shadowfireflame | The Adjustment Bureau

Just got back from seeing an advanced screening of The Adjustment Bureau due to some very well-connected friends. Since the film doesn't come out for a while, I'll go ahead and put the review under a cut for the spoiler-phobic.

Warning: The Adjustment Bureau is a mediocre film with an awkward, awkwardly delivered premise and average acting in general. It in no way deserves the amount of scrutiny I’m about to give it. But I can’t seem to resist.

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, Philip Pullman's awesome fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, The Adjustment Bureau, and I'm sure tons of other literature and films all share a common basic premise: they re-tell the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and they conclude in the most circuitous way that humans were right to commit the first sin.

Since discussing this topic outright tends to be confusing and frankly rather dull, all three of these examples did their best to disguise what they were writing about and the fact that they were essentially disagreeing with the basic premise of the Christian Bible. Milton, of course, was writing in a time in which such a conclusion was unacceptable, so he couched his decision in religion-positive language, but it remains clear that Satan is the true protagonist of that poem, not God. Pullman wrote his novels for children and hid the true point of the work under some damn impressive world-building and a great heroine, Lyra Belacqua, whom he openly states is Eve.

The makers of The Adjustment Bureau pretend that Heaven is akin to a rather corrupt males-only corporation with no tolerance for creative thinking, all presided over by the mysterious Chairman. The job of the Adjustment Bureau is to make sure that all humans adhere, often by force or memory modification or untimely little "accidents," to The Plan. The Bureau is peopled by suited men always in hats who consult their Plan booklets and force these little adjustments if things are going off-course.

Except one Bureau worker named Harry (beautifully portrayed by Anthony Mackie, fresh from The Hurt Locker brilliance) literally falls asleep on the job one day, an adjustment fails to happen, and Matt Damon and Emily Blunt meet and fall in love—against The Plan. Damon plays his role as a young New York congressman (a Democrat who actually loses an election to a Republican—in New York!) convincingly, if rather uninterestingly, but Blunt is great as the dancer who steals his heart. No joke, she’s a dancer. Vile temptress! Of course, since there are no other women in the film whatsoever, stealing Damon’s heart is remarkably easy work. And in my opinion, she could do a lot better than him, but whatever. So we have cast our Adam and Eve.

Damon’s congressman accidentally “sees behind the curtain he wasn’t supposed to know exists” and witnesses an adjustment taking place because apparently the Bureau is not too careful when it does things like freezing time and wiping memories. The Bureau informs him he has to break up with Blunt; he ignores them; chase scenes ensue. Some of the special effects are cool, but in general it seems like a laughable parody of Inception.

Mackie utterly steals the show because he plays the role of Satan/the serpent. He’s a lowly Bureau worker who decides to share his knowledge of the Bureau hat/fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil with Damon because he’s not convinced all is well in Corporate Heaven. While this further disenfranchises women in this story because it’s supposed to be Eve who drags Adam into the light instead of the other way around, I won’t harp on the topic (for once!) because Mackie is delightful in this role. He has very soulful eyes and a great way of acting by expression instead of dialogue that makes him really interesting to watch. My favorite part of this movie.

Anyway, the theme of the film is that eternal paradox of God’s Plan vs. free will. Can they both simultaneously exist? If God knows all, then surely He would have known that Adam and Eve would, if given the choice, use their free will to sin by ignoring God’s warning to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge/by deviating from The Plan by loving each other. But if He knew beforehand and it was all in His Plan, then how can there truly be free will?

The movie obviously sides with free will trumping all (thank you, Statue of Liberty imagery) and the tenacity of True Love beating the Chairman into changing his Plan, but it does not (cannot, really) answer this question. However, the filmmakers definitely intend us to believe that following one’s heart instead of a super-logical plan from above is the only way to achieve happiness. Also that greatness and happiness cannot really co-exist: by choosing to love each other, they are erasing the drive that they would otherwise need to go far in their careers because they’re already happy. I’m not sure I agree with those conclusions, but there they are.

In the end, though, The Adjustment Bureau comes to the same conclusion as its irreligious but courageous predecessors: even though having knowledge about what’s behind the curtain is difficult and painful and embarrassing, it’s better than the alternative of ignorant bliss. Eve was right to eat the apple.

What the film doesn’t address is why the Chairman/Bureau should give a damn about the course of human history at all. But I suppose I’ll leave that to the deists.

EDIT: On an unrelated note, it’s also kind of interesting to look at this film—which, again, in no way deserves the amount of scrutiny I’m giving it—from a Business-y perspective. If the entirety of earth is a corporation, then it’s curious that God should be called the Chairman. The Chairman being the Chairman of the Board of Directors in a corporation. The Board of Directors theoretically only exists in order to ensure that stockholders’ needs and wishes are being met. So in this version of heaven, God only exists at the pleasure of humanity. They can, at least theoretically, vote to replace him at any time. What a fascinating view of the world.