MANILA, Philippines - It is an idea that still bothers me at times. If God were all-knowing and omnipotent and can see into the future, than he knows how everybody will turn out to be. New baby born. He will be a rock star. New baby born. Will spend all his life on a farm and die without ever seeing the big city. New baby born. This one will fall in love and marry baby who will born at such and such a date three years hence. And so forth and so forth. Our future was charted for us long before we were born and there is nothing we can do to change it. If that is the case, then what are we here for?
If no effort on our part can change what we were destined to do then we might just go along with the flow and depend on fate. The idea is difficult to accept. That is why man has made his own explanations and came up with devises to explain the unexplainable. It is fate. Heaven wills it. You want to change that? Then there are deities or angels or other exalted beings close to the powers that be you can call on for help. I guess this is how somebody came up with the image of gods and goddesses playing games with puppets on strings. We are those puppets. There is no problem as long as the dolls behave but woe to any one of them that goes against the tug of the strings. This is when man chooses to exercise that faculty that distinguishes him from the other animals, free will. It can be right or wrong but God allows man to make choices.
That is what Matt Damon did as Congressman David Norris. He is a promising political figure patterned after a Kennedy scion whose bid for the senate fell through after a tabloid published an old embarrassing photo. He was rehearsing his concession speech when along comes this girl, Emily Blunt as Elise, a dancer. The chemistry is instantaneous. It is love at first sight. You feel the sparks when they kiss for the first time, albeit, briefly. He feels that they are fated to be together. Being with each other, even in casual moments like walking a city street is an easy fit. There was no way he was going to let her go. But fate or the heavens or destiny or in the case of the story by Philip K. Dick on which this movie is based, the Adjustment Bureau, has other plans for him. And these do not include Elise who has her own destiny as a great ballerina.
This dilemma is what turns what might have been a gray, antiseptic sci-fi tale into an entertaining movie. It is nothing new. Once again we are being asked how much are you willing to sacrifice for love. Just like it was for Paris and Helen or Romeo and Juliet, the answer is everything. That is how David feels. Screw the senate or even the presidency. He is in love. Not so fast, say the adjusters who now proceed to make David behave according to plan or his entire memory will be erased. But isn’t it fate when he and Elise met in of all places, the men’s room? Isn’t he merely exercising free will when he decides to ditch reason for the woman he loves? Finding the answers to these age-old intriguing questions though is not what makes the movie such a joy to watch. Despite the new concept of adjusters in dark suits and fedoras setting things right, they say they are sometimes called angels, The Adjustment Bureau is basically a love story.
I want to put in a point of reference from the recent past for the sake of younger movie-goers, but cannot find any. Have today’s producers and directors stopped believing in the power of love? Instead my mind goes back to Charade from the ’60s for the chases and the easy, subtle eroticism in the banter between Damon and Blunt. That one had Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Hard acts to follow. Damon though is a revelation. Watching him makes me hard put to think of any other young actor who approximates the bigger than life romantic appeal of Grant or William Holden or perhaps Richard Gere. And to think I had already consigned him to be Jason Bourne forever. Blunt is good but not yet there. Still, she and Damon make for a perfect match. There is never a part in the movie wherein I stopped believing they were truly in love.
Credit for that should also go to the director George Nolfi, who is making his debut after his success as writer of the Bourne series. His sci-fi chops might be cliché. That trio of adjusters, despite a still impressive Terence Stamp as the Chairman, look like they were moonlighting from The X-Files, but he made the strange romance seem believable. Of course, it also helps that the film is set in a lovingly photographed New York. Again, I think, when was the last time New York was this romantic in a movie? Breakfast At Tiffany’s? An Affair To Remember? OK sige na nga, Sex and The City. Puwede na rin. But I still say somebody had better follow Nolfi’s lead and bring back romance to the movies fast.