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I can now chime in on this movie. I was very disappointed. It’s way too self-indulgent. I don’t care if the screenwriter knows he’s being self-indulgent, it’s still “shame on him” for being so.

The message of Adaptation is very similar to that of Signs, in my opinion. It seems like Hollywood people are so hung-up these days on finding personal meaning in life, as if that is the great end for mankind. What matters for Charlie Kaufman is that he has discovered himself in what he loves and it doesn’t matter who loves or doesn’t love him. And this is the great conclusion to his two hour struggle?

I also have a problem with the film’s perspective concerning what films are good for. Blah, I need to get the taste of this one out of my mouth!

Dan, I’m not saying every piece of art needs to be a gospel presentation. There are infinite ways to glorify God through art and through our lives.
My concern is the same as Dave’s, if we’re not rooted and grounded in the Word, then everything becomes subjective to what we think, and our hearts are deceitful above all else.

Also, a lot of God’s truth is tough to swallow for the world. We should not be ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God (Romans 1:16) The gospel itself is power, it doesn’t need any dressing up, but the great thing about art is that we can express the things God put on our individual hearts. Rev 12:11 says something like “They overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony”.
So I’m not saying we have to cancel out the beauty of individual expression-it’s a vital part of the kingdom. But it should be in keeping with the Word, by which we judge all things.

Laurencer,

Thanks for the heads up on the link. Great article. The key is that we don’t say, “That film is true to me.” If something only shows the emptiness of human existence, it isn’t fully true. It takes a Christian understanding to see it as the emptiness of human existence without God.

And isn’t that really true of everything in life, not just art? It takes a Christian understanding to see things how they really are. And still we see “through a glass darkly”.

So how is art different than the rest of life if the the important thing is the perspective of the person experiencing art (or life)?

I want to continue Dave’s argument, because that’s exactly to the point of what I’m disagreeing with in Dan’s comments.

If you really examine yourself properly, you should find that your likes and dislikes are not your own, but you have acquired a taste that has been formed and shaped in a certain way. Learning to recognize “the good” or “the true” in an art work takes a certain amount of self-lessness. This was clearly displayed when we had movie night at college. We showed movies with violence, nudity, “swears” and sex to people who had thought these things made a movie “bad”. But, as we talked about the films, we started to learn what was good about these films. We all “give in” or “bow down” to something as we develop “our” tastes. If you think you’ve developed your own personal taste on your own and can rely on that for what is true, good, noble, pleasing etc., I believe that’s delusional.

I also want to disagree with the interpretation that the last scene in “Adaptation” speaks to the wonders of God’s creation. The flowers in that scene are over-determined, fatalistically moving in and out, ADAPTING to their environment according to the evolutionary process explained by Darwin. If you see enough films or art where the artist is trying to reveal God’s creation (Wim Wenders, Tarkovsky, Bresson, Van Gogh), you will no longer be able to mis-interpret the last scene in Adaptation…but it takes a certain kind of giving up of yourself to conform your tastes to fit those of the film-maker. I suppose if you believe the world really is just a matter of people and things adapting to the environment they’re in, you might find Adaptation to be a “true” representation of things, but it’s wrong to say the film reveals God’s Creation when it doesn’t.

I am always torn between the deisre to ultimately evaluate a movie as good or bad — and the desire to simply pull out the truthful stuff (that may come through general revelation or whatever) and the untruthful stuff and let them stand.

What “truthful stuff” are people finding in this movie? Many people have mentioned that it has truth in it, which then would make it good, I guess. What truths are people finding in Adaptation?

Grant—
I posted on July 10th as to what I thought of the movie. I believe, aside from my comments about the last shot, that I have found some truth in the movie related to a Christian perspective on the art of storytelling.

In an earlier post, you said something about the artist’s intention, whether he/she was intending to portray the wonders of God’s creation, and that the filmmaker in Adaptation was intending to portray a deterministic, Darwinian world.

I agree. But do you really think that the artist’s intentions are an absolute measurement by which the artwork should be judged? I firmly believe that an artwork, to a certain extent, exists independently of the artist’s intentions. To say that a movie is “bad” based on what the filmmaker’s intentions were is the same as saying that “all swearing in films is bad” or “all nudity in films is bad.” Isn’t it possible that, through common grace, a filmmaker will have unwittingly allowed some truth to slip into his/her film? Instead of labeling things as “good” and “bad” we should take a more transformative role, viewing all things through the “spectacles of Scripture” and recognize the blend of truth and lies.

Here’s the thing about “artist’s intentions”. I know very little about the story behind the making of “Adaptation”. I’m reading the film almost entirely on its own terms. However, I do believe an artist’s intentions are often very clearly communicated in a work of art, especially if the art work is done well.

And there are always the interesting clash of intentions that can occur in a collaborative art, like film. “Hard Core” is a great example where the director’s intentions for the main character were different than the actor’s intentions for the main character. And the confusion is evident in the movie itself. As an audience member, it’s hard to figure out how we’re supposed to feel about the main character.

Although I believe an artwork should communicate its “message” in and of itself, I see no reason why we can’t take the artist’s process into account as well. For instance, knowing that Salvador Dali used himself and his wife as a model for Jesus and Mary in one of the artist’s Crucifixion pieces helps open up the work in different ways than if you didn’t know anything about the process. But there’s something really disturbing about that painting in and of itself, with all the cubes and floating objects.

And I’m still uncomfortable with the idea that truth slides in and out of a work of art, mixing with lies as if it has nothing to do with human involvement. I just don’t understand what kind of truth that is.

Certainly, you can turn NIN’s Downward Spiral into a true statement about the desperate conclusion of people who try to take their salvation into their own hands, but you can only do that by changing the relation of the work to the listener. If a listener thinks Downward Spiral is advocating suicide as the only way out, then either the album is a lie, or the listener has misinterpreted the album. Am I making any sense?

Truth is only truth embodied, in relation to living, breathing people. And it’s in a broader context. Sure, a stark red line drawn across a canvas may be “true” to how stark red lines look in “real life”, but what kind of truth is that? That’s not the kind of truth you’re talking about, is it?

But isn’t it also true that the very earth screams God’s turth at us in big and small ways. Such that when Adaptation explores the creation of the earth stuff, it is reasonable to see through the distortion of the Darwinion stuff and take from the movie an amazement at the wonderful complexity of God’s creation? Even darwinian philosophy itself, despite seemingly leaving out God (though I am not sure that Darwin inteaded that :), has helped me appreciate the amazing world God made.

It is interesting to me too that the larger movie that this all fits into certainly argues for a story — not a random series of events.

What i find more bothersome about Adaptation is the way it mocks itself and movies and sometimes I think it mocks everything. I don’t know whether postmodernism rose out of our cultures tendency to mock itself or vice versa — but mockery can become a way of life and habitual mockers have a hard time building (or cultivating) anything.