More obsession leads to more evil
The 2002 flick, “Adaptation”, mostly starring Nicolas Cage, watched by Manny Face on the Internet at home, tells the story of a man aged into his early middle who is struggling to write a commissioned screenplay taken from a book that has been optioned for a movie, but he finds no narrative line in the book to develop into a film script. The book, called “The Orchid Thief”, is based on a long investigative article written by one Susan Orlean for The New Yorker (a big famous intellectual magazine – M.F.).
She travels to Florida to interview one John Laroche, who was caught stealing rare orchids from Florida state lands (swamps), to nurture and grow them independently, with the help of Native American Seminoles, whose rights to things on such lands supersede those of the state. Legally, therefore, Laroche’s scheme could not be called a theft.
The name of the film, “Adaptation”, is thus largely a signifier toward the adaptation of the book into a film, as well as Darwinian evolutionary adaptation, particularly as related to orchids.
It is inevitable that we change, the movie tells us, though what it doesn’t say, but shows, is that if we, through our will and desire, latch our adaptation on to the wrong thing, or motive, then the process and result can go haywire and turn into something monstrous.
Is it the nature of the thing one is obsessed with that turns out to be evil, or is it the obsession that brings out the evil in the thing?
When we find a beautiful thing, is the essence of the thing the beauty that we see, or is it the evil hidden inside it that we uncover by going in too deep – wanting to know too much, asking too many questions, and getting a reward commensurate with the depth of the search?; as if going too far, wanting to know too much, is a crime?
This is the lesson of The Garden of Eden. With greater knowledge comes greater suffering. Do we then reconcile ourselves to admitting that the truer, deeper essence of the beautiful thing is its evil? Or again, is it our desire, the wanting it too much, that makes it so?
In the movie, the highly elusive and hauntingly beautiful Ghost Orchid exerts its influence on our desire for it and pulls us through to its real essence, a drug that, when extracted and taken, causes a state of sustained fascination. Like things evil, the drug is addictive, and as such, destructive.
Of course Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter, without even meeting her, begins to fall for Susan Orlean, who is essentially the object of his creative pursuits, while, rather predictably, Susan and Laroche fall for each other as well.
Also, of course, Donald Kaufman, Charlie’s twin, is the opposite of his brother. He also wants to be a screenwriter, but he is not his brother’s intellectual and literary equal. But thanks to his native gumption and instinctual pursuit of a cliché-driven market formula for his screenwriting, combined with a far more easygoing and naïve attitude toward success compared with his brother, he gets that success, making tons of money with his first try at a formulaic psycho-killer thriller screenplay.
Comically ironic – no?
Clearly upset, Charlie nevertheless now enlists Donald in his efforts to write his orchid script.
Driven by his accommodating good nature and a fierce loyalty to his brother Charlie, Donald is determined to nail the truth about Susan, and Susan to the truth. Donald’s potential public exposure of the half-demented and orchid-corrupted Susan’s drug taking and lovemaking with Laroche ignites a kill wish in her, which leads to Donald’s death, and Laroche’s, and the unraveling of her life. The only one left standing in the end is Charlie, all happy because he finally wrote his script.
Know what I mean?
Manny Face, August 14, 2013