The adjustment Bureau

The adjustment Bureau

Here I go once more. I don’t think there is anything that can stop me from doing this “The adjustment Bureau” is about the battle between choice and destiny, and you know what? Right then and there lies all the riddles of life. Either what we choose to do matters, or the book has already been written, and all we can do is flip through its pages.

That these questions are being asked in a science-fiction thriller with a love story at its center should come as no surprise. Science fiction gives storytellers leave to play with reality, and few writers did that with as many variations as Philip K. Dick. This is George Nolfi’s movie based on a Dick story; it was also written by Nolfi. It tells the tale of a bunch of “adjusters,” who move this strange thing here and that known thing there just to make sure everything goes according to plan. Whose plan? The adjusters aren’t big on explanations. They’re like undercover agents for your favorite higher power.

But even the best-made plans sometimes get mixed up. A random chance mucks things up, and it must be fixed again. In “The Adjustment Bureau,” Matt Damon plays David Norris, a congressman to be who walks into a men’s room he can only assume is empty except that when he comes out of one of the stalls, there stands Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt). What was she doing in there? You don’t interrogate Meet Cute; you accept it as an article of faith.

What matters is this: These two people, never meant to meet, have that kind of chemistry together that means they can’t help but fall in love (from which certain doom ensues). They know it; we know it; their lips know it before their eyes do.

Phillip Dick loved him some devices that allowed him to examine how life came undone by itself. I think he was a short run free will kind of guy (until intelligent life on Earth ends), medium range evolutionist (things develop according to underlying principles) and long haul predestinationist (the universe will entropy). A man and woman whose eyes Meet Cute only need worry about the very short run.

In the movie, David Norris becomes aware of certain men who wear fedoras and suits, who start showing up in his life. He meets two of them: Mitchell and Richardson (Anthony Mackie and John Slattery). They tell him that they work for a bureau that makes corrections when things go just slightly wrong. For example, David and Elise were not supposed to meet. What was she doing in the men’s room? For her sake and his, David must never see her again.

OK, so here’s where it gets interesting. They do meet again, by chance once more. But something is different this time: they know each other. Now, the second time around could have been intended as the first (in which case and you follow me? they wouldn’t have had to notice each other at all). Seeing a woman on the bus isn’t quite the same as talking to her in a men’s room.

So tell me this: When the adjusters tell David to forget Elise and never see her again, aren’t they asking him to use his free will? Aren’t they implying he has a choice?

That’s what I thought too, but “The Adjustment Bureau” actually shows that there are rules beyond this level of reality. In some industrial netherworld, David is told that unless he shapes up, his memory will be wiped clean. This place is reached through a door into what cannot logically be; it must be like the bedroom behind Jupiter in “2001,” summoned by higher intelligence for its unwitting subject.

The story turns into a cat-and-mouse chase of minds as David and Elise try being in love and believing they’re meant for each other either to outwit or outrun the men in suits. It’s exciting; with Matt Damon and Emily Blunt having such an easy rapport, it seems less absurd than it should. There’s actually a romantic comedy hiding beneath these sci-fi surfaces.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll figure that the universe of this movie was designed by someone very inefficient indeed. Predestination doesn’t leave any space for chance; if there’s a plan at all, you can’t let anyone tinker with it. You know how there’s this idea in sci-fi that says if you travel back far enough in time and step on one insect too many, you could wipe out the future? By the time we meet Thompson (Terence Stamp), a very, very serious senior adviser, we begin to suspect his employer’s problem is megalomania.

Thompson seems supremely in control, knowing exactly which buttons to push but David and Elise have seen behind the curtain and know they don’t have to be instruments of anything. It even occurs to us that the Adjusters may have some freedom themselves.

“The Adjustment Bureau” is a good and smart movie that could have been great if it had had a little more guts. I think the filmmakers were unwilling to follow through on what it implies. What David and Elise mean with their adventures is that we’re all in this together but alone. If you follow this through, some religions might take offense; ultimately, though, the movie is just sappy fun.

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