Adaptation

Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002) attempts a level of meta that I hadn't seen in a movie before. I found its implied claim of realism very interesting and had to look up which elements of the movie are true and which are not. I think that was a successful feature of this film. It was interesting that Charles' twin brother who plays such an important role in the film is completely fictitious. At the beginning of the movie I thought the whole thing would be mostly non-fiction, but by the end it got so absurd that it was clearly fictional. There's a noticeable turning point in the movie where it goes a bit off the rails. In my opinion this is the point where Charles and his brother are spying on Orlean. After the ridiculous ending of the movie I was prepared to learn that the entire thing was made up. However, I was surprised to learn the the original premise of the film, Charles attempting to write a screenplay based on the book about orchids, actually did happen and the film is, in fact, the result.
I find the freeform blending of fact and fiction in this film to be very interesting, although, in a way, all stories blend fact and fiction to some degree so maybe it's not that strange. This movie just makes you more aware of it.