"The Adjustment Bureau" (2011)

Dwight Dekeyser rating: BBB

Dear Friend:

Pizzicato:  DOO DOO, doo doo. DOO DOO, doo, doo.  Rod Serling: “You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead — your next stop, The Adjustment Bureau?!”  Well, they tried.  And for the most part they succeeded in trying to revive the unique genre of what I will call the “supernatural film noir” of The Twilight Zone (1959-64).   Film noir was an edgy but stylish dramatic genre filled with marginal, often desperate, characters struggling to stay alive in an unforgiving, usually criminal, world during the 1940s and 50s.  The films were generally low budget and always filmed in black and white, which I might add was not a problem for the seasoned experts of the studio system before their destruction by the antitrust division of the United States Department of Justice.  But, that’s another story.    

I (and everyone else) loved The Twilight Zone.   (The opening with music by Bernard Hermann was enough to give you the creeps for the next half hour.)  The series spanned the “utopian” Eisenhower years to the disillusioned never-to-be had last year of the Kennedy administration.  Faith in America’s unlimited future popped like a soap bubble with the Kennedy assassination.  They tried to warn us that all was not well in Levittown – those leftist Jewish intellectuals we thought we excoriated from Hollywood during the McCarthy era.  Despite all the appearance of success and security of middle America, people were unhappy in their assigned roles.  It was the rigidity of thought and behavioral codes that exploded into the counter culture of the 1960s.  But I digress.

 

The Adjustment Bureau is in many ways a comment on post 9/11/2001-America.  (I add the year because people forget.)  It is the Patriot Act gone gaa gaa.   Men in black hats (government/god agents) assume control over the fate of a young couple in an attempt to separate the two lovers for their own good, much like controlling parents might.  But these parental figures have magic powers.  The hatted-ones (and we know dangerous they can be) have plans for these two, which does not include marriage.   The failed senatorial candidate (Matt Damon) is to become president and his dancer girlfriend (Emily Blunt) is to become a great choreographer – but only if they stay apart.  Is love stronger than professional ambition and the predestination of government/god?   I found the issue posed by the movie to be a curious one: that marriage for a presidential candidate would be injurious, in fact fatal, to his candidacy.  Perhaps, the filmmakers have no knowledge of the public’s presumption of any unmarried man over the age of thirty.  But this is the supernatural, and one must suspend one’s sense of reality for the movie to succeed.

In fact, the ability of the director and screenwriter, George Norfi, to cast a spell of plausible deniability upon the audience for 106 minutes had to have been a real challenge.  The screen play was based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.  As one supernatural event followed the next, the film at times resembled a malignant Bewitched (1964-72) episode.   This is where the television format has an advantage.  The Twilight Zone was for the most part a one-act play.  It opened with a mundane premise, introduced the supernatural element which created a dilemma, and resolved the story with an ironic surprise ending – all within a thirty-minute timeslot.  There wasn’t time for the audience to appreciate the absurdity of the plot because they were so engrossed in the intensity of the drama.  To lengthen the plot for this movie, chase scenes (i.e., car/bus/bike/boat/people) were added.  To this extent it would appear, The Adjustment Bureau just might carved out a new triple genre for itself, the supernatural-film noir-action picture.   Holy Triple Threat, Batman!

I mentioned the Hollywood studio system, where the great film companies made their movies in-house by using a full-time staff of professional specialists.  The lighting directors, the costumers, the set designers, the sound and film editors all worked together for years.  They knew what the director wanted and they would pull it off.  Consequently, the movies had a unity to them and a predicable studio stamp of style and elegance.  Modern movies often lack this quality as this one did.  The production value was rough around the edges.  For a film that placed such significance on hats, I was astonished to see the cheap rumpled ones the costumer selected for the government/god agents.  For me, it was genuine distraction.  It is beyond me that a movie with a budget of $51,000,000.00 would dress main characters in cheap rumpled hats purchased from Target.  It did not help that they were ill-fitting.  This is something that would not have occurred in studio system.  When it came to hats, this movie was no Casablanca (1942).

Here’s the trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H78XCiJamXc

From the vault:  Casablanca (1942), directed by Michael Curtiz; written by Julius J. Epstein, Philip Epstein, and others; starring, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Raines.  Bogart and Bergman were convinced this was going to be a monumental flop.  Studio chief Jack Warner reported co-writers and twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein to the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Although they were never called to testify, when asked if they ever were members of a "subversive organization," they responded, "Yes. Warner Brothers.”

Best of luck in your movie selections.  Your faithful friend,

Dwight Dekeyser

© 2011 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq.  All rights reserved.