Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
3/12/11
Most people believe in a
deity, some sort of Creator who runs the show here on Earth. But
even the most religiously devout tend to defer on questions of exactly
how He does so, and odds are that's for the best: clearly if a being
with the power to set all this into motion doesn't want to be seen, there
is a reason. And, besides, if the curtain really were to be pulled
back, and we were to really learn the reason all this life's suffering
and unfairness exist, we probably wouldn't be nearly as pleased with it
as the possibility that there IS a perfectly good explanation we just can't
figure out. The Adjustment Bureau, George Nolfi's splendid
Theological Fiction (henceforth to be referred to as “theo-fi”) crowd pleaser,
uses Philip K. Dick's 1954 short story "Adjustment Team" as a jumping-off
point for an examination of fate, free will, and what our part might be
in those higher “plans” we suppose exist. But while it's fun brain
food, what makes it pop as a movie is what a great love story it is and
also how remarkably light on its feet for a movie about the biggest of
Big Ideas. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt absolutely sparkle as a couple
and Nolfi's Dick-assisted vision of a creation in His own image that extends
to a love of self-serving bureaucracy is inspired. It's the first
Great Movie of 2011.
Congressman David Norris
(Matt Damon) loses a Senate election and, as he prepares to deliver his
concession speech, has a chance meeting with ballerina Elise Sellas (Emily
Blunt), whose disinterest in political bromides inspires him to deliver
a shockingly blunt address that makes the public fall in love with him
just as he fell in love with her. Days later, as he prepares to start
a civilian job with his friend Charlie (Michael Kelly), two hat-wearing
men discuss the importance of him spilling coffee on his shirt at a particular
moment. When one of them, Harry (Anthony Mackie) falls asleep, David
instead has another chance meeting with Elise on a bus, getting her number
and feeling like he's finally met The One. He shows up to work to
find everyone frozen and more hat-wearing men led by the other guy we saw
earlier, Richardson (John Slattery) making “adjustments” to Charlie's thoughts
on a solar energy project. David tries to flee, but these guys seem
to have shortcuts through the walls and he ends up in their clutches.
After some debate about what he's authorized to do, Richardson makes a
simple proposal: David can never tell anyone what he's seen or his
memory will be erased. And he is never meant to see Elise again,
so the card with her number is burned before his eyes. But just what
has he seen? The Adjustment Bureau seems to be made up of Angels
who work for “The Chairman”, ensuring that his Plan is carried out on Earth.
When David and Elise bump into each other again three years later, Richardson
amps up his efforts to keep them apart while an increasingly guilt-ridden
Harry looks for ways to help the star-crossed lovers. Keeping them
apart is crucial to the Bureau, and if lower-level clerks can't make that
happen, it's time to call in the big guns, namely Thompson (Terence Stamp),
who paints David a grim picture of what the future holds if he doesn't
get with The Plan.
As I've mentioned before
on the site, Philip K. Dick's body of work has been treated for decades
by studios as a pile of really great pitches. Few films have ever
actually attempted to tell his stories, but many are based on his ideas,
and The Adjustment Bureau succeeds where so many fail in actually
using his notion (thanks to a slip-up, a man discovers that God has men
on the ground nudging us in the right direction) as a reason to think some
big thoughts of its own. The Bureau (I honestly can't recall if they're
ever actually called that in the film) has the biggest of big jobs, but
they're really just another irksome Fortune 500 company, with grunts on
the ground who either don't question or grow to hate their duties, middle
management that excels at doing nothing but not getting noticed and higher
ups who've grown so good at the more unsavory parts of their jobs they've
forgotten why they were once thought of only as necessary evils.
That manipulating men to prevent them from achieving their dreams is both
the province of your employer AND your God is a pretty good way to get
an audience on board to join David and Harry's rebellion against The Plan,
and Nolfi is very clever in the way he makes that grand design seem more
arbitrary and unfair the more we learn how specific and logical it is.
Only a select few really matter, and everyone else's fate is simply a domino
to get them to play their role. So what if David's father and brother
must endure thwarted dreams and early death? They really only exist
at all so their fates have the correct impact on the future politician's
psyche. So too is the spark of true love between he and Elise nothing
more than a tool to create a single fleeting moment for him, while the
rest of her life is designed to insist she settle for less. But in
some ways the worst lot of all is David's because the Powers That Be DO
care about him, and have inflicted all this suffering on others specifically
to create a great emptiness in his heart that only success can fill.
If he was ever happy, he could never be Great in the way The Plan requires,
but of course a Great Man is unlikely to simply stand by and let higher
beings have their way with him...
But before we get too carried
away with sticking it to The Man, Thompson explains to us that the Bureau
HAS tried to leave us to our own devices before, and first the Dark Ages
and then the Holocaust were the results. Truth be told, even the
angels themselves don't seem to really WANT to control our destinies, they're
just stuck with doing so. That Harry's sense that there must be a
better way so nicely mirrors David's is a smart bit of plotting, and when
we finally do learn The Chairman's intentions... maybe things aren't so
cut and dried after all. Throughout, the petty frustrations of The
Bureaucracy From Heaven and David's great difficulty swimming against the
current of his destiny are played out with a delightful sense of how we
usually only notice fate when it's irritating. Nolfi has created
an impressively mapped-out set of powers, rules and limitations for his
Bureau, which pays off very nicely at the climax when we have a very good
sense of what is and isn't possible for all parties involved, allowing
everyone to just run like hell. The Adjustment Bureau is about
the lightest and most up-tempo drama that could be made from this material,
and a movie with so much on its mind that's still not afraid to entertain
us is always a pleasant surprise.
It all starts with the stars:
the story requires that there be magic between David and Elise, and Damon
and Blunt are truly magical together. It's not just the palpable
sense that they complete each other, but the ease with which they seem
to do so. The actors succeed in that hardest of romantic movie feats,
convincing not only that they can make each other laugh or generate passion,
but simply make each other happy. And the pain of feeling that happiness
thwarted is all the more acute, for David because he knows what's keeping
them apart and Elise because she doesn't. These are really strong
performances, and it's rare to find two name actors who click so quickly
and so completely. Mackie nails his first major post-Hurt
Locker role, allowing us to feel not only the emptiness that comes
from following a Plan he doesn't believe in, but the spiritual heft that
comes from being led by his own moral compass for a change. Slattery
is a delight as a being capable of really thinking all this is nothing
more than a day's work, and Stamp intones ominously with the best of them.
The Adjustment Bureau
went through several scheduling delays and reshoots (hopefully footage
with Shohreh Aghdashloo as The Chairman makes its way to the DVD), but
other than one odd bit of business where all references to where Eloise
has her ballet rehearsals were clearly looped in after the fact, the finished
product is as seamless as it is delightful. Aficionados of both sci-
and theo-fi should have a ball, as should fans of the stars, who've done
the hard work to seem absolutely effortless. And, as visions of the
True Nature of the Universe go, this is actually one of the more plausible.
In fact, it would actually explain a lot. |
