How Juvenile

By Alex "The Savant" Heisman
The Savant's Rating: 1.5/5 Stars

Copyright cdn.screenrant.com 2011

The title of Jason Reitman’s new film, Young Adult, serves two obvious functions. Firstly, the phrase refers to the type of books the main character Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) churns out rather unenthusiastically. Secondly, it also brings to the forefront the fact that Mavis is stuck in her past high school years (hence the trashy books she writes), is incredibly narcissistic, and refuses to grow up and accept adulthood. Upon deeper inspection, however, the phrase also begins to highlight a more problematic issue; namely that the movie is actually quite poorly constructed. I certainly saw a few areas and scenes that could have been developed further into an overall much more fluid and resonant piece, yet, as it stands, the film becomes Jason Reitman’s least inspired effort. The picture is the “young adult” version of a better, richer piece of cinema that never truly found its way.

Young Adult centers on the author Mavis Gary and her self-centered lifestyle. Mavis truly has nothing going for her as her publisher (J.K. Simmons in a cameo voice role) has recently cancelled her poorly selling book series and she feels too important to sustain any long-term relationship. Mavis develops, and can’t let go, of the idea that she and her old high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) are destined to be together, so she travels back to her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota to see him. Mavis is completely aware, however, that Buddy is very happily married with a new child at home. Nothing in her mind can deter her in her quest except for another old high school acquaintance, Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), who certainly tries to after he sees the obvious lunacy of her plan. Mavis, Buddy, and Matt, must all revaluate their lives as they reconnect and figure out what is most important.

Young Adult never lives up to any sort of promise established from the previous career success of director Reitman or writer Diablo Cody. After delivering a personal and refined portrayal of the recent United States recession with his last film, 2009’s Up in the Air, Jason Reitman presents what amounts to actually quite a boring film this time around. There is no impetus for change on a scene-to-scene basis aside from Mavis’s narcissism, and because Charlize is in literally every scene, the gimmick begins to wear thin quickly and never recovers. Diablo Cody created an interesting character in Mavis Gary but, through her script, placed her in the most utterly droll and asinine world that does not serve the character’s function well.

Special dispensation must be paid, and this will sound contradictory as I have been arguing that there is no case to be made for the movie, towards the acting of Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt. Charlize, already an Academy Award winner for her brave performance in Monster, delivers the best performance by an actress this year so far (that will surely change, however, when I finally see Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady). She capitalizes on the venomous streak in Mavis rather effectively as she repels the rest of the characters and the audience with her unforgivable actions. Delivering saner emotions on the opposite end of the spectrum, common supporting player Oswalt injects a human suffering into his conception of the tortured Matt. While Patton Oswalt can always be counted on to provide some comic relief to any of the hundreds (!) of parts he has been featured in, he is finally allowed to spread his wings with the part he was born to play. Although suffering in a very different way than Mavis (to reveal why would be to lessen the impact of when the moment is revealed on screen), the character of Matt Freehauf does add some layers overall to the lacking film.

Aside from the acting of the two standouts, however, the movie completely and utterly falls apart. For being such a short movie, clocking in at an hour and thirty-four minutes, I was still filled with a sense of lethargy from the movie not developing into anything important. When the film FINALLY begins to hit its stride with the two or three scenes that end the picture, it slowly dawned on me that the credits were about to roll and there would be no time for more scenes of this caliber to redeem the rest of the flick. What a pity, too, as Diablo Cody did write one powerful and notable scene at the end as a duet between Mavis and Matt’s sister Sandra (Collette Wolfe). All the usually reliable supporting players, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser, Mary Beth Hurt, are literally left with not a single thing to do except stare mouth agape at Mavis’s incendiary actions.

Young Adult has just expanded wide to theaters all across America, although, judging by my review, I would not recommend going out of your way to see it. Movie: D Plus/C Minus, Redeemable Performances by Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt: B Plus.
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Deus Ex Machina, the Genre-izing of Art, and more

By Paul "The Good-Looking One" Goldberg

Loyal readers: I apologize for the two week delay in our posts; this is exclusively my fault.  Spread very thin during finals week at school, and now scattered with all my free time since coming home for break, I’ve had little time/focus to write an article.  But here it is—though as befits my current state of mind, it’s a general stream of scattered thoughts on film that has been going through my mind lately.

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Deus ex machina—what is it, what does it mean, and why does it drive critics so nuts?

History lesson: the phrase is in Latin, meaning “God [Deus] out of [ex] the machine [machina]”.  It refers to a convention in Ancient Greek drama, wherein a sort of crane-do-hickey (i.e. a machine) lowered actors portraying Gods onto the stage, often to solve tricky problems via divine intervention.

© depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu, via uvm.edu

Today, when people call something a deus ex machina, they are referring to any sort of miraculous, inexplicable happening that resolves a situation.  For you older folks, a great example of this is at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (a fantastic western that’s worth a watch for all generations), wherein John Wayne—well, you know, kind of saves Jimmy Stewart’s ass, seemingly from out of nowhere.  For you younger folks, Aslan’s resurrection in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will suffice.  If you’re still not getting it, think back to when you were kids, and you invented superheroes to play make-believe with your friends, and that one annoying kid you played with always had a superhero who magically had a counter-power for everything; if you had laser-beams, he had laser-beam defense; if you could breathe fire, he could douse you in water.  This kid was using deus ex machina inventions all the time.

So why do critics hate this so much?  Essentially, it’s because a deus ex machina often is a crude device employed by a lazy author to save characters who need saving for the story to work.  It doesn’t do justice to a complex plot line, the audience immediately realizes its unlikelihood and ridiculousness; thereby, the plot loses credibility and compromises its integrity.  Usually, a logical and realistic resolution functions far more effectively.

Critics are mostly right about this: if a plot is to be credible and authentic, it must resolve itself according to the rules already established therein; it must maintain integrity in its structure.  However, critics can also be incredibly pretentious in their vilification of deus ex machina.

Such a pretentious critique may be found here http://bestforfilm.com/film-blog/top-10-deus-ex-machina-moments/. 

Sometimes, a deus ex machina, or rather a seeming deus ex machina, is absolutely necessary to a story; and moreover, a story has no credibility without it.  Life and everything that happens in it is truly unexpected, and the result of countless upon countless accidents.  Think about it: you’re now married with kids because you happened to meet that special someone at a party you almost didn’t go to for a friend who you met because you happened to sit next to each other in some class at a school you attended only because your dad changed jobs in a certain year.  Ever been driving and realized that if you hadn’t been paying attention for that split-second, you probably would’ve been killed in a major accident?  These are the kinds of circumstantial, accidental happenings that rule our lives, and certain invocations of a deus ex machina simply serve to reflect the insane, inexplicable, accidental nature of daily life.

Unless wholly abused, deus ex machinas serve such a genuine, imperative purpose in literature and plot development; thus, shove it! pretentious critics.

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I’ve also been thinking about our incessant need to classify and categorize, especially regarding art.

This last semester, I took a creative writing class.  And I certainly learned some interesting things, heard some good advice from my professor (a successful author of several novels), etc.  But one common critique of his that frankly, I think, shows him to be (at least in certain aspects) a narrow-minded—even lazy—reader is his need to put every story into a genre.  He says things like “The first scene seemed funny, but the second scene seemed serious.  I advise you to just make it a full-blown comedy or a full-blown drama, because otherwise I’m confused about how to take it”.

I realize that we have a need to organize everything in our minds in order to better understand it (e.g. Kingdom→Phylum→Class→Order→Family→Genus→Species); but honestly, I hope that we’ve progressed to the point where we can interpret art, and discern subtle nuances that reflect themes far deeper and richer than any particular genre can paint.  Life isn’t all a comedy, or a drama, or a tragicomedy, or a satire, or an underdog story, or an indie drama, etc.  Life is so filled with various facets, that speaking of it as only one of these things is ludicrous and short-sided.  And the task of art, really, is to provide some sort of reflection/improvement of life (note that this doesn’t mean that art must be realistic; rather, if it’s fantasy, it still must reflect, in its core ideals, the realities in which we live/should live).  So why do we then demand that everything be so neat and tidy and inauthentically wrapped in the scheme of some hackneyed ‘genre’?

© thefoxisblack.com 2011

 That’s why I love Woody Allen’s work so much; most of it transcends any BS, artificial label some critic could give to it; it thereby maintains credibility and authenticity to life.

So please, let’s be open to depth and nuance in all art—including film—and let it speak with the full power of its own voice, rather than from within some artificial, trite framework.  Let’s become more active readers, watchers, etc. who don’t need to be told how to think and feel in every artistic encounter; often the most rewarding experience is to come to an understanding of a work after having to strenuously and constantly apply our minds to it.

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Upcoming stuff:  Within the next couple weeks, check out another video review of Alex and me on the critically-acclaimed, heavy Oscar favorite The Artist (hint: I think it’s excellent).  Also look for Alex’s next article coming out on the Globe-nominated film Young Adult.

If you’re bored during these waning holidays, watch some of The Twilight Zone on the Sci-Fi channel for its annual New Year’s Day Marathon (I should really get paid for this plug).  It’s a thought-provoking series that holds up beautifully today.  I’ll write an article on it soon.

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How Many Years Ago? (Fargo)

By Alex "The Savant" Heisman

© ew.com, timeinc.net 2009

It is once again time to dip into the well of history and analyze a film released long ago in the second entry of our blog’s series, "How Many Years Ago?" If you remember from the introduction to the first post reviewing 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Paul and I look at a film under a historical lens and view how that particular picture shaped the future of cinema in one way or another. The film under scrutiny for today’s post, Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 seminal masterpiece, Fargo, actually kills two birds with one stone: depending on what kind of mood I’m in, Fargo is hands-down my favorite movie of all time. The bleak and pure snowy landscape of Minnesota and North Dakota mask the vicious and bloody carnage that unfurls to a small group of characters over the course of a few days. And to top it all off, the movie’s actually really damn funny!

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the hapless used-car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (a stunning William H. Macy) organizes the kidnapping of his wife with two petty thieves (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) who think they are much smarter then they actually are. Turns out Jerry’s in a little bit of a financial situation after same bad deals at the auto dealership, so he not only needs to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay off his debts, but to also pay off the two criminals. Jerry’s wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell), a shrewd business man in his own right, begins to feel something is strangely amiss when Jerry relies too heavily on him for the ransom money. Meanwhile, in Brainerd, North Dakota, the two thieves, Carl and Gaear, while transporting the kidnapped Mrs. Lundegaard to the remote cabin hideaway, ferociously slaughter a state trooper who is on to their trail. The seven months pregnant police chief of Brainerd, Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand in her Academy Award winning role), becomes the lead investigator on the case. Once connections between all the characters are established it’s only a matter of time before someone must pay. Even though this whole mess eventually begins to sound sadistic, and even a bit inhuman at times, one is both pacified from the release of their laughter at the humorous moments in the piece, and repulsed at how alarming laughing might feel during the rampage.

Actually the biggest shock, and those that know me well can support this, is how long it took me to actually write a piece on a Coen Bros. movie. I will defend to the death that Joel and Ethan Coen are simply the finest filmmakers in the profession. Having seen all fifteen of their films, I can attest that each is densely layered with rich dramatic moments of tension while still maintaining a sophisticated level of humor throughout. Perhaps, if the mood strikes me, I may even do an overview of the fifteen films they have created just to emphasize the fullness of their works. The Coen’s have literally almost tackled every genre, from western in True Grit to full-blown comedy in Burn After Reading. Thrillers have never looked better than their debut piece, Blood Simple., when compared against the film-noir classic Miller’s Crossing, and the musical based on Homer’s Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou? In 2007, Joel and Ethan even won Best Picture at the Academy Awards with their searing and visceral No Country for Old Men.

This film is INCREDIBLY important to the evolution of cinema even though it was released just 15 short years ago. Now, disclaimer, I’m not arguing that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences that annually present the Academy Award statuette are completely infallible in their own right and truly represent the best of the year (I’m looking at you Sandra Bullock….like, honestly, the total blundering of that whole situation just became one of the next posts I’m writing). Yet, as in this instance, I will defend the Academy when they show signs of forward moving, progressive thinking. However, if you read the following argument and still find the Academy to not be your cup of tea and that they, in no way, are the ultimate bellwether for change, bully for you and I will hold no grudges.

The state of small and independent films had been evolving as far as they could grow without actually breaking into the mainstream during the early and mid 90’s. Just two years prior, in 1994, arguably the most important and famous independent film, Pulp Fiction, made a massive splash with audiences, critics, and the Academy alike--even though it lost Picture, Director, and Actor to the less challenging Forrest Gump. In 1996, independent films had risen to such a status in the motion picture community that FOUR out of the FIVE available nomination slots in the Best Picture category were filled with films that had a considerably smaller budget than most studio outings, and thus considered independent: the eventual winner The English Patient, Fargo, Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies, and Scott Hicks’ Shine. (The fifth and final slot was reserved for the questionable Tom Cruise vehicle Jerry Maguire). That smaller films had catapulted to such a position emphasized not only that the reserved Academy members had begun to take notice, but that they actually decided to do something towards this response. The Academy, usually known for their big and epic choices (like the colossal piece Titanic the very next year), were willing to set aside their allegiances to studio heads and marquee actors for one season to honor films that had a tough time even coming up with a budget to begin shooting with.

On a side note--Frances McDormand’s Oscar winning performance as Police Chief Marge Gunderson is one of the five greatest female performances in the history of the medium. Of course, all taste is subjective and my opinion might seem bogus to another critic and fan, yet, there is an underlying thread of humor and sensibility that allows the viewer to empathize with her heavily pregnant character as she begins to battle forces that are just slightly more overwhelming and bigger than she is. McDormand, the real-life wife of co-director Joel Coen, asserts her position as one of the most versatile actresses of present with her character’s northern accent alone that will most certainly have one rolling in the aisles clutching at their sides.

Please go rent, buy, stream, illegally download Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 masterpiece Fargo. Along with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Little Miss Sunshine, it is my most favorite movie of all time, and one that I would be proud to bestow with the elusive, and almost unheard of, five star rating.

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The Descendants Descends into the Incredible World of Blah

By Paul "The Good-Looking One" Goldberg
The Good-Looking One's Rating: 3/5 Stars

© studiobriefing.net, 2011

Although I hardly keep up with all the Oscar-palooza that goes on throughout the year, my good buddy The Savant—obsessed with all things Academy, as I’m sure you know by now—has informed me that Alexander Payne’s recent release The Descendants is currently a heavy hitter in the race for “Best Picture”.  After seeing the film last week, I can only wonder why.

The film is based around how Matt King (George Clooney) and his two daughters, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller), deal with the boating accident and ensuing permanent vegetative coma of Elizabeth King (Patricia Hastie)—his wife and their mother.  The tragedy is further brought to the forefront by the fact that Elizabeth’s will stipulates that she must be taken off of all life-support machines within a few weeks.

Right at the outset, we learn that the King family lives in Hawaii, and that nevertheless, their life is no paradise (this is revealed via banal self-conscious inner-monologue from Clooney; indeed, this trope was simply cloying). It seems that even before Elizabeth’s injury and subsequent coma, the family was disconnected from each other: Matt’s relationship with her seems to have significantly fizzled, his version of fatherhood could be described as distracted and clumsy, his oldest daughter Alexandra is in full-on ‘rebel without a cause’ mode, we eventually learn that Elizabeth was having an affair with a married man before her accident.

Alongside this primary plot is what we could call ‘The Hawaiian Heritage Plot’.  Matt’s descended (hence the title) from a serendipitous marriage between a Hawaiian princess and a European land acquirer (I know there’s a technical term for this), and thus through various dealings, he’s now the sole trustee of a hundreds-million dollars’ worth of Kauaian land.  And since some of his cousins are deeply in debt, Matt is searching for a developer to buy the land and make them all rich.  This causes somewhat of a stir in the Hawaiian community, as most hope that Matt doesn’t sell, in order to stave off the glitzy tourism such would bring.

Of course, Matt makes up with his daughters and decides to preserve his Hawaiian heritage in the end; it all works out (don’t worry about the spoiler, the plot isn’t really what matters in this movie; it’s more a character and relationship piece).

So, knowing all this now, what’s all the praise about, and why is it misguided?  Well, there is indeed much good in the film: Clooney is Clooney per usual, only Dad-style—but it kind of works.  Woodley imbues her character with complexity, and manages to create a unique identity rather than falling into the clichéd trap of being the ‘rebellious teen’—indeed, her reaction at first hearing that her mother will die is powerful, and well-directed by Payne.  The relationship between the family comes off as authentic and dynamic; it’s fun watching them (especially Woodley and Clooney) interact with each other.  One of the opening scenes—in which a mother at Scottie’s school calls to tell Matt that Scottie’s been bullying her daughter, and that they must come over and apologize—is fantastic in the way it interweaves all the themes of the story (this mother is a native Hawaiian who makes sure to give Matt her two cents about selling the land) and illustrates the psyches of and relationship between Matt and Scottie (by the way, is there anything more BS than someone else’s parent demanding that you force your child to apologize?).  The bouncy ukulele-filled soundtrack lightens the mood of a film that deals with something so, so dark.

For all these reasons, the film is deserving of praise.  But ultimately, it’s undone for one reason: it manages to take a plotline filled with such gravity, and turn you out of the theatre feeling---well, blah about it all.

I suppose this is accomplished (or failed at) for several reasons: The story makes Elizabeth out to be so unsympathetic (the affair with a married man, poor relationship with her daughters, risky behavior, jackass of a father, shallow best friend) that quite frankly, it’s difficult to care too much about her or what’s happened to her.  While we care somewhat about what Matt and co. are going through, the actual tragedy of her death is muted by her unlikability as a character.

Nonetheless, however, it’s impossible for us to get the warm fuzzies at the end of the film—when Matt and his daughters become a connected family and realize the importance of their bonds—because the situation that’s happened to them is still too weighty and muddled to just shrug off.  Thus, as an audience, we’re left not especially caring that Elizabeth will die, and not especially caring that Matt and his daughters have found true connections.  Overall, then, it seems to me that the topic itself and the Payne’s treatment of it alienate the audience from any sort of lasting connection to the film.

The film’s secondary ‘Hawaiian Heritage Plot’ also fails to resonate with us in its resolution.  In fact, this plot’s development is so disjointed that the resolution seems confusing and frivolous; the film only sparingly mentions Matt’s Hawaiian ancestry, and until the end, it seems that Matt could care less about it.  Rightfully, he’s so distracted by his wife’s accident that the land’s sale becomes unimportant to him; he seems willing to leave it all in the hands of his numerous cousins.  When Matt finds out, however, that the favored buyer will integrally involve the man with whom his wife had an affair, he suddenly starts to care again, flirting with the idea of selling to someone else.  Abruptly, however, Matt decides not to sell at all.  The filmmakers try to pawn off the reason to us as ‘Matt has a sudden epiphany that he truly does love Hawaii, and cares about its natural preservation’.

I’m sorry: this just doesn’t fly.  I can’t even remember once in this movie when Matt expressed anything more than passing appreciation for his native land; and certainly, it seems more plausible that Matt didn’t sell because he didn’t want the man with whom his wife had an affair to benefit at all from his sale.  Thus, the resolution of this secondary plot comes off as forced and inauthentic, and moreover confused in its motivations; as an audience, we don’t exactly buy Matt’s sudden love for the land.  And therefore, we find it difficult to feel much of a connection to the film in its resolution of this secondary plot.

There are other issues with the film—mostly dealing with disjointed and lazy character development (most of this is on the screenplay, I believe).  But what really stands out about this film is how despite its weighty plot and sympathetic characters, it manages to not really say anything powerful, and to leave us with—well, nothing.  So tell me, Academy, why shalt thou give this film your most precious award?

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Wait...Did We Watch the Same Movie? (Taxi Driver)

By Alex "The Savant" Heisman

© avclub.com 2011

No matter what I may be doing, be it something as simple as a trip to the supermarket or going for a drive, my mind is often transported back to a great scene from the humorous 2006 movie The TV Set. Mike Klein (David Duchovny), a struggling writer who can’t seem to sell his script for a new pilot to any network, finally lets all his troubles overwhelm him and berates his assistant, Alice (Judy Greer), when he finds out she has never seen his favorite movie, Taxi Driver. As the two bicker, the comedic tension in the scene is brought to such a point that when Alice, still remaining completely ignorant of the entire situation, misunderstands the name of the movie and screams “I WILL RENT THE TAXI DRIVER OKAY?!”, it allows me to greatly relate to her character.

The secret I’m about to divulge may make me appear to be a terrible film buff, but I think it’s time to let the world know: until this past weekend, I had never seen Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver. I do deserve brownie points, however, as I have started to watch it three, yes, THREE, times in the past. Despite progressively getting about ten minutes farther in each time, my finger found its way to the stop button as I never seemed to able to get into the groove of the movie. The reason I kept revisiting the movie was that, like Mike from The TV Set, literally everyone champions this particular film as being one of the single greatest accomplishments in the history of cinema. No less than Roger Ebert himself labeled this movie as “one of the greatest he has ever seen”. It must finally be stated that there was no specific reason or aspect of production that previously kept me from seeing Taxi Driver…there were just other movies I had never seen that I wished to watch first.

With my girlfriend at William and Mary for the weekend (I’m not bitter!), I used the ample free time I now had at my disposal to now watch the film in its entirety. I mean this in all due sincerity: I. was. bored. FREAKIN. stiff. the…entire…time. I knew the entire point of the film was to present an intense character study of a lonely, disillusioned “warrior”, but there is a distinct line between a film that accomplishes just that goal, and one that takes its message to the point of monotony. Special dishonorable mention must be immediately paid to Bernard Hermann’s famous (for what reason?) saxophone score. As Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) drives his cab all over New York City throughout the night, the wailing jazz solo that accompanies him creates a somber tone. Eventually this original score becomes excruciating and completely out of place when it changes key about halfway through.

Secondly, while VERY controversial for its time, this film has not held up well. Robert De Niro’s inward reflections seem almost childish as he attempts to produce a macho presence in his scenes with the girl he likes, Cybill Shepherd (remember her!), and a 12-year-old prostitute (Jodie Foster) he hopes to provide a new life for. Oh! Yes! What a gimmicky performance by Ms. Foster. I had hoped, being such an interesting character to undertake, that the normally outstanding Jodie Foster would provide a bright spot in this laborious production. Her scenes amount to a total run time of just over ten minutes and her character never hits such scandalous notes as probably befalls a child hooker (I say probably as I would have no way of knowing.)

All this is not to dispel the notion that I did not enjoy the film completely. The bloody ending absolutely captivated me as I certainly did not see it coming, and it truly is a gritty, realistic ode to New York for which Martin Scorsese ultimately became known. I was just expecting a whole lot more for all the championing done by scholars, family members, friends, and yes, Mike Klein. It was not the worst film I’ve ever seen (Hey! I’ve sat through Cabaret and lived to tell the tale!), but it thankfully lost all four of its Oscar nominations: Best Picture (we are going to pretend Rocky did not even come close to the Academy Awards and the masterpiece Network took this award that year), Best Actor (De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Foster), and Best Original Score (Hermann).

If you’ve enjoyed this review, please let us know! Paul and I have been toying with creating a new series out of this. We would choose, or you could suggest, a film (usually classic), that for one reason or another we should have seen but have not yet. Paul and I will record what we already know heading in/what we expect, and compare that to how we actually feel when we’ve seen it.

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J. Edgar? No. More Like J. Foolish (Video Review)

By Alex "The Savant" Heisman and Paul "The Good-Looking One" Goldberg

The Savant's Rating: 1.5-2/5 Stars
The Good-Looking One's Rating: 2/5 Stars

Hey Guys!

Here's our review of Eastwood's J. Edgar, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.  Please pardon the delay in my side of the video; that's what you get when you buy a Dell and try to upgrade your software.

-The Good-Looking One

Here's the link to the Funny or Die Parody.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/J-Edgar-Parodied-DiCaprio-Oscar-Bait-Funny-Or-Die-Video-27801.html

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The Adjustment Bureau Has No Idea What It's Talking About

By Paul "The Good-Looking One" Goldberg

We're what you call 'Angels', folks. (image © entertainmentwallpaper.com, 2011)

Writer-Director George Nolfi’s 2011 film The Adjustment Bureau promised big things in its advertisements.  Statements like “If you believe in free will…” pounded on screen while images of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt running from some seeming MIB agents flashed by.

Although I admit that I was turned off by what seemed a superficial pander to an omnipresent human desire (free will), I was nonetheless interested in seeing the film, and what it would make of the whole ‘free will’ dilemma.

Well, the bottom line: I was entertained, but unimpressed.

A quick overview of the plot runs thus: David Norris (Matt Damon) is a young, successful, ‘voice of the people’ type politician.  Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) is a talented, aspiring dancer who has yet to make it big.  Both are single.

The two have a chance encounter in a bathroom (it’s not as creepy as it sounds, I promise), and they really hit it off—although Elise is forced to flee before either can exchange contacts.  However, David and Elise are able to see each other again, and all seems destined for a feel-good rom-com.

But “The Adjustment Bureau” (a secret, supernatural-ish organization made up of angels who look like corporate bigwigs, headed by “The Chairman”—i.e. God—designs people’s fates, and ensures that each fate happens according to plan) doesn’t want David and Elise to wind up happily ever after; it seems that the two of them aren’t destined for one another, in a very real sense, and that their falling in love actually is a violation of their respective destinies.

Eventually—through chance circumstance—David is becomes aware of “The Adjustment Bureau”, and the fact that “The Chairman” doesn’t want him and Elise to be together.  Thus, a certain quandary develops: should David follow the destiny that’s been properly set out for him, or should he seek his own? 

Of course, he seeks his own.  And those wonderful chase sequences ensue.

Now: The Adjustment Bureau is generally entertaining.  Its concept is fresh and mildly stimulating, some of its imagery is cool, Emily Blunt is fantastic (she manages to be sensitive, willful, and dignified all at once.  There’s a quiet beauty about her).  So, overall, the movie’s worth a watch.

And yet, there are many, many things wrong with it.  The way it visualizes and animates abstract, supernatural forces is ridiculous, many characters are overdrawn, a lot of the dialogue is cheesy, Matt Damon is annoying as hell (but really, when is he not?), the plot becomes overly intricate and contradictory, etc.

However, I’m going to focus on one fundamental aspect in which the film fails: its confusion about—well, the whole free will thing.

The Adjustment Bureau overtly deals with this conflict between free will and fate.  It reminds me of the innate contradiction many of us carry around: we want to have freedom, and to have the right to make our own choices; and yet, simultaneously, we want to feel taken care of—that ‘God’ or whatever you want to call it has a plan for us, and in the end, we’ll all wind up on the right track.  We desire freedom, and yet we desire fate (at least the good, this-person-is-destined-to-be-my-lover, kind).  And this film tries to draw a middle path, with its resolution being something along the lines of: God (“The Chairman”) has a plan for you, but if you come up with a better one yourself, then maybe God will be ok with it.

Now, before I dig too deeply into the movie’s conceptions of free will and fate, I’m gonna give you all a brief primer on the meaning of free will and fate (more academically deemed determinism).

Free will, essentially, is the belief that an individual has power over his/her present actions.  It’s the belief that you are free to pursue your own will, and that this will, moreover, is self-created and self-motivated, and not placed upon you by any higher power, or anything out of your control.

For instance, imagine that you are in an Olive Garden (God forbid) trying to decide between spaghetti and lasagna.  Now, if you truly have the ability to choose either the spaghetti or the lasagna—meaning that there’s no destiny, nor genetic determinance, nor socialization inescapably boxing you into one of the two—then in making your choice, you are exerting free will.

Fate, or determinism, is just the opposite.  It’s the view that, because of destiny, or because your genetics or socialization inescapably foster who you are, in the end, you have no freedom in the choices you make, and thus no control over yourself in any real sense.

So, re-imagining our Olive Garden situation above, a determinist would say that, although you might choose either the spaghetti or the lasagna, your choice of either one or the other is entirely out of your hands, and in a sense, is made before you even show up to the restaurant.

Ok.  So there’s the brief overview: free will is an individual’s power to choose otherwise, while determinism necessitates an individual’s choice being inextricably tied-down and out of his/her control.

So how does The Adjustment Bureau treat what it calls free will, and what it calls fate?

Well, obviously, the “Bureau” itself is supposed to be a symbol of fate.  But this isn’t so.  Why?  Because the movie never really stops to consider what true fate means: true fate, as I discussed, means that an individual has no power to choose otherwise.  It’s akin—in the sense of destiny—to God playing both ends of a chess board, and moving all the pieces (humans) around howsoever He wills.

But David does have the ability to choose otherwise.  Thus, he must have free will.  Thus, the “destiny” that the agents mean to protect isn’t really a destiny at all; since David has the power to simply disregard it, then it doesn’t ‘define’ him at all; he isn’t ‘destined’ to do anything.

What The Adjustment Bureau insists on calling “destiny” is really just coercion.  It’s more like “Hey buddy, if you don’t listen to what the Big Fella (God) says, then he’s gonna break yours and all your cousins’ legs (annihilate you)”.  Real destiny would mean David never even had the opportunity to make a choice different from the plan; in fact, it would be logically impossible for him to break from his destiny at all, since he would just be a mindless chess piece moved entirely at God’s will.

Therefore, although The Adjustment Bureau makes interesting, literary, quasi-stimulating attempts at discussing and breaking through the free will vs. fate argument, it’s mostly just lazy and illogical in how it treats the dilemma; thus, its fundamental premise is flawed.  And as such, the movie itself is fundamentally, inescapably flawed.

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