Remediation in it's finest form!

After reading The Orchid Thief and viewing the film Adaption, I came up with these similarities and differences.

Connections:

Adaptation – Orlean is adapting real people to fit in her non-fiction accounts just as Kaufmann wrote real into his screenplay; all characters are adapted for these spaces through what is included and what is left out.

Anthropomorphization – Often the orchid in the book are described as having features of animals or people. This is shown visually in the film by a montage of people at an orchid show while stating physical features or by stating a type of animal in conjunction to the orchid it resembles.

Idea of Research – Just as Orlean surely researched her topic before writing her book, so did Kaufmann onscreen which hints at the idea that there is no new story to tell, just different ways to convey it.

Temporal Stability – Neither the film nor the book is chronological in narrative but rather slip into different stories which may or may not be sequential.

Themes of Evolution and Mutation – One of the first sequences in the film is the story of evolution which takes from the book the idea that orchids are one of the oldest living things on earth.

Differences:

Auditory Elements: Part of the story line of the movie was the Monkee’s song “Imagine You and Me” which moved character development along although music does not play a role in the book.

Exclusion: While Orleans writes long segments on other “characters” other than Laroche or herself, these Seminole Indians, other orchid lovers, and historic explorers, these people are largely left out of Adaptation.

Fictional Elements: Orlean had a journalistic responsibility to hold to the truth in telling the story while Kaufmann did not and thus was allowed to write his fictional twin into the movie who served as a plot point whereas the book is said to have no plot at all.

Interpretation: In Adaptation, we see the world of the Orchid Thief through the lens of filmmakers and the interpretation of the actors instead of using the imagination that comes with reading a book.

Underlying Themes: The humanistic and existentialistic themes are easily inferred from dialogue-heavy movie whereas the reader has to assume these themes from description-laden book.