Adaptation.

"I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size." What began as a movie I was having to pause to cringe at and also force myself through the first hour give or take, hastily becomes a fascinating and beautiful story of, you guessed it, adaptation from the main character of Charlie Kaufman. I adored the meta-narrative of Kaufman writing a script of himself writing a script of himself writing a script, callbacks to 'Being John Malkovich' with Malkovich himself having a cameo on the set, the ending in general and of course the decision to have Nicolas Cage play both Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald. Charlie and Donald are extremely polar opposites, and Cage succeeds in portraying his respective role in thst way. I'm never confused on whos who, or iffy on a certain attitude or action one of the brother takes because it just fits so naturally. Charlie being a reclusive, anxiety-ridden, depressive and cowardly screenwriter suffering from intense writer's block when compared to his brother, Donald, who is ambitious, passionate, sociable and confident rookie screenwriter having immense success from his first script and then genuinely wanting to help his twin. Cage is perfect in these roles, and when I say I struggled to get through the first half, it's not a bad thing when it's due to the incredibly awkward performance of Cage through Charlie. The story is great, as the movie tells two separate plot lines (the Cage twins) and then the story of Susan Orlean (played by Meryl Streep) and her journey of writing a book about John Laroche (played by Chris Cooper). Orlean's story is initially shown as context for the scriptwriting of Charlie, before finally intertwining with the main plot physically (which definitely aligns with when I began to enjoy the movie a lot more) once Charlie travels to New York. Even though the final act's portrayal of Orlean and Laroche was a dramatic departure from the rest of the movie, I think it was executed relatively well! To keep things a mystery, I'll neglect to talk about the final act much more but just know it does do a lot of heavy lifting for my overall view of the movie. Despite it being extremely fabricated compared to the rest, which has foundations in reality, it works perfectly as a satirical play on Hollywood clichés and the cinema's desire to over-dramatise everything.