ADAPTATION - As many people much smarter than me have pointed out, the problem with irony is that if everything is a joke, something to ridicule and laugh at with a wink, than nothing truly meaningful can ever transpire. Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze have given us a movie that begs to be interpreted as a satirical jab at Hollywood (Roger Ebert's interpretation) -- Cage's Kaufman spells out early on exactly what his movie will NOT include (car chases, sex, drugs, characters who grow, etc...) then proceeds to fill his finale with all of those things -- while the "real" story about Kaufman's difficulties adapting 'The Orchid Thief' ends with him having a seemingly serious moment of growth and realization after the mock-tragic outcome of his twin brother, Donald. He seems to want it both ways -- to mock and ridicule and then, perhaps, sting us with seriousness at the end. But it's like crying wolf. By that point, I wasn't listening. As Sam wrote last week, "But the movie "Adaptation" is about Charlie Kaufman. He experiences his own transformation, and so the characters in his screenplay experience one as well." I am typically a big fan of irony and all things post-modern, but 'Adaptation' left me worn out and frustrated. I wouldn't say I disliked the movie by any means, though. I thought Cage and Chris Cooper were fantastic and some of the dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny. The fact that I am curious to see it again is always a positive sign.
ANTWONE FISHER - Denzel's Washington's directorial debut is impossible to watch without recalling 'Good Will Hunting' and its inspiration, 'Ordinary People,' both of which are better films. The title character (newcomer Derek Luke) isn't a genius, but he's a smart kid with anger-management and abandonment issues that only get resolved through the help of his Naval psychiatrist, Dr. Davenport (Washington). There's even the customary scene where the unwilling patient -- Antwone is sent to Davenport by his commanding officer for fighting (just like Hunting) -- initially sits silently through session after session, each character ultimately waiting for the other to blink. One interesting difference is that both 'Hunting' and 'Ordinary People' hinged on the protagonist learning to forgive himself for all of the bad he has experienced in his life ("It's not your fault, it's not your fault"), whereas 'Fisher' is all about Antwone being able to forgive the people who have hurt him -- the mother who abandoned him as a baby, the step-parents who abused him, etc... It would be easy to denouce 'Fisher' as inspirational Hollywood crap, but I was moved by the story and felt that as a director, Washington never let the movie slip too far into sentimentality. However, I can appreciate Michael Atkinson's comments in the Village Voice: "Everything—even life on an aircraft carrier—is sentimentalized... Antwone Fisher is, in the end, a navy recruitment ad writ large and cozy." The scenes aboard the aircraft carrier did strike me as cliched -- Fisher's group of friends inevitably includes one fat guy and a skinny white boy -- but Atkinson's cynicism is perhaps getting the best of him here. The ship scenes total about 10 minutes of screen time and while the movie doesn't try to hide the fact that the Navy played a pivotal role in Fisher's maturity as a man, it by no means implies that it is the only answer. To think that as a director Washington was more interested in promoting the Navy than telling Antwone Fisher's story seems to me a bit ridiculous.
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