This movie is great. I remember it coming out and my thinking I should watch it but I just never got around to it. Anyway, yesterday I watched it. Meryl Streep (with whom I am not ashamed to admit I am more-than-slightly obsessed) is fantastic as writer Susan Orlean, Nick Cage carries the role of the twin Kaufman brothers superbly, and Chris Cooper is endearing as the toothless John Laroche. The story on the surface appears quite a bit convoluted but ultimately ends up conforming to the conventional Robert McKee narrative form one Kaufman twin swears by. The genius of this film is that it’s self-referential without being overly self-indulgent.

That said, the overriding concept, adaptation, led to self-indulgence for me. It got me majorly thinking of the big picture. Which is interesting seeing the film seems to home in on quite a specific situation, that of adapting a book into a screenplay.

We all have to adapt – cities, relationships, supermarkets, jobs, homes, careers, ideas, haircuts and lives all change with or without our consent, we are adapting every day. We must adapt. However these are relatively small adaptations in light of larger ones like the evolution of life on earth, smartly summed up in a time-lapse photography sequence. It got me thinking that worrying too much about all the stuff that happens in day-to-day life is supremely superfluous when our nano-second lives all end the same, anyway. Not to sound fatalistic, but it’s important to put things in perspective. Do what you want to do. Live your life. Figure out what makes you happy and do that. Why should it be any other way? This film made me think maybe everything comes down to adaptation. And I guess it is when the relationship between the big and the small pictures is relayed seamlessly that we get a great film like Adaptation.

Go on, adapt yourself to yourself.