The Adjustment Bureau

We went to see The Adjustment Bureau the other night. This is based on a story by the famous sci-fi writer, Philip K Dick, who also wrote the stories that became The Minority Report, Bladerunner, Paycheck, Total Recall and others.

It's perhaps a bit underpar by comparison with some of those more illustrious movies. That's not to say it isn't interesting, or exciting, though it does take some minutes to get off the ground. It just lacks a little innovative edge, I think, though what that edge should be I'm not exactly able to put my finger on.

Matt Damon plays an upcoming congressman who's a likely candidate for the Presidency a few campaigns down the track. Something from the past is revealed and he finds himself seemingly back at square one. He meets a girl with plenty of personality (in the men's toilet, for no apparent reason) and it's love at first sight. She vanishes, he finds her again on the bus by chance, and the supposed pattern of his life is broken; that is, the pattern according to the Adjustment Bureau, a mysterious group who are caught in the act of changing someone's mind by Damon, and who swear him to secrecy on the pain of a very nasty future.

Damon and Emily Blunt make a good romantic couple, but part of the problem with the movie is that it's not quite sure whether it's a sci-fi story, a debate relating to free will, or a love story. It's all three at times and the three don't always fit comfortably; there are moments when they (almost) belong to separate movies.

Nevertheless we enjoyed it. It doesn't rely on any great special effects (the way in which ordinary-looking doors open onto football stadiums, or lead back to the place you started from, or other oddball rooms, is perhaps its niftiest component) and the discussions on free will pose some interesting questions. It also gives Damon and Blunt some warm fun scenes - in fact, for once, Damon isn't the indomitable man, full of a streetwiseness that doesn't exist outside the movies.

The free will discussions don't really get the room they need to become full-fledged, and leave the audience saying...'that's all very well, but...' We never find out who the Great Chairman is, or whether these human beings (as they seem to be) are angels or some other spiritual beings. They certainly work hard for their money, however: as one character says, there just aren't enough of them to go around, and so some things get overlooked.

The movie looks great: the Chairman and his cronies inhabit a vast soaring building full of art deco design (?), broad hallways, modern furniture (in the sense that it was modern when the building was built) and strange cramped corridors. The photography has a sharpness to it, particularly in the interiors, that creates a superb atmosphere in itself.

Not quite in the class of some of the other P K Dick classics, but still a visit.

Blasphemy is a tribute to God

Michael Gerson reminds us that : British author G.K. Chesterton argued that every act of blasphemy is a kind of tribute to God, because it is based on belief. "If anyone doubts this," he wrote, "let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor."

If all else fails, quote Chesterton. He'll back you up every time. Gerson's article is called, What Atheists Can't Answer, and was published in the pages of the Washington Post. This is what he's discussing:

Proving God's existence in 750 words or fewer would daunt even Thomas Aquinas. And I suspect that a certain kind of skeptic would remain skeptical even after a squadron of angels landed on his front lawn. So I merely want to pose a question: If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?

So who's Michael Gerson? Well, I didn't know either, but here's the bio the Post helpfully provides:

Michael Gerson writes about politics, global health and development, religion and foreign policy. His column appears on Wednesdays and Fridays. He also contributes to PostPartisan.

Gerson is senior research fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement's Center on Faith & International Affairs. He served as a policy adviser and chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush from 2000 to 2006. Before that, he was a senior editor covering politics at U.S. News & World Report. His book "Heroic Conservatism" was published by HarperOne in 2007.

Reading on holiday

I read the only novel I bought with me on holiday within one night - it was a sci-fi page turner, and it was sort-of-not-put-downable.   The title was A Kiss Before the Apocalypse by Thomas Sniegoski, an author I'd never heard of before.  It was all fairly improbable, with an angel living as a human being on earth as the main (detective) character, and several battles between various factions of the heavenly realm (God seemed to be a bit of a distant observer as far as I could tell) and some graphic paragraphs of violence that I could have done without.    

The angel character's wife, being human, has aged a good deal since he first married her (he's stayed the same, of course), so she spends most of the book in a hospice waiting to die of cancer.   Their love story is fairly well done, given the circumstances, and the novel moves along at a cracking pace (hence the quick read).    However, you'd have to be a real fan of this sort of thing to go for it often.   The dog was likable...especially since the Angel could converse with him (!)

So I picked up another book in Whitcoulls, in order to have something else to get into.    It's a Barbara Vine novel called The Chimney Sweeper's Boy, and to be honest, it's fairly peculiar.   (Vine is Ruth Rendell in her other persona.)    The copy I've got is published by Penguin and, at $12.99 is a good deal cheaper than most of the other novels available, which range around the $40 mark.   Hence, in part, the choice of it. 

This book concerns a successful male writer who dies of a heart attack fairly early on in the book.   He's shown himself to be an unsympathetic character from the beginning, and little in the later part of the book changes our view of him - although several other characters try hard to give us a different viewpoint.    

He has two grown daughters, who idolise him, and have done since childhood, helped by the fact that he basically acted as though he was their sole parent, cutting their mother increasingly out of the picture - even though she lived in the same house.   He's done everything for them.   

The mother began her marriage as a naive young woman who thought she was being courted for herself; eventually she came to realise the writer only married her in order to have the two children.   He and she live under the same roof, but share little more than occasional passing conversations.   

After the writer's death, however, we begin to learn some odd things about him: he wasn't who he said he was, for one thing.   It seems as though he took on someone else's name as a young man and created a new background for himself.    Finding out why he did this, and what his real background was, is the substance of the book. 

One of the daughters, Sarah, does a good deal of the detective work - mostly unwillingly - and alongside this we read about the information the mother has garnered over the years.  This information comes to us from a different quarter of the book, as it were;  the two areas remain mostly separate just as the two characters do. 

This isn't a murder mystery, as a Rendell book would have been - although there is a murder in the story's background.   It's a story of a man trying to work out his salvation on his own, and not succeeding.    In the process he almost destroys his wife, turns his daughters into arrogant snobs, and snubs his "friends."   Friends is a loose word in this context, as most of them are either syncophants or people who can't understand the abuse they're receiving.  

Sarah also has a very odd relationship with a young man which consists of them insulting each other in public to the dismay of their friends and then making made passionate love as soon as they're alone.    

I doubt that this is a book that would appeal to everyone; the writing is good (though occasionally I had to re-read paragraphs to actually understand who was saying what) and the switching between various characters and the constant adding of layers to the writer's personality is intriguing.   

The Lady in Question

Somehow managed to catch an old movie from 1940 on tv this afternoon. It was a very classy print, and fitted the wide screen format without anybody looking twice their size, so obviously some work had been done on it to make it viewable.
Seemingly this particular movie was notable for being the first in which Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth appeared as a romantic couple. It took me a while to recognise Ford because he looked so young. By the time he came back from the war, a few years later, he’d aged considerably, and was much more the way I remember him. Hayworth plays a very subdued role; she’s a character who’s under suspicion and always on the back foot. None of the temptress here, even though Ford falls for her at first glance.
The film was The Lady in Question adapted from an earlier French movie called Gribouille. It concerns a bicycle shop owner played by Brian Aherne who’s called into jury duty, and, by speaking out at the right moment, manages to get Hayworth (the accused) acquitted. He’s a bluff, good-humoured character - a bit too off-hand about the other relationships around him, and not always wise. However, he offers to give Hayworth a job after the trial, and she comes and lives with the family. Of course one of the other jurors believes she was guilty and keeps popping up every so often; and of course both Ford and his sister’s boyfriend know who Hayworth really is. It’s surprising half the town doesn’t, but that’s neither here nor there.
The acting is all a bit over-the-top - these are Americans being French people, remember, (even though they call their wives ‘Mrs’ rather than ‘Madame’ and speak with good, solid American accents), and anyway the French are more ebullient than the Americans - aren’t they? The script isn’t well written, never being sure whether it’s a drama or a comedy, and several scenes are played for their comedy effect, which undercuts the dramatic ones. Nevertheless it’s an interesting example of a typical studio production, with the small parts being played by actors who bring an eccentric quality to their roles.
One piece of trivia: the part of Lurette, the little accountant who causes so much hassle, is played by Curt Bois. Bois’ career in German movies began in 1907, when he was only six (!) and ended in 1989. Around 1937 he came to Hollywood and appeared in nearly forty movies before returning to his native Germany. He’s often uncredited in the Hollywood movies, or has tiny parts (such as a pickpocket in Casablanca). But he kept on working, and survived long enough to revive his career in his own country, appearing in some 35 movie and tv roles, including that of Homer the poet in Wim Wenders’ famous Wings of Desire. (Later remade, like Gribouille, into a much less worthwhile movie, City of Angels, starring the lugubrious Nicholas Cage and the super-cheerful Meg Ryan.)