In 2006, Brooklyn Democratic congressman David Norris unsuccessfully runs for the United States Senate. While rehearsing his concession speech, he meets Elise Sellas, and they share a passionate kiss. David does not get Elise's name before they are separated, but, inspired by her, he delivers an unusually candid speech that is well-received and makes him a favorite for the next Senate election.
A month later, Harry Mitchell receives an assignment from Richardson at Madison Square Park, which is near David's home. He is supposed to spill coffee on David's shirt by 7:05 a.m., forcing David to go home to change, but he falls asleep, so David catches his intended bus to his new job and meets Elise again. Before she gets off the bus, David gets her name and phone number.
David arrives at work before he was supposed to and finds his coworkers frozen and being examined by unfamiliar men, Richardson among them. He attempts to escape, but is incapacitated and taken to a warehouse. After some debate about what to do, Richardson reveals to David the existence of the "Adjustment Bureau", an organization that ensures people's lives proceed according to "the Plan" created by "the Chairman".[3][4] He says David was not supposed to see Elise a second time, so he destroys the card with her phone number on it, and then he releases David, warning him that his memory and personality will be erased if he tells anyone about what he has learned.
Three years later, David spots Elise on the street. He gets off the bus and invites her to lunch, but Charlie (David's campaign manager), after an adjustment initiated by Richardson, interrupts them with reminders that David is scheduled to announce he is running for another Senate seat. Richardson tries to prevent David and Elise from reuniting after the announcement, but David stubbornly persists and outruns Richardson to Elise's rehearsal with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, even though members of the Bureau have a way to teleport using ordinary doorways.
Richardson learns that David and Elise keep crossing paths because of remnants from earlier versions of the Plan in which they were meant to be together, and Thompson, a senior official in the Bureau, takes over David's case. He brings David back to the warehouse, where David argues he has the right to choose his own path through life, but Thompson says humans only have the appearance of free will, as the Bureau's experiments with withdrawing their influence resulted in the Dark Ages and the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century. Thompson tells David that being with Elise will keep him from his fate of becoming President of the United States, and being with David will keep Elise from becoming a world-famous dancer and choreographer. To prove he is serious, Thompson causes Elise to sprain her ankle, and David abandons her at the hospital to avoid ruining their futures.
Eleven months later, Charlie, David's campaign manager and lifelong best friend, alerts David to Elise's imminent wedding. Harry surreptitiously arranges to meet with David when it is raining, since water prevents the Bureau from tracking people. As David's "caseworker", Harry feels guilty about all of the negative things he has helped to make happen to David in support of the Plan, so he teaches David how to use doors to teleport and, hopefully, reach Elise before the Bureau can stop him. David finds Elise just before the wedding and tells her about the Bureau, proving what he says by teleporting with her. Agents of the Bureau pursue them all over New York City, and, eventually, David decides to try to plead his case directly to the chairman. Elise chooses to accompany him, and they enter the Bureau's headquarters. Chased to the roof and surrounded, David and Elise declare their love and kiss. When they let go of each other, they are alone. Thompson appears, but he is interrupted by Harry, who presents the chairman's newly revised Plan for David and Elise, which is blank going forward. Harry commends David and Elise for their devotion and sends them away, speculating that the chairman's true "plan" may be for people to fight for their free will and write their own destinies, like David and Elise did.
In early drafts of the script, the character of Norris was changed from a real-estate salesman, as in Philip K. Dick's short story, to an up-and-coming U.S. Congressman.[5]
Financing
Media Rights Capital funded the film and then auctioned it to distributors, with Universal Studios putting in the winning bid of $62 million.[6][7][8]Variety reported Damon's involvement on February 24, 2009,[9] and Blunt's on July 14.[7]
Filming
Writer/director George Nolfi worked with John Toll as his cinematographer. Shots were planned with storyboards, but changed often during shooting to fit the conditions of the day. The visual plan for the film was to use a dolly or crane to keep camera movements smooth and employ a more formal style when the Adjustment Bureau is in full control, and to use hand-held cameras and allow things to become more loose when the Bureau is losing control.[10]
Original ending
The climactic scene on the "Top of the Rock" rooftop observation deck of 30 Rockefeller Plaza was filmed four months after the completion of principal photography.[11] According to Nolfi, the ending that had originally been shot featured "the Chairman":
[I]nitially I was going to show the Chairman. The Chairman was going to be in female form, too. Ultimately, while making the movie, I realized how important it was going to be for people to put their own beliefs in the end and not foreclose that. I don’t think the scene would have foreclosed [people's] beliefs, but the more I could hint at it and the less explicit I could be about it, it wasn’t enough to hint about it in the dialog and have an actual person there acting it. I just had to not show the Chairman, so I ended up not going that way.[12]
The chairman was later revealed to have been portrayed by actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who, in her 2013 memoir The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines, said Nolfi told her that Universal Pictures was to blame for the change to the ending.[13] She said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times:
I loved that role. As actors, we all know we're at the mercy of the editing table, but not to this extent, never had I experienced it. The director, George Nolfi, decided I should play God. Everything went great until I got a call from the director who was asking to have lunch with me. He was on the verge of crying. He said, the distribution company believes that you cannot play this role.[14]
Music
The score for the film was composed by Thomas Newman, and two songs by Richard Ashcroft appear on the soundtrack: "Future's Bright" (which was co-written by Newman) during the opening sequence and "Are You Ready?" during the end credits.
The Adjustment Bureau had its world premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on February 14, 2011.[24] The film was originally scheduled to be released on July 30, 2010,[25] but was pushed back to September 17.[26] In July 2010, Universal Pictures announced that the release date was pushed back again to March 4, 2011 because Damon had to promote his two other films, True Grit and Hereafter.[27]
Home media
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on June 21, 2011.[28] It was the top selling release the first week it was for sale.[29]
Reception
Box office
The Adjustment Bureau made $20.9 million from 2,840 theaters in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office behind Rango ($38 million).[30][31][32][33] The film ultimately grossed $62.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $65.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $127.8 million.[2]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 72% of 264 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "First-time writer/director George Nolfi struggles to maintain a consistent tone, but The Adjustment Bureau rises on the strong, believable chemistry of its stars."[34]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 60 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[35]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, describing it as "a smart and good movie that could have been a great one, if it had been a little more daring. I suspect the filmmakers were reluctant to follow its implications too far."[36]The New York Times called the film "a fast, sure film about finding and keeping love across time and space ... [that] has brightened the season with a witty mix of science-fiction metaphysics and old-fashioned romance."[19]
^"The Adjustment Bureau". Catholic News Service. Archived from the original on March 12, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2007. Though this is certainly not a film for young people—in addition to the quasi-theological issues underlying the story, David and Elise's liaison becomes physical prematurely—the metaphysical elements of the plot can be interpreted by mature viewers in a way that squares with Judeo-Christian faith.
^"Finally, an Action Thriller for Religious Thinkers". The Jewish Journal. Archived from the original on March 10, 2011. Retrieved October 18, 2007. Even rarer are those films that tackle theological dilemmas, like the age-old apparent contradiction of free will vs. determinism. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all believe in an all-powerful and all-knowing God who controls everything that happens in the World. What, then, is the role of our own decisions? Does man truly possess free will, or does he only have the "appearance" of free will? Did I truly decide of my own free will to marry my wife, or did God orchestrate a complex set of circumstances that forced my hand and caused me to fall in love with this wonderful woman in order to fulfill His unknowable Divine plan? This is precisely the theme of the new film, The Adjustment Bureau (Grace Films Media, now playing.
^"The Adjustment Bureau: Fate vs. Free Will, Matt Damon Style". The Christian Post. Retrieved October 18, 2007. How much power exactly do the agents of fate hold over someone's life? Can free will ever win over fate? And is it free will or fate that orchestrates action? Such are the questions that come to mind throughout George Nolfi's newest film, "The Adjustment Bureau," based on the short story by Phillip K. Dick.
^"The Adjustment Bureau: Fate vs. Free Will, Matt Damon Style". The Christian Post. Retrieved October 18, 2007. Free Will vs. Predestination: What's Matt Damon Got to Do with It? "It's not this or that," responded Detweiler. "Gamers understand this very well, this tension between predestination and free will. It seems like they may be able to live better with that tension."
^"Matt Damon Defies God's Insidious Bureaucracy in The Adjustment Bureau". D Magazine. Retrieved October 18, 2007. You see, "the Chairman" (as the film calls the being responsible for managing the entire universe) has dispatched "case workers" (angels—without wings, but with magical hats) to keep humanity moving according to his carefully choreographed plan.
^"The Adjustment Bureau: Fate vs. Free Will, Matt Damon Style". The Christian Post. Retrieved October 18, 2007. "The intention of this film is to raise questions—that's what art should do," commented Nolfi about his soon-to-be released motion picture at an earlier Pasadena screening. And that, Mr. Nolfi, it definitely did.
