Next week in Cafe Society - the intricacies and subplots of 2Fast/2Furious.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Next week in the Pit - why people who don’t “get” things other people obviously “get” are so snarky and sometimes even downright hostile.
I just finished watching this, and I’m confused. I figured before the half-way point that Donald wasn’t going to turn out to be real, but…was there a part that I didn’t pay attention to that confirmed that?
No, there’s nothing in the movie itself that says Donald isn’t real. In the context of the movie, Donald is as real as Charlie. However, in real life, Charlie Kaufmann doesn’t have a twin brother. Also, of course, Susan Orlean isn’t a drug addict and John LaRoche has not, AFAIK, been eaten by alligators. All of these events are, apparently, still “real” in the film.
Incidentally, I took the part about the writing seminar to infer that we are expected to take the ending as completly on the level: in real life, fucked up stuff happens to people out of the blue, all the time. Your family can get smashed flat by a drunk driver as you’re backing out of your drive way. Successful professionals really do take drugs and ruin their lives. People do get killed to cover up infidelity or relatively minor legal infractions. And every year, several people really do get eaten by alligators. I don’t think you have to approach the ending as ironic for it to work: accepted at face value, it makes an equally valid statement on the random and tragic nature of life in general.
hijack:
I’m not sure if you were being sarcastic, but I’ve never heard of this movie having any substance other than its obvious popcorn qualities. I’d like to hear your thoughts on it, or possibly a link to some information about any interpretations of it.
Just finished watching it.
Brilliant, through-and-through-- even the third-act “de-newey-ment.”
Self-referentiality taken to a hallucinogenic extreme. What’s not to like?
I’d say that I thought that the visual leitmotif of rare orchids representing unattainable and somewhat abstract, idealized desires, contrasted nicely with the preternaturally beautiful, although ubiquitous-to-the-point-of-being-overlooked, daisies in the final shot underlined the subtext about the irony of chasing after ephemera while ignoring the very real treasures that are right under your nose in an elequont way, and further that I really appreciated the many subtle references to Donald’s imaginary status, such as the “keys-in-ignition” chime going off when “Donald” opened the passenger-side door of the car when they arrived at LaRoche’s house, and then again when Charlie opened the driver-side door, but sometimes I think that by cutting a movie into little tiny pieces like that, you run the risk of killing something beautiful, and besides, I really hate run-on sentences.
Seriously? I agree. Who gives a rat’s patootie. But, man. Come ON!
For the observant: a nice touch on the DVD is that if you look in the “Cast & Crew” section, both Charlie and Donald Kaufman are listed as screenwriters, and sure enough, if you click on Donald, it lists two film credits: Adaptation and the script he was working on during the film, The 3, to be released in 2004.
None of it’s real, of course, but it definitely gave me pause for a minute. “That’s not real… is it?”
Not sarcastic at all. Here’s an excellent review by the Chicago Reader’s own Jonathan Rosenbaum.
Also, doper Cervaise, in personal communication, articulated similar theories about this film more succinctly; perhaps he’ll check in here.
Oips. Insert right bracket after [Hollow Man in second quote.
Wow, I’d thought that I was all over the movie, interpretation-wise, but I never understood the last shot, and why it lingers on it for so long. Thanks for the explanation!
Holy shit. You talk about overoveroveranalyzing a poor film. Some of you people assume that because BJM was good, this MUST be incredible, no matter how crappy it looks. You know what? Sometimes crap actually is crap.
The fact that you think it was some kind of wink-and-nod bullshit speaks much more about you as viewers than it does about the actual movie.
Does it really? I could just as well say that the fact that you get so upset that others find value in a movie that you didn’t appreciate says more about you than it does about any of us.
Yes, sometimes crap is just crap, and there have been plenty of cases where a movie/TV show/book/whatever gets lionized on these message boards, while I found it absolutely worthless if not insulting. Dancer in the Dark is a prime example. But I would never go so far as to say anybody who did manage to find value in it was wrong, or that my opinion was the only right one. It would be preposterously arrogant of me to do so.
It would also be arrogant of me to say that Adaptation was a brilliant movie and the only reason someone could see it as just “wink-and-nod bullshit” is because they didn’t get it, and were so hung up on their preconceived notions which couldn’t possibly be wrong, and the very idea of that angers them so much that they have to say it’s everybody else who didn’t “get” it. So I won’t say that.
Cmon, Sol. People are getting all uppity in this very same thread about how others “didn’t get the joke.” They never for a moment consider that the joke’s not terribly good, even if it does exist.
If it was a joke, it was very poorly executed; it was done with such subtlety as to allow plenty of wiggle room.
Count me among those who:
a) Got most of the points the film was trying to make (i think).
b) Still didn’t think it was very good.
I appreciate the points that some people have made about challenging conventions, etc., etc. But i just wonder whether Hollywood, and the entertainment industry in general, isn’t already a little too self-indulgent and self-referential. Do we really need to add a new level, a new layer, whereby the process of turning a story into a script becomes the story itself?
I know, i know…there was more to the movie than that. But still, i just found the whole thing vaguely dissappointing. The acting performances were outstanding, however, IMO.
And i’d just like to finish by adding that all this vitriol, all this “you just don’t get it” taunting (on both sides of the debate) is pretty unbecoming. In case people hadn’t noticed, we don’t all like the same things–fucking get over it!
As I said in the earlier thread I thought the film was decent enough : in particular, it had some excellent performances but found the ending more gimmicky than clever.
BTW does anyone know if there is going to be a regular DVD with extras? I know there is a Superbit release but if any film cried out for a good commentary it’s this one. I would love to know what Jonze/Kauffman have to say about it.
Thank you for explaining to me what I think, because I sure can’t tell by myself. Here I was, thinking I had enjoyed the film because it was good, but now I know that I only thought that because I liked Being John Malkavich so much. Thank God you’re here to explain these things. I’m thinking about ordering a pizza now. Do I like pepperoni? Please respond quickly, because they close in about an hour.
Cmon and what? Agree with you? I already said I didn’t, and explained why, and tried to do so in a more literate manner than just calling it “crap.”
As I said before in this thread and others, my take on it was that the ending wasn’t just a joke. The joke was there, obviously, but that’s not all there is to it. In my opinion. I don’t know why anyone would just refuse to accept that others could appreciate a movie that he didn’t. I don’t know why it’s so much easier to accept that the filmmakers were running along fine until they just looked at each other, said “I got nothing,” and decided to release it anyway with its crap ending and hope that people wouldn’t notice. Or that a screenwriter would spend so much time emphasizing how his pretension and self-doubt were ruining his life and making him miserable, and then suddenly do a 180 and say, “Ha ha, the joke’s on you! You’re all idiots for watching this crap!”
Several other posters and I have brought up our interpretations of the movie and its ending, and what we got out of it, and how it works on more levels than just as a prolonged self-referential joke. If that’s “uppity,” then I guess I’m uppity. You little man.
I don’t know about DVD releases, but I’ve read a couple of interviews with Jonze & Kaufman where they’ve said they want to present the movie in the same manner as a poem, that is, don’t try to explain it and let the audience get whatever they want to from it. So if you think it was a failed adaptation, or a movie that ran out of ideas, or an elaborate joke on how cheesy and cliched most movies are, or an elaborate joke at how audiences will watch anything, or pompous self-referential humor, or an analysis of the creative process, or an ingenious study about passion and inhibition – it’s all the same to them.
There was nothing subtle about it. The frist two-thirds of the movie set up the last third. I think it’s the first scene in the movie that outlined all the stuff that happened at the end.
The first two thirds were mildly entertaining. I wasn’t terribly impressed by Cage acting against himself. Whoopee - the quiet, introverted one versus the outgoing one. True, no subtlety there.
You’re wrong, though; there was plenty of subtlety as to what they were trying to accomplish. I’m pretty sure they didn’t beat the viewer over the head with the plan. Had they done so, a lot of people in this same thread would have complained about how obvious it all was.