Adjustment Bureau Directed by George Nolfi

 Adjustment Bureau

Directed by George Nolfi

George Nolfi both directed this movie and wrote the adaptation from Mr. Dick's work, so let's take a brief look at him first. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 10th, 1968. He moved to Illinois in childhood and attended Homewood-Flossmoor High School in the southern suburbs of Chicago. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University with a bachelor's in public policy and was awarded a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford University, where he started graduate work in philosophy but switched to political science and headed out to UCLA. He sold his first script Pathfinder, which as of yet has not been made into a movie, before completing his Ph.D. and left UCLA with a master's degree. Before directing Adjustment Bureau, he wrote Ocean's Twelve, the screenplays for Timeline (which was terrible), and The Sentinel. He was also one of the co-writers for the Bourne Ultimatum (which was good). He also directed Birth of the Dragon, a film about Bruce Lee's time in San Francisco, and The Banker, a film about the first two African American Bankers in the US. He is currently working on a horror film entitled XOXO. Adjustment Bureau was released in 2011, but before I get into it, as always a film or adaptation receives two grades: the first being how faithful/good of an adaptation it is, and the second being how well it stands on its own as a film.

The story of Adjustment Bureau is mainly the story of young politician David Norris, unlike Ed Fletcher, Norris isn't a regular guy or married. Instead, he's an up-and-coming Senate candidate for New York which right away makes him an elite member of society. The film opens with him doing interviews on the Daily Show with then-host John Stewart and being shown with various movers and shakers of the political world. We quickly get a sense that David is an Obama or AOC-like figure; he generates a lot of excitement especially among young voters who feel he is different and more authentic than regular politicians. It helps that David can point to a rough past, he's from a working-class neighborhood and had a troubled childhood, complete with tragedy. He lost his mother and brother at a young age and those losses have left deep marks on him. Interestingly enough, we learn later in the movie that it's memories of his Father that actually goad him forward into politics and the rarified heights of national figures, because to be honest how many Senators can you remember off the top of your head? Don't feel too bad if you can't remember more than a dozen or so, because not even being a Senator is enough to capture national attention.  It takes a rare combination of luck, charisma, and the right message to grab attention on that scale. Of course, this being a film, we can't have David just cruise to victory; so his first Senate run is brought down in screaming flames in a scandal that... Honestly in a post-Trump world just feels too damn innocent to be believable. These days I can't imagine a politician being brought down by the revelation that before he went into politics he mooned his friends at a college reunion (Honestly, I can’t really buy it in 2011.  2001 maybe.{I feel like in late 2001 we would have been a bit too distracted to be scandalized by a bare ass.}  Fair. The election would have been in 2000 anyway.). I strain to remember if this would have been believable in 2011 but it's like I'm gazing at a completely different age. I mean, even ignoring the orange elephant in the room, we have Prime Ministers and Governors who have survived black face scandals, open adulterers, and governors brazenly siccing the police on scientists for daring to report the facts. Compared to all that, should I really care about a bare ass even if the New York Post posts a double-page picture of it? (The answer is no.)

Well moving on, David is composing his concession speech as the election night collapses into a full-out rout when he meets Elise played by the always welcome Emily Blunt, who is hiding from security in the men's room because she crashed a wedding. They have an instant connection and in that chemistry-soaked moment, she inspires something in him before she runs off laughing seconds ahead of security. I'll say this for Elise she knows how to make an entrance! This leads to David giving a heartfelt, honest speech that is so damn good that it makes an icon out of a damn shoe (And it honestly was very good.).

As it turns out, this is all part of the plan. What isn't part of the plan is David running into Elise again on the bus on his way to a new job and getting her phone number. This is compounded by David walking into his buddy Charlie being “adjusted.” It's here that the curtain is peeled back and David is shown that humanity is being kept on a plan by shadowy figures that look like us but aren't us, blessed with abilities and technology that we can't fathom, working on behalf of the Chairmen (Read: Non-Denominational God {Could also be a goddess, one of them flat out says the Chairmen might be a lady} Point.  Change to Deity.). They tell David something he doesn't want to hear. He can't have Elise and they can't explain why. This right away tells us that they don't understand humans very well, most likely because they haven't had to; they’ve been able to nudge us through their technology and manipulate us through their strange powers for so long that they haven't really ever had to convince one of us of anything. Because if you want a human to want something? Tell them they can't have it. Then refuse to explain why making it feel unfair and arbitrary. At that point not only is it about getting what you want but sticking it to the man and his unfair rules. On top of all that, they do this to a guy who was raised a working-class American who has likely been told since he was knee-high to a house-pet that rebelling against unreasonable authority is the most virtuous and American act possible (Which is an attitude that I encourage.). So shockingly David rebels and thus we have our plot. (I’d have rebelled on principle too.  Even without the love of my life hanging in the balance, because fuck these people.  Thing is, they take credit for the plan’s good results, but not the bad results.  You don’t get to take credit for the enlightenment, and then not own Imperialism.)

David Norris, played by Matt Damon, is the driving force of this movie, everyone else is basically reacting to his choices, even Elise. Although in Elise's case that's because David has information she doesn't. The information he would share, except he's been bluntly told that our antagonist will burn out his brain and possibly hers if he tells. Thankfully Matt Damon is up to the task of being the main engine of this movie and Emily Blunt is up to the task of convincing us that she can match him. I feel like she doesn't get as much as she deserves in this movie, but what she does get she plays with gusto. Worth mentioning is the sheer physical effort she put in to learn dancing for this role, as Elise is supposed to be a professional ballerina. I can't claim to be an expert in dance but she convinced me that she could be a professional dancer and frankly, that's what a good actress is supposed to do. The chemistry between them is also pretty damn good and it's believable that there's an emotional investment between the characters. Playing a supporting role Anthony Mackie plays both antagonist and mentor to David, as his role is to actually explain the rules of the game he's playing and give David a fighting chance at victory. Mackie's character is an interesting one and I wish we had more of him as well.  He is someone who is increasingly disillusioned with the sheer cost of the plan even though he knows that the end goal is benevolent. However, considering that he played a hand in David's rough childhood, especially in the loss of his brother, he is finding himself in a position where he just can't accept the destruction and loss that the plan is built on. His decision to help David is both an act of penance and rebellion, as well as an act of protest from a person who has simply been pushed to damn far. There's an interesting story there.

The changes are interesting in and of themselves as the stakes are both bigger but intensely more personal. Where in Mr. Dick's story Ed's personal stake is to figure out what is going on and if he is going mad, the global stakes are the prevention of World War III. On the one thing, it's hard to get bigger than stopping WWIII from happening, but Ed's piece of that story is tiny and he doesn't really have much to do with it. David on the flip side is front and center, if he simply follows the plan, he's gonna become the most powerful man in the world. Instead, the stakes are personal: will David assert his free will and choose love, or obedience and power? By giving David a clear choice and the agency to make that choice, Adjustment Bureau becomes a much different and in a lot of ways a more interesting story. There is a clear conflict and agendas driving the plot as well as a win condition for our protagonists. Where in Adjustment Team, Ed is helpless in the face of his encounter with the profound forces that move a reality, David can assert his independence and push back for his own goals. That's honestly the more interesting story. The change from basically average guy Ed Fletcher to a member of the elite top of society David Norris is another change that serves to maintain a sense of there being actual stakes. If David was just some average guy, well he wouldn't be giving up much to chase after Elise, would he? By giving him something substantial to risk, however, David's choices have weight and impact. By choosing to be with Elise he could be giving up a chance to be President. Adjustment Bureau uses this to go deeper into the initiate's journey I mentioned in the last review, where Ed survives his brush with the profound, buying minor favor with submission. David resists and in his resistance wins secret knowledge from a hidden mentor who shows him how to navigate this hidden world to his goals. This is a riskier path than submission, but as David shows the bigger the risk often means the bigger the reward. There's also the change of introducing Elise and Mackie's characters as well, Elise takes on more of Ed's role here, in that she is pulled into this other world and has to adjust quickly and make a decision to submit or resist fast. Mackie's mentor archetype doesn't exist in Adjustment Team at all. This is in addition to the fact that the movie takes place in the 21 century and the story isn’t in the middle of the Cold War. So as an adaptation it shares very little outside the main concept that forces beyond our ken actively work to keep things moving according to plan.

So how am I going to grade this? As an adaptation it's frankly a D, having made incredibly dramatic changes and having pretty much nothing to do with the original story. That said, I liked Adjustment Bureau more than I liked Adjustment Team. It's an interesting spin on star-crossed romances and manages to create interesting, sympathetic characters struggling against both vast impersonal forces and frankly arbitrary and heavy-handed authorities for a chance to define their own lives and personal happiness. However, the sheer amount of focus on David means the other characters suffer. For example we don't get a sense of how Elise exists outside of David and we're told about what wears down Mackie's character, not shown. So while this is a good movie and one worth watching, I can't call it a great movie. So I'm giving it a B- as a stand-alone story.

Having not read the book, I cannot grade the adaptation.  However, having seen the film, I will give it a B+. I look at it like a first person narration in a lot of ways, just in a visual medium.  While we get the occasional cutaway to other characters, the primary focus is relentlessly from David’s point of view, and thus we wouldn’t necessarily get independent character development for the other parties.  We get the definite sense that Elise has a life outside of David’s existence, and she definitely has agency of her own.  However, we just don’t see that life, because she isn’t the viewpoint.  If it were a matter of the film being rushed or if she got short-shrift within the narrative style in question that would bring it down for me, but given the narrative format, it doesn’t.  

Hope you enjoyed this review.  If you did and you'd like to see more, for example, a version of the review with the editor's full comments on display and access to our first-hand impressions while we were watching the movie join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you'll also get a vote on what I review next month for as little as a dollar!  Next week we're heading into the Zone, the Twilight Zone for a look at Gabe's story and maybe I'll break down this Initiate's Journey thing I keep bringing up.  After that, we'll end February by looking at the film, Dark City.  Until then, stay safe and Keep Reading!