Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation is a poetic demonstration of Gadamerian historicity. It is a self-interpretive narrative experienced from the inside, degrading retroactively as it unfolds into the future, always faithful to the truth of the utter faithlessness of memory. The content of memory might be the past, but its sole allegiance is to the future.

Kaufman is the best philosophical filmmaker I know of. He seems gimmicky because his urgency is rare, and his ingenuity is distracting.