Adaptation is one of the best and most original American films of its decade, and an excellent cinematic brain-twister. Hollywood’s top screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jonze, a true directorial original, combine to produce a film that forces audiences to constantly question if what’s on the screen is ‘real’ or in the main character’s imagination. Every scene seeps with meaning and demands analysis in a work that plays out on so many levels that it becomes impossible to discern fantasy from reality.

Kaufman’s script is about difficulties in adapting a novel, where the script itself is also an adaptation and a lesson in how to write an adaptation. Get it? No? Well, Charlie Kaufman (the one in the film) is forthright, and often announces exactly what is about to happen, but it’s never clear if he means in the film we are watching or the film he is writing. Kaufman and Jonze are magicians that explain the trick before doing it and still baffle the audience.

Adaptation is not suited to brief analysis, but here is a hint: trust Kaufman, even when he tells you there is only one real character in the film.

Michał Chaciński