul, a side he basically loathes. But in the end, he just gives in to those Hollywood standards and bows down to the god of commercialism, spitting on everything he stood for just yesterday.
It's that battle between the horse and the motorcycle, just like when "Donald" described it in one of those scenes, and Charlie responds with, "and they're still all one person, right?"

So, he calls on "Donald" to help finish the Adaptation, finishing the story by following Smith's "story" instructions after the book's final line: adding drugs, sex, crime, cars, death...

He adapts, even though he views adaptation as a weakness.
"Plants are adaptable; it's the only way they survive. But it's easy for plants; with people, it's different. For humans, it's almost shameful: it just means they're running away."

Charlie admits defeat. Even though he says the script turned out exactly how he wanted, he’s clearly bummed that it happened that way—that he crossed over to the side he hates. He wishes there was a way to do it without that compromise.
(Susan says at the end: "I want to be new, like I was before I messed everything up.")
In the end, he kills Donald—his own weakness—which somehow lets him stay true to himself as "Charlie" while simultaneously burying "Donald" for good.

hey
did anyone else catch that part where Charlie is peering through the window at Lari's place? You know, the scene with all the partying, drugs, and chaos... there's "Donald" lying on the floor in that weirdly perfect posture
even though "Donald" is actually right there with him
to me, it just hammers home the whole point: I'm weak, I'm giving up, and now Donald is taking over the narrative

coastalpanther43, you're spot on, but the issue is that last third of the film is just garbage. Instead of leaning into the obvious betrayal with over-the-top action scenes and characters flipping into those typical Hollywood clichés, they should've gone way more subtle. Why couldn't that last third be handled seriously instead of being all tongue in cheek? Why not approach it like a legitimate action thriller? That way, the audience would actually catch what the poet was trying to say much later—maybe even right at the end (which would've been perfect). As it stands, after maybe 5-10 minutes, you already figure out where Kaufman is going with this movie, and while that’s all well and good, you're stuck with another 20 minutes of watching a dead horse being beaten. Long story short: they needed a serious approach, respect for the thriller genre (even if it's being parodied), and SUBTLETY.

Look, let's be clear: I don't totally agree with how the ending played out either, but conceptually? This is how the movie had to end. Besides, there's actually some solid stuff in the last third of the film:
1. that intense twist at Cooper's place, where Streep is the only one with enough guts to actually settle things once and for all
2. then that super poetic scene where the two brothers are just leaning against that tree, surrounded by morning mist (kind of like something out of Bambi😁)
3. for me, that sudden, totally unexpected collision where Donald dies—even if it makes perfect sense looking back now
4. the fact that it isn't a textbook happy ending; the hero doesn't necessarily win the girl, it's just left as a possibility. The focus stays on the internal shift rather than the actual outcome

I have to say, this thread is easily one of the best and most well-argued discussions not just on Movie Talk, but on this entire forum. 👍 👍 👍

This is how every discussion should look. 😎
Maybe it's because mostly intellectuals watched Adaptation, or maybe it's something else...😉

The movie is genius. Some people have said enough already, so I won't bore you by copying them. Honestly, I'm just glad to finally see Cage in an interesting role, because the guy actually knows how to act.

coastalpanther43:

The movie is high concept

Adaptation isn't really a high-concept movie.

Look, the movie is easy to remember and recognizable, and you can sum it up in a single sentence. Sure, it didn't pull in billions at the box office, but it made enough, and it even caught the Academy's eye -> which is plenty for a film that's basically "indie" at its core

It was a similar story with something like Memento

It's also true that the movie is simultaneously "high concept" 🙂

coastalpanther43 said:Look, just to be clear, I don't entirely agree with how the ending was executed either, but conceptually speaking, it feels like that's exactly how the movie had to wrap things up. Besides, that last third of the film actually contains some really great moments:

Yeah, I definitely had that same impression myself.
It feels a little too early to just write off the last third of the film as pure self-irony, because some genuinely beautiful things actually happen there. Take that dialogue between Donald and Charlie, for instance—the movie really does have these big moments of revelation where the characters actually undergo a transformation. I don't know, maybe Charlie finally realized that certain cinematic conventions actually hold a bit of truth after all.

it was pretty much the same deal with Memento

Man... he’s really overdoing it now. Calling something a "high concept" movie isn't exactly a compliment (well, that's just my take, anyway); it basically means it'll rake in cash during its first two weeks and then call it a day. Just because "high concept" sounds a bit cooler doesn't mean it's actually a good thing. Take Adaptation—that's an incredibly well-thought-out art-house film with this weird, wonderful sense of humor, and you can't just summarize it in twenty-five words. Simply put, Adaptation is the perfect example of what a HC film is NOT.

High-concept movies are usually the stuff made by Spielberg and his crowd (take Jaws, for instance), where everything boils down to pure action. The Matrix is a HC film, too. Honestly, the whole term is just a product of Hollywood producers like Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer, and those types. I once read an interview with some guy who looks at his watch and says, "If I'm not entertained in 5 minutes, the movie sucks." And it's people like that making the calls in Hollywood about what gets funded and how. About 95% of movies end up being flops, and only that lucky 5% brings in enough money to keep everyone else working.

And calling Memento a HC film... no comment.

Jessica Nguyen85 said:A 'Memento' HC movie... I have nothing to say to that.

Jessica Nguyen85, it seems like the term 'high concept' carries a slightly different weight depending on where you're from versus where we are. Around here, there isn't a single critic who hasn't described 'Adaptation' or 'Memento' as a high concept film.

The screenwriter fails at making an Adaptation of the novel, so he just writes about himself and his own failure. - 15 words 😁 😁 😁

Anyway, enough arguing over definitions—the movie is "high on concept" 🙂 , does that sound right?

I'm totally with you on that one!

There aren't any critics here

And where exactly is this 'here'?

coastalpanther43 first said: This is how discussions on other topics should look. then followed up with: but anyway, let's stop debating definitions

😁 👍

hmm, I don't see anything contradictory about that. 😕

What I was actually trying to get at is that we should get back to discussing the movie itself...

so, getting back to the actual movie...

It’s actually pretty vital to this specific movie that it isn't HC. Since everyone seems to have a different take on what "high concept" even means, it makes for an interesting debate about the term itself. Especially considering one character is out there churning out HC scripts while the other is trying to write "different kinds of movies."

Take something like Pulp Fiction, for example—it's basically synonymous with high concept. Of course, Tarantino is a screenwriter first and a director second, and what he pulled off with the script for Pulp Fiction is something very few people who write for film can actually do. He managed to turn dramatic dialogue into a full-blown movie. In Reservoir Dogs, for instance, we don't even see the bank robbery happen, whereas in a typical HC movie, that heist would probably eat up half the runtime. Filling the screen with nothing but dialogue before and after a heist you never even witnessed? You have to be a genius to pull that off, which is exactly what Tarantino is (just my two cents, anyway).

Ah... and there goes the discussion... 😉

Jessica Nguyen85 said:Ah... here we go, the debate begins... 😉

Hey, at least we can all agree on one thing—albeit a pretty non-controversial point—that Tarantino was one of the absolute directing geniuses of the 90s. 😁😁 -> though Jackie Brown just never clicked for me (and this new one looks like it might be total garbage)😢

We could start a whole new thread about this right now...🙂

Tarantino was one of those directing geniuses back in the 90s.

What I meant was talking about Tarantino specifically as a screenwriter. 😉

I honestly thought I was some kind of directorial genius hiding among the screenwriters. 😁

I feel like I’ve already gone over this, but fine... one more time...

First, coastalpanther43 says: This is how discussions on all other topics should look. And then follows up with: anyway, let's move on from debating definitions

😁 👍

Anyway, if you've got more to say about the movie itself, go ahead. The floor is yours.😁 👍