In 'The Adjustment Bureau,' Heaven Looks A Lot Like Corporate Hell

The order of the universe was upended last weekend with the opening of The Adjustment Bureau, a speculative thriller written and directed by George Nolfi which was lauded by the hard-to-please Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, and unequivocally panned by Peter Travers — whose opinion ordinarily runs the gamut between “Brilliant!” and “A Masterpiece!” — in Rolling Stone. (“Sorta heartwarming entertainment,” offered Roger Ebert amiably.) But few appear to have questioned the validity of this movie’s shocking assumptions: first, that God himself is a careerist, and second, that angels are responsible for everything good that has ever happened in history, and are the only thing standing between mankind and total ruin. Evidently we are less trustworthy than a pack of rabid jackals, so why God (known here as “The Chairman”) would keep us around at all is one among many, many half-baked metaphysical questions this movie never bothers to answer.

There are some good things about The Adjustment Bureau. It is very pretty and very expensively made. The best part is that Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have the most appealing on-screen chemistry that has appeared in a big movie in ages. They are sweet, sexy and funny. Anthony Mackie, too, is really wonderful. And everything to do with politics is spectacular, including the flood of clever cameos at the beginning: Terry McAuliffe, Jon Stewart, Madeleine Albright, Matalin and Carville… so many, and each one well done.

But Nolfi’s two-dimensional cosmology is profoundly, horribly depressing, plus it makes very little sense. He turns the whole universe into a yuppie prison of aspirationalism. Even the angels are buffoons in suits who are slaving away at their angel-ing in order to rise to a higher position. “You wait for a case to make your mark as an agent and you find out it’s booby-trapped,” John Slattery moans, for all the world like Roger Stirling when Joan reminds him that she’s married.

So, these angels want better jobs or maybe more prestige; this is not exactly made clear. The really good angel jobs are at this angel HQ that looks like the world’s bleakest and most sumptuous law offices where they represent like kleptocrat third-world dictators, or Monsanto. Unsurprisingly, these high-class superangels do not look as though they’re having any fun at all; they mostly look worried about their billable hours. One gathers they must have better angel apartments and can take longer paid vacations — I swear to The Chairman, the angels discuss vacations at the beginning of this meshuggeneh movie.

Anyway, the central concern of The Adjustment Bureau is that old business of changing one’s fate (a theme beloved of Philip K. Dick whose story is here mutilated). Matt Damon’s David Norris is on a celestially orchestrated track to become President, if only he can keep his mitts off of the irresistible dancer and wag, Elise, whom he runs into in the bathroom and on the bus and things. Fat chance! But here is the gnarly part. The meanest of the superangels, Terence Stamp, explains to Norris that if he doesn’t back off of Elise, the most terrible things will happen. Firstly, Norris won’t become President, as specified by “the plan”! Oh no! and also, Elise herself won’t become a world-famous dancer. Instead she will suffer the HORRIBLE fate of teaching dance to six-year-olds. Nooooooooooooo!

This is where every sane adult in the audience has got to be going Jesus H. Christ what do I have to do to NOT become President, because I would do that instantly even if it involved getting six kinds of leprosy instead of just being boringly un-driven and happy ever after with the most fun and beautiful companion in the world.

“You can make a difference, David,” Stamp continues, idiotically. Oh yeah? Dude has just spent about forever explaining how human beings don’t have free will! How the angels “gave us” the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, because yeah things were so perfect in the 16th and 18th centuries?! (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) How can David make a difference if he isn’t even in command of his own will? What bloody difference does it make what you do if you’re just being danced around on the puppet-strings of a bunch of vexatious lawyers from the astral plane? Why agree to conform to “the plan”?? Wouldn’t anybody just go all V for Vendetta at this point? Why not, there’s no free will!

This is not a plot hole so much as a massive plotsplosion that leaves behind only a few tiny bits of plot-shrapnel.

It’s somewhat predictable and also sad that a man like Nolfi who spends his days in the Hollywood machine would imagine that all anyone wants is to be famous or “important.” And not only that. The Adjustment Bureau seems to be telling us that an ordinary person would give up anything for fame and position even if he weren’t truly the master of his own fate.

Not everyone believes that there are “important” people who count more than others, or that wealth, fame and power elevate one human being above another in some elemental way. But if you do believe any of that, unless you also believe that you yourself are “important,” you will lose some of your own power; your faith not just in your own agency, but in everyone’s. Which may explain why the Man, who runs Hollywood too, would encourage us to think this way; to believe that teaching six-year-olds how to dance is the worst thing that could ever happen. People with no faith in their own significance, and with no faith in the power of exercising their own free will, are much easier to control.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo and Act Like A Gentleman, Think Like A Woman.