Ryan McNeil
My life as I know it all comes down to a seat in a movie theatre.
One night, I went to a film and ran into a friend of mine along with two friends of hers. After chatting for a few minutes, we decided to sit together for the film we were lining up to watch. Once inside, I picked a seat – one seat over from my friend, with one of her friends sitting in between us.
Had my friend sat next to me, or her other friend sat in between us, my life as it stands right now wouldn’t have happened. That’s what THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is all about: Those little moments – like choosing where to sit – and how they alter an entire existence.
David Norris (Matt Damon) is a young politician making a run at the United States Senate. After stunning many by losing his election bid late in the game, he stows away into a hotel men’s room to practice his concession speech. It’s there that he meets Elise (Emily Blunt) – yes, in a men’s restroom. The two talk, all the while exhibiting a very palpable attraction and seal their unexpected rendezvous with a kiss.
Days later, before David makes his way into work, we’re introduced to a pair of dapper gentlemen named Harry and Richardson (Anthony Mackie and John Slattery). Richardson reminds Harry that David needs to spill his coffee no later than 7:05am. Why? We’re not told, but Harry leads everyone, including Richardson, to believe he’s got it all covered. He doesn’t, as it happens, and as Harry dozes off, David gets to 7:06 not missing so much as a drop.
When he gets on a bus, full coffee in hand, he’s delighted to see Elise again. Once more the embers glow, and this time our boy is smart enough to get a phone number. However upon getting to his office we all learn what was afoot with the coffee-spilling-plot: David has unknowingly altered the plan of how his life was supposed to go. Thus these men, “The Adjustment Bureau” are dispatched by an unknown entity called The Chairman to cause a few minor incidents and push him back on to their track.
At first the idealistic go-getter plays along…but the heart wants what the heart wants, and it’s only a matter of time before his determination forces his path to cross with Elise’s again. Thus he faces the choice: play nice and both he and Elise can achieve great things separately? Or continually defy The Bureau, and force their hand into occurrence after occurrence that will drive their lives apart whether they choose it or not.
At this point, I should state that how much you enjoy THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU will entirely depend on how much you buy into its philosophy. If the concept rings true for you, this movie will take you tightly by the hand and lead you down an introspective road of “what if?”. If the premise seems hokey, then odds are the film’s execution won’t do much for you.
I am the former – a firm believer in what the film is preaching, and as such I was an ideal audience for this particular story.
While we all want to believe that we are primarily in control of our own lives, but the fact is the little things matter. Sometimes the entire course of a person’s life can be determined by a missed traffic light…or that they were twenty minutes late to work. We don’t know these things at the time – we never can of course lest we all lose our sanity. But as the film illustrates, an action as simple as spilling a cup of coffee can cause a ripple effect that changes our entire future.
I’ve thought these very things for a long time. For instance, when I was younger I attributed my relationship with the first girl I loved to an injury during a hockey game. Wasn’t my injury. Not only was I not playing in the game, but I didn’t even know the guy who was playing it and got injured. But if not for that injury, I never would have met this girl. Our paths never crossed before it, and they never would have crossed without it.
Where THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU really earns its wings, is where it asks us to consider what’s best for us. Furthermore, the film asks us to consider what’s best for those we love. What’s better? Drowning in a pond of immediate happiness, or giving it up for something greater to come? If you think you have your brain bent around that, ask yourself if you would consider wading out of that happy pond if it meant your loved one could go on to something great? Sure it’s dressed up with fedoras, magic doors, and lots of metaphoric dialogue…but it’s no less true in the end.
We exist holding evident the fact that we are making the decisions – that we are charting our own trajectory. We believe that nothing is forced and that everything is a matter of free will. But what if it’s not? We could decide through our own free will that we are going to be there when those we care about most need us…but something just happens – keys can’t be found, or an uneven sidewalk forces us to fall. In that instant, our determination spurred by free will has been thwarted. Is it dumb luck? Or is it all part of a plan?
This is what makes the story of David and Elise so poetic. They rise above the “adjustments”…the calls not made, the unexplained absences, the multiple heartaches…and instead see in each other something worthy of taking fate into one’s own hands. They have a connection – one that has survived multiple attempts to keep them apart. Blunt and Damon play these two souls as people who feel something truer than anything they’ve ever felt. Even if it goes away for years, they know it hasn’t disappeared within them, and all it takes is one look to bring it back.
It’s their story, their bond and their love that make this movie something special. Neither one of them is flawless in their role, but their chemistry together is undeniable. You watch them together at a table in central park, or talking by the morning’s light and it’s clear. They have something worthy of searching for…worthy of clinging to…worthy of fighting to keep.
This film might be the sort of thing that I’d always carry with me, if I didn’t already carry such ideas anyway. the fact that I do just made it that much more joyous to see them unfurl onscreen. Like the wedding Elise gets chased from or the men’s room David walks into, that seat at the movies irrevocably changed my life – a simple action that I never would have guessed could play so much a hand in my future.
Just like it did that friend of a friend who sat next to me. After all, she just thought she was going to see a crummy movie…she didn’t anticipate meeting her future husband.