Okay, so what if that bus you missed or had to board, the detour you were forced into, the cup of tea that you spilled, the stranger you kept running into or the familiar face you kept running away from were all part of a big plan? What if, nothing was an accident? What if that sudden sprain, the phone number you could not find, the connection you felt in your bones but could do nothing about, the closed doors of opportunity were all indicators that maybe you were meant for something else? That maybe, it was Fate, God or some invisible Adjustment Bureau that was nudging you away from the paths you thought, believed or felt were yours to walk on? What if, there is no free will? What if, we are all here to serve a purpose bigger than ourselves? 

 One of  Philip K Dick’s stories that asked  these questions has been adapted as The Adjustment Bureau, a nuanced study of a man single-mindedly in love and  grappling with  forces beyond his control that want him to forget the one woman he cannot forget. The one woman he does not feel alone with. This is a film that at some level can be compared to The Matrix because it does talk about an alternate reality that seeps into us and everything we do without our being aware of it. But it is far less metaphysical and much more accessible as a story.

It is also a brave and intelligent departure from cult romances like Serendipity and Sleepless in Seattle that propagate the idea of a soul mate who will be brought to us through signs, happy accidents, timely reminders, a lost and found glove, a rediscovered book and a red heart flashing love on the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day.

 This film asks what if your soul mate is not meant to be with you? What would you do if the one person who is perfect for you is never going to be a part of your life? How far would you go? Would you challenge fate? Run into walls heedlessly? Open doors where they were none to defy what is written and to rewrite the Plan that has been assigned to you?

 There are also questions about personal happiness and if it really comes in the way of our desire to make something more of our lives. If we were all fulfilled, would we do all of the things that we do to satiate the vacuum within? If Matt Damon’s charismatic but lonely David Norris was happier, would he fight to become a political force even after being crushed in the race for senatorship? If he had not lost the love of his life,  the spirited, beautiful Elise (Emily Blunt) to the machinations of the Bureau, he would perhaps have been too content to care about his political future or even the future of the world.  

 The hatted beings from the Bureau play games with Norris as he keeps trying to find the woman who once dunked his cell phone into a coffee cup, joked about his tie, laughed at him and still made him feel at home  in the universe.

The Bureau makes it impossible for him to find Elise and makes it clear to him that she is not part of his life plan but he keeps ducking the diktat and keeps pushing his luck till one day he finds her, spends long, charmed hours with her but has to leave her abruptly when he is told by a coldly menacing Bureau hand(Terence Stamp) that his persistent love for Elise will put her life and ambitions in harm’s way.

If you take away the Science-Fiction prattle, this is an old fashioned love story. The kind, we do not see anymore in the cynicism  steeped, contemporary film writing. We are actually expected to believe that a man who may someday be the President is naive enough to fall in love with a straight-talking ballerina in the unusually empty men’s room at the Waldorf. And also that he will bump into her in a bus and will keep traveling the same route for three years till he finds her again. But believe we do because both Dammon and Blunt display a palpable chemistry of conversation, longing and laughter that draws us into the energy they acquire in each other’s presence.   

Director George Nolfi (with writing credits ranging from Ocean’s Twelve to The Bourne Ultimatum), skillfully inserts the science fiction sub-text complete with seamless special effects but never loses sight of the fact that this story is about the human heart.

 And about the dilemmas and choices we face everyday. And the questions we ask every moment whether we should face the truth or change it. Who is to know really if the barriers life puts in our way are infact the Bureau’s way of testing our will and just how badly we want to get somewhere or to  someone?  What if the Plan A that impedes us at every step is simply a way to push us into a corner from where we will have to take charge of our own fate and write our own story, our own plan B?

In the ensemble caste, Anthony Mackie plays a sedate yet powerful cameo of a Bureau hand who actually ends up feeling more than he is supposed to for a man trying desperately to hold on to love even though bigger things await him in the future.

The  best adaptions of Philip K Dick’s works would arguably be Minority Report and Blade Runner but this one is a compact little beauty as well.  It is smartly structured and written and is a remarkably optimistic film because it shows us that if destiny is a wall, free will is a door that we can build in it to get to the other side.

Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight. (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870) . More about her in Story Wallahs.  Also check other books by Unboxed Writers in our Store.