Adaptation

I know that many of you mentioned in class that you hate Nicholas Cage. For your own sake, I hope you can overcome whatever distaste you have in order to see Adaptation. With that said, let us start.

Adaptation is one of the movies you’ll watch once, get to the end and then wonder what it was that you watched. Similar to Singing in the Rain, this film discusses the film industry in a somewhat critical way throughout the story. Adaptation however, focuses more specifically on the difficulty of screenwriting. It seems to be a satire about screenwriters themselves, discussing the search for a muse, the incredible depression that overcomes an author without vision, and the personal revolution and elation that happens when the big idea occurs.

When this film concludes, you’ll ask “What was the message there, was there one?” because is a remarkably confusing story line that seems to contain satires within satires. Overall it seems to say that screenwriters are narcissistic, sad, and uninspired. There are so many emotional levels to this movie, and each emotion is featured in a light that is far different than other films. With this film, love is dark, awkward, sometimes dirty, and yet romantic. Happiness is passionate, lost, confused, and yet lonely. This film is a strange partnership of fiction and non-fiction, and it teeters between a humorous tonality and a morose one.

The camera is never a prop or theme in this film as it is in other films that we’ve seen, but there is certainly a level of self-reflection that implies a sort of metafiction, or implies a movie within a movie within a movie. Adaptation never breaks down the fourth wall, although it seems like it might, and it constantly lends itself to a level and self-analysis. There are so many references to the movie industry itself, and to the process of screenwriting, and it seems that throughout the film the main character is writing the story of Adaptation, but you don’t realize that until the end or perhaps not until the third time you’ve seen it.

This film has a remarkably scattered story line, but there are two main characters that are involved throughout the film. The main character is a self-loathing screenplay writer who has a twin brother that may or may not be fictional, it’s always feels like his twin could be figment of his imagination. Another main character is a journalist who seeks happiness but cannot find it, she seeks love through a story that she covers for her job and throughout her reporting process the story becomes her life.

The movie ends with the journalist referencing her life prior to meeting the subject of her story and wishing for that life to come back to her. The other character is finally able to finish his book but he remains remarkably depressed. The final scene ends with the main character telling a woman that he loves her and then narrating what he believes will be the perfect end to his book, which is describing what happens in that instant of love. That narration is also a reflection on the movie where his mentor told him to never do a voice-over.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268126/

The genre of psychological thrillers is not defined easily, however there are certain qualities within it that have come to signify the category. The film Peeping Tom was one of the first psychological thrillers, so it had a grand influence on what we now recognize as a psychological thriller. One of the staples to the category is it’s ability to push the viewer into empathizing with the “bad guy.” We spoke about this in class briefly during a discussion, and the consensus was that there were moments while watching the film when we felt bad for Mark, and that made us feel weird. This reaction is interesting because it heightens the power and ability of the psychological thriller. It moves the viewer to reach a new level of existential involvement because they go from viewing and analyzing the characters in the movie, to analyzing their own psyches.
The main character in this film, Mark, is a murderer. He is obsessed with filming women and then killing them. For this reason, the viewer knows that Mark is a villain in the story. Through the film we find that he was abused as a child, and we learn that it is because of his father that Mark experiences most of his struggles. When the viewer learns this, they start to view Mark as a victim. This juxtaposition of villain and victim begins to dictate how the viewer thinks about Marks character. After we know that Mark is acting this way because he has been trained to act like this, we start to feel for him. We become empathetic for his character because it starts to feel like maybe his emotional condition isn’t his fault. In any regard, we shift from feeling disgusted by his character to understanding his pain.
One scene which illustrates this juxtaposition of villain and victim, and the empathy that follows suit, is when Mark unveils his home movies to his love interest. The viewer sees this woman shift from fear to sorrow in a matter of seconds. This visual representation of empathy cues the viewer to embrace a similar feeling. From fear of the killer, to feeling sorry for his pain, there is an obvious shift that occurs and it is palpable to the viewer. This transition pushes the viewer to engage in a level of personal reflection and begin to ask themselves “is right to feel bad for the bad guy?” This confusion of what is “right” becomes a defining trait for this psychological thriller and for others that follow suit. There is a level of guilt that comes with feeling bad for a killer and that invites an internal reflection for the viewer.
Another scene that pulls the viewer into confusion about their empathy for Mark is in the final scene. Again the viewer knows that Mark is set up as the bad guy in this scene, but again they start to feel bad for him because he is also portrayed as a victim. In this particular scene, he is painted as a victim by his involvement with the police and by revealing that he is suicidal. As the viewer watches this scene, they start to feel uncomfortable by their inclination and desire to feel badly for a murderer.
The empathy that the viewer feels for the murderer is one of the first examples of how psychological thrillers can truly engage their audience. Peeping Tom is one of the first films to push its viewers to feel uncomfortable about their own mindset or psyche. This level of discomfort is now a staple for the category of psychological thrillers. Through the use of empathy, the user is almost forced to evaluate their own and emotions as well as those of the characters on the screen. This moves psychological thrillers to become even more engaging and introspective.