The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau is a movie directed by George Nolfi which I found raised many interesting questions surrounding the concepts of free will and determinism. The film is based on a book called Adjustment Team written by Philip K. Dick, a self-proclaimed “fictionalising philosopher”.  The film follows a Congressman called David who has just lost an election. David runs into a free-spirited woman who inspires him to deliver an honest concession speech which leads to the revival of his career in politics. By chance, he runs into her again on a bus where he begins to fall in love with her. However on that day he accidently discovers the existence of the “Adjustment Bureau”. A group of immortal men with omniscient powers who work to ensure that everyone’s life stays ‘to plan’ – kind of like a cross between angels and the FBI. He is warned that the young woman he has met is not part of his plan and that he must never see her again or else there would be dangerous consequences. They intervene with their lives to ensure they never run into each other again, this keeps up for 3 years when suddenly they see each other again and David decides that he won't let them keep them from her again. The Bureau are not happy with this and strike back, doing everything in their power to stop the relationship from happening.

The Bureau follows the orders of a ‘Chairman’, who is never seen nor properly described throughout the film. It becomes evident that the Bureau themselves do not know the reasons for the ‘plans’ and also don’t know what disastrous consequences would supposedly arise by not sticking to them. In this way they are seen to be blindly following orders from this ‘Chairman’ who, despite the fact his true nature is never revealed, can be assumed to be an omnipotent, omniscient deity figure of some kind - determining how everything will occur in the world. This raises a key question which is central to this film: “What happened to free will?” - A question David asks the Bureau.

“We actually tried Free Will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman Empire we stepped back to see how you'd do on your own. You gave us the Dark Ages for five centuries... until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman thought maybe we just needed to do a better job of teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution. For six hundred years we taught you to control your impulses with reason, then in 1910 we stepped back. Within fifty years, you'd brought us World War I, the Depression, Fascism, the Holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that point a decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn't fix. You don't have free will, David. You have the appearance of free will.”

I thought this was a pretty cool take on the nature of God and humanity surrounding determinism and free will, and whether or not the two can collide. It seems to suggest that God can control everything yet can also choose not to. This theory is similar to Descartes’ which states that God can bring about things that are logically impossible, yet he can also choose not to.

Determinism states that God ordains everything that happens. There are two groups of theological determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism. The former refers to an existence where everything is pre-determined; free will doesn’t exist and it is impossible to change the ‘plan’ that is set out for you. This is the type of determinism that the film originally leads us to believe is present. Soft determinism, however, states that humans do still have free will despite the fact that God ordains all events. Although God knows what will happen beforehand (omniscient), he does not have the omnipotence to ensure what will or will not happen. In other words, God can see a variety of possible paths which lead to a variety of different consequences however humans have the free will to decide which path it is they choose to go down. This links in with Plantinga’s possible worlds theory that suggests there is a different world for every different possible outcome; God can see all possible worlds however the outcome of which potential world becomes the individual’s actual world is in their hands.

This is when the God of Process Theology links in with the film. Although we have been led to believe that the Chairman and the Adjustment Bureau (God and angels?) work by enforcing a world run by hard determinism, the ending of the film suggests otherwise.

At first, I was really disappointed with the end of the movie. Mainly because it focused on predictably resolving the cheesy love story subplot and subsequently changed everything we had been led to believe about the supposed absence of free will, however I then realised that it raised some interesting points about the nature of the Chairman which could present a possible link to the God of Process Theology.

Throughout the film, David has been doing everything he can to pursue Elise – the woman he loves. The Bureau have meanwhile been doing everything in their power to stop him from running into her again, even causing a car accident and injuring an innocent man in the process just so that David can’t cross the road to her showing how any disruptions to the predestined plans will cause chaos in the universe. (This could relate to the problem of evil – does evil occur for some ‘greater good’ in order to prevent worse consequences arising/ to ensure that everything stays ‘to plan’?) . The film ends with one of the members of the Bureau acting as a kind of fallen angel and deciding to help David. It then concludes, predictably, that David and Elise end up together. When they question how it is they can now be together they are told “It says that this situation between the two of you is a serious deviation from the plan. So The Chairman rewrote it.”  This is interesting as it conflicts with the previous understanding that the pre-destined plans are final by suggesting that the Chairman is capable of changing his mind. This links in with the Christian understanding that God is immutable which conflicts with occurrences in the Bible where God changes his mind.

This links to Process theology as it presents a God-like figure (or figures) that uses persuasion rather than coercion.  Although the Chairman and the Bureau did everything in their power to persuade David to give up trying to be with Elise, they were unable to force him to change his mind about wanting to be with her and therefore could not keep him from her. Additionally when David asks them how it is he ran into Elise again on the street after 3 years if it was determined for them not to be together. He gets told that it was 'just chance'. This suggests that although the Chairman has the ability to see how a plan should and will go, there is still a chance that things can change along the way. This isn't fully explained in the film so it's a bit paradoxical but could still be considered to link to the limited God of Process Theology who is omniscient but not omniprescient. This means a God who knows what will happen, but not when it will. I.e the Chairman knew that David and Elise would run into each other again and thus had the Bureau running around trying to stop it but he didn't know when or where it would occur - they could not prevent the chance of them meeting on the street.

The ending of the film is pretty rubbish because it does contradict everything you’ve been set out to believe throughout it but I would recommend seeing it anyway because I think the concept is really interesting (and there were other ways I remember I found it linked to process theology but I’ve completely forgotten now and I'm starting to ramble).