The Adjustment Bureau - review thoughts

Sometimes an unforeseen event occurs in your life and the path that you were on is suddenly changed. Often, it’s only in hindsight that we see the event as life changing and in order to understand we attempt to map all the minute circumstances that had to happen in order for that particular moment to manifest. I've been as guilty as anyone else in sprouting New Age platitudes such as 'it wasn't meant to be' or 'something else is in store for me' as if all of life is part of a grand plan. We meet the love of our life, only for them to be romanced and spirited away by another or they enter our life as a kind of fatalistic accomplishment, one that appears to have been written in the stars.

The concept of destiny spoken of in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet is at least at old as Greek Tragedy, if not older and tends to present much of our lives as fatalistic, in that no matter how we much we avoid a person or situation, life has a way of representing them. Some things appear destined. Indeed the intensity of some events encourage us to think that behind reality as we know it, lay an invisible power that predetermines our thoughts and actions and which prompts us to question whether in fact we have any kind of agency to act in a world that often presents us with twists and turns. Free will versus determinism is an age old philosophical problem in which one contemplates whether the future is set or whether our free will can make a difference to future outcomes.

Into this labyrinth in which none of us can predict what’s going to happen from moment to moment, enters David Norris (Matt Damon) a young politician who by all accounts is fated to become President of the USA - part of the overall plan devised by the Chairman (read God) of The Adjustment Bureau (George Nolfi, 2011) filled with angels who dress in suits and hats and occupy a large office building in a parallel universe, carrying out mysterious, intricate and delicate interventions (in a world also determined to a large extent by chance) that ensure human beings do not deviate from their already predetermined paths. Norris’s future appears set in stone until he accidentally meets a beautiful, contemporary dancer Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) and falls in love with her. He also accidentally walks into an office whilst the Adjustment Bureau are presetting the mind of one of his colleagues and because of this he is offered information about the Bureau’s operations and offered a choice – continue to see Elise, in which case she will not end up as a famous dancer (part of the plan) or relinquish becoming further involved with her and become President.

There were traces of The Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002) in this film since both were written by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and both raise the issue of Free will and Determinism. But that’s not unusual, indeed other science fiction films including the Matrix Trilogy and GATTACA also dealt to a certain degree with whether or not we have free will particularly in an era of ubiquitous technology. Apart from feeling a little annoyed because of my familiarity with these themes I also noticed the liberal borrowing of concepts from Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) in which different realities or time zones were accessed through portals (in The Adjustment Bureau it was through doorways).

For a while there I felt like I was inside a video game – maybe this was the ultimate intention of the film, to make the audience feel like we were moving through a labyrinth, like Lyotard’s Italian man who went from room to room at a social event at the museum but could not identify a familiar face in the crowd until he recognized his lost lover whose photograph was exhibited on a wall (33). He felt so possessed by something that dictated his conduct (35) he seeks to find her.

In The Adjustment Bureau Norris is also obsessed by his lost love Elise and knowing that he cannot and should not contact her because it contravenes the plan, makes his pursuit of her even more intense. For me, the most interesting proposition is when Norris reveals to an angel he is willing to give up his successful future as President in order to be with Elise, however, when he discovers his choice will mean that she will not fulfill her destiny as a great dancer, he walks away from her. I’m not entirely sure if this is a measure of love or whether Norris didn’t want the responsibility of seeing his lover operating at less than her potential through his selfish choice.

If the purpose of the film was to establish that with enough passion and determination we can alter God’s plan - a sentiment expressed at the end of the film, then this too was explored in a similar vein in GATTACA in which the strength of human spirit is portrayed in the figure of Vincent who overcomes his genetic disposition and deterministic ideas that posited him as less than capable. However, the whole notion of being able to influence or change God’s plan for humanity appears controversial in light of the fact that God is purported to have given man free will, but in that case what is the point then of God having a plan in the first place. Does this film posit God as imperfect, since she has not already figured individual free will into the overall equation?
Note: I've written 'The Adjustment Bureau' Part II extension to this post on Thursday 5 May.