Tag: Phillip K. Dick

Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his..hat?


Another fortnight gone by, and GitM is behind the curve once again: Clearly keeping up to date around here isn’t part of “The Plan” at the moment. At any rate, some quick thoughts on George Nolfi’s Twilight Zone romance, The Adjustment Bureau, which I caught awhile ago.

In brief, I found myself enjoying The Adjustment Bureau, even though many elements of this story really have no business working. For one, its basic conceit — supernatural Organization Men have a Plan for all of humankind, and the meet-cute and subsequent romance of Senate candidate Matt Damon and ballerina Emily Blunt just isn’t in Their Cards — flirts dangerously with both Touched By An Angel and Bagger Vance territory at times. (As Damon’s guardian angel and eventual angel-buddy, The Hurt Locker‘s Anthony Mackie gets stuck with the thankless Will Smith role here.) And, to be sure, all the quasi-religious meanderings here get a bit cloying after awhile. (Every time somebody namedrops “the Chairman” of this spiritual bureaucracy, I half-expected Morgan Freeman to pop up in the final act.)

For another, while I understand Bureau is based loosely on a 1954 Phillip K. Dick story — I haven’t read it, but it sounds quite different — parts of the film seem decidedly retro, and I’m not just talking about the fedoras. At one point, one of the sternest Men With Hats (Terrence Stamp) talks of how giving free will to humankind ultimately led to the Dark Ages — Well, ok, that’s a cautionary tale…if you’re Western European. Meanwhile, as a friend pointed out, Arabs are inventing algebra, and the Chinese are doing just fine, thank you very much.

That’s a passing irritation. But more problematic here is Emily Blunt’s retrograde character, who is passive to a fault: She doesn’t actually do anything in this story but look fetching and wait for Damon to call the shots. (At one point, three lost years go by because Damon loses Blunt’s phone number. Really? She couldn’t call him?) Now, I’m all for a guy going the extra mile to win the girl of his dreams — Say, Sam Lowry chasing down Jill in Brazil, or Luke braving the Death Star to rescue the pre-sororital princess in Star Wars. But, in those cases, Jill basically thinks Sam is a loon, and treats him as much, while Leia realizes pretty quickly that her rescuers haven’t put a lot of thought into their escape plan.

In other words, I find romances more engaging and, well, romantic when there’s more back-and-forth between the pair involved, like, to take just a few examples, Alvy and Annie in Annie Hall, Tom and Verna in Miller’s Crossing, or any of the couples in Stanley Cavell’s “comedies of remarriage” (and their spiritual descendant, Eternal Sunshine.) But Emily Blunt barely participates in this story. She’s less a character than an object of desire to keep the story rolling along. For all intent and purposes, she’s just the Maguffin.

Now, having said all that, why am I still recommending The Adjustment Bureau? Well, chemistry goes a long way, and if nothing else Damon and Blunt have are convincing together. They’re a cute couple, even if they have to slog their way through some seriously terrible plot points at times. (For example, the angels make it clear that this duo’s romance will be irrevocably set in stone if Damon sees Blunt dancing. That in itself is cheesy enough, and it’s not helped by the fact that the herky-jerky Blunt happens to dance like Elaine Benes.)

Plus, while the “Mad Men angels” conceit starts to bog down under its own weight in the second half of the movie, and particularly when Damon’s personal Clarence starts enumerating all kinds of new random rules — angels need their hats, they can’t stand water, doorknobs have to be turned clockwise — just so we can have a big chase scene finale, the first hour or so is still intriguing and sci-fi enough that it held my attention even when the story faltered.

Let me put it this way: About twenty minutes in, The Adjustment Bureau has one of those scenes where, while addressing a large audience at a hugely important moment, Senate-wannabe Matt Damon rips up the remarks he was giving and starts ad-libbing, because, you know, he just can’t give that pre-prepared speech right now — It’s time to keep it real. From Up in the Air to Traffic, this is one of the hoariest and most cornball cliches in the movies, and it takes me out of the flow every time. And, yet, even with groaners like this, I still found myself mostly enjoying The Adjustment Bureau by the end. For all its faults, it’s a low-key, goofy, and amiable time at the movies. Who knows? Perhaps I was just predestined to like it.

Lowry? Has anybody seen Sam Lowry?

In the trailer bin, aspiring Senator Matt Damon thumbs his nose at Fate — as represented by Organization Men John Slattery and Terence Stamp — by wooing ballerina Emily Blunt in the new trailer for George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau, based on a short-story by Phillip K. Dick and also starring Anthony Mackie, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Michael Kelly. (This is not to be confused with Information Adjustments, although they do share the same sartorial sense.) Hmmm…maybe. I just hope it’s more A Scanner Darkly than The Time-Traveler’s Wife.

A Slacker Darkly.


Set in the near future, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is basically a po-mo meditation of sorts on how both technologies of surveillance and hallucinogenic drugs have warped our conception of reality, and can probably best be summed up as a meditation on the wisdom that “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” Unfortunately, while it’s both faithful to the paranoid-android feel of Philip K. Dick’s best work and undeniably unsettling for most of its run, Scanner — a movie I’ve been meaning to see for weeks — never really gets off the ground quite like it should. In short, the film lacks momentum — it feels episodic and choppy, and doesn’t manage to generate or sustain much in the way of narrative drive: Things happen, then more things happen, and then they don’t. (Since the movie is partially about a descent into schizophrenia, some may argue this was the point…but it still means the film stalls out all too often.) In short, I was entertained by Scanner for most of its run, but I also left feeling vaguely unsatisfied by it.

The film, as in the book, follows an undercover cop by the name of Fred (Keanu Reeves), whose true identity remains unknown to all of his colleagues thanks to his mercurial standard-issue “scramble suit.” Early in the film, Fred is assigned to spy on the life of one Bob Arctor, a suspected drug kingpin and trafficker of Substance D, which is a mind-bending and thoroughly addictive substance known to produce vivid hallucinations and, eventually, schizophrenia in its users. The trick is, Fred is not only a slightly-more-than-casual user of this tenacious D, he’s Bob Arctor, and has in effect been ordered to spy on himself…although the more D he takes the less aware he becomes of this ironic fact. (To quote Keanu in another film, “whoa.”)

Regardless, Fred/Arctor then spends much of the rest of the film popping D and hanging around with his girlfriend Donna (Winona Ryder) and his two bizarro roommates, amoral motormouth James Barris and hot-tempered hippie Ernie Luckman (Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson respectively, both expertly doing variations on drug-addled babble that seems, um, unrehearsed.) At first, this is rather fun, sorta like Dazed and Confused with the aggro ratched up to 11. But, ultimately, we’re left with a few too many intermittently amusing scenes of paranoid-stoner schtick, and they get to be repetitive after awhile (and are too laconic to achieve the madcap mayhem of Terry Gilliam’s more rousing and enjoyable Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.) As a result, when the movie arrives at its big reveals near the end (which will remain scramble-suited here), I thought they seemed out of the blue and somewhat unearned. I didn’t dislike the film, and would even recommend it to a certain type of Dickian sci-fi fan. Still, I thought it was missing a certain something (what the French call I don’t know what) that would’ve made it a truly memorable experience.

As most of y’all know (or can tell from the film stills here), one of A Scanner Darkly‘s main conceits is that it was filmed and then re-animated via interpolated rotoscoping a la Waking Life (or those “Talk to Chuck” Charles Schwab ads.) At times, the decision works wonders in giving Scanner the semblance of a fever dream, particularly whenever the creepy, hypnotic, and bizarrely off-putting scramble-suits are onscreen. Nevertheless, a few aphids and interdimensional visitors notwithstanding, the cartoon flights of fancy you might expect come less often than you’d think.

Terry Does Dick | Prison Break.

Speaking of Philip K. Dick, word on the street is the one and only Terry Gilliam will be heading The Owl in Daylight, a biopic of the author set to star Paul Giamatti in the lead. And, speaking of paranoid sci-fi-ish surveillance thrillers, Christopher Nolan looks set to board The Prisoner, as in a film version of the classic BBC series, after he finishes the Dark Knight.

Of Divided Mind.

You may well have seen it by now — I caught it before Constantine, along with the Hitchhiker’s trailer, but, if not, Keanu, Winona, Downey, and Woody get animated in the Waking Life-ish trailer for Richard Linklater and Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. Haven’t read the story, but I’m impressed by the look.

Flights of Imagination.

The Science Fiction Book Club picks the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy books of the last 50 years, although after the top ten they’re listed alphabetically (Via Lots of Co.) I’d say I’ve read about half of these, and the choices seem pretty legit. No surprise who‘s at the top of the list, but otherwise it seems like the fantasy side got short shrift. I guess the Narnia books (and for that matter Animal Farm and 1984) are over 50-years-old. Speaking of which, I can’t say I’m a very big C.S. Lewis fan (particularly as compared to Tolkien), but nonetheless – the Narnia film site is now live.