The Adjustment Bureau

I wonder if any other author (besides Ian Fleming) has had as many of his works adapted for the screen as Phillip K Dick. A prolific writer, he churned out an amazing number of highly imaginative science fiction novels and short stories. Hollywood seems obsessed with trying to take his visions and transform them into cinematic reality. Blade Runner and Total Recall are the only two that are successful in translating the surreal paranoia of his works but neither is particularly faithful to the source material. Meanwhile there are plenty of failures littering the DVD bargain bins (and then there’s Minority Report, but more on that in a moment). So how does The Adjustment Bureau rate?

The film starts out very well, bringing us up to speed on David’s history without being too overbearing and then jumping straight into the story. David’s first meeting with the Adjusters is well handled and appropriate to the phildickian nature of the story in that he just accepts the reality as it’s placed before him despite its total craziness. But while intellectually he accepts that the world is not random and that things are manipulated, he’s emotionally unable to give up on Elise. And after years of trying, he does manage to find her again, and thus incurs the wrath of the bureau. What follows is a fairly dizzying array of manipulations of chance and the use of doors between realities as the Bureau struggles to keep a lid on a situation that could unravel their plans. Not to mention the bruising reality of why the two must be kept apart and the cruel choices that it involves.

What’s great is that the Adjusters, while ruthless, are not evil. Their plans for David and Elise are actually laudable: they’re designed to enable them to discover their full potential. But instead they will do something very different. Eschewing the easy option to create a stark black and white of villainous determinists opposed to the human drive for freedom, the film presents choice and consequence as something far more complex. But unfortunately it can’t hold that complexity as it pikes on its promise and opts for a sadly conventional third act that ramps up the action while ignoring some of the selfish elements of David’s pursuit of Elise. And that’s where Minority Report comes in. See, there are films that absolutely nail the paranoia and insanity of Dick’s work. And there are those that miss it completely. But then there are the ones that come close to touching greatness, and fumble it with a conventional final act that just dumps all the subversive weirdness in favour of something a little more digestible.

In Minority Report Tom Cruise’s character was just a thug, not a detective, and hopelessly out of his depth when he had to solve a real case. Colin Farrell’s character was a real detective, and in any sensible version of the story would have solved the crime and laughed at everyone in the pre-crime division for losing their basic policing skills. But instead we got a lame third act designed to satisfy the need to have a hero be heroic rather than flawed. In The Adjustment Bureau, while we get a better deal overall, but there’s still that major fumble at the end. Love conquers all, at no cost, despite having been warned repeatedly that being together will ultimately be the undoing of both of them. It, and an offensively patronising closing voiceover, leave a sour taste in what had to that point been an exceptional thriller. Though when your entire story is about strange beings who serve “The Chairman” by guiding humanity, a deus ex machina resolution is less of a cop-out than in most cases.

Damon and Blunt are both incredible and the chemistry between them is thoroughly convincing. It makes everything they do, as the world around them becomes more and more bizarre, still seem credible. You can believe they would go through everything they do to be together. And for all my complaints about the finale, they’re provoked by the fact that for 90% of the runtime I was amazed at how smart, witty and engaging the whole thing was. A surreal thriller for hopeless romantics, The Adjustment Bureau falls somewhat short of greatness but is still most definitely worth a look.

 

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