I finally streamed Adaptation on Netflix, and now I’m going to talk about it. Adaptation is one of those movies they tell writers they need to see, and indeed it has much to say about writing and the creative process, not to mention the movie business. But I’m not sure I consider the film a success.

Adaptation, released in 2002, is based (in a sense) on a book called The Orchid Thief, by journalist Susan Orlean (played here by Meryl Streep). The book, about an orchid poacher in Louisiana, was apparently very well received by the right sort of people. Some Hollywood idiot acquired the movie rights, in spite of the fact that the story is basically a think piece in which nothing much happens. The job of adapting this non-story for film fell upon Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicholas Cage), who had previously made a splash with the script for a very strange movie called Being John Malkovich.

The movie starts with Kaufman verbalizing his determination not to vulgarize the purity of the book by adding extraneous elements like a romance or action scenes. Which is essentially an impossible task, and he knows it in his heart (his interior dialogue, presented in voice-over, is frighteningly similar to my own, I might add). Gradually he hits on the idea of focusing the script on his own struggle to write it, and what we see on the screen is that story. But adapted. By the addition of romance and action scenes.

For someone interested in writing, there’s considerable interest in watching each script writing principle Kaufman discusses (with a fictional twin brother, Donald) appear before our eyes. Donald is writing a thriller script, and he talks about fooling the audience by making one character seem like two—precisely what Kaufman is doing. The action picks up—absurdly—as the script becomes entirely Donald’s kind of story.

It’s certainly a fascinating film, worth seeing more than once, and I’m sure it deserved all the accolades and prizes it received. But in my personal view, a movie fails if you have to go to Wikipedia to find out how to feel about what you just saw.

Cautions for language, brief nudity, sex and violence.