Adaptation.

REVIEW
Adaptation of a species to a planet, adaptation of a book to a screenplay, adaptation of the individual to society . . . Adaptation considers it all, over millennia, between brothers, in the swamp primeval. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Cage), a ghost on the set of his own movie (Being John Malkovich), is approached to write the adaptation of "The Orchid Thief," written by Susan Orlean (Streep), a New Yorker writer with the quintessential, New York literary life. The story moves between Kaufman's tortured existence, of which his writing experience is only one aspect, and Orlean's experience in the Everglades researching the book. John Laroche (Cooper), the orchid thief in question, impacts Orlean's ordered sanity with the gritty force of emotive spontaneity. Meanwhile, Kaufman struggles with an inability to commit and a massive writer's block, while his (fictional) twin brother Donald (Cage delivers the best twins since Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers) connects to others with easy glee and whips out a hackneyed potboiler that sells immediately. The intellectuals vie with the experientials, leading the viewer into frenzied considerations of life, its origins and meaning, with quirky and inexplicably endearing abstraction. Episodic, nonlinear, straddling the gap between inner truths and outer presentation, Adaptation makes maximum use of its superlative cast, including the incomparable Streep, who can convey a subtle, fleeting emotion with a subtle, fleeting glance; and Oscar winner Cooper, who presents a fully fleshed character the instant he shows up on screen. When the film changes tone from Charlie's cerebral meandering to Donald's visceral conventionality, the actors keep the human authenticity intact. A must see.