With movie theater attendance in North America down a grim 20 percent so far this year compared with 2010, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, it’s natural to point fingers at the biggest flameouts. “The Green Hornet.” “Sucker Punch.” The early 2011 list of unprofitable pain is long; if it weren’t, AMC Entertainment Inc. honcho Gerry Lopez wouldn’t have said in the LA Times piece that sluggish business at the multiplex “boils down to the quality of the movies.”
There are, however, medium-budget films of considerable quality to help us through these doldrums. “Source Code,” made for around $30 million, deserves an audience; it plays fresh variations on familiar science fiction ideas, time travel and alternative realities for starters. It’s genuinely exciting. And it believes in love, which for the record I’d like to point out is a nice thing.
I felt the same way about a very different, lower-keyed picture, still in theaters. “The Adjustment Bureau,” which cost about $60 million and has grossed about $100 million worldwide (no smash, but no flop), carries the courage of its unformulaic convictions straight through to the end. It is a sincere fantasy about soul mates passing the ultimate test. My second time, I brought my 10-year-old son. My hunch proved correct (you never know, do you?). He fell headlong into the movie and came out dazed, but pleased. It gave him a few things to think about.
The second time through, I realized something truly remarkable about the film: First-time feature director George Nolfi, handling his own screenplay adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story “Adjustment Team,” managed to make a star-driven studio picture, a thriller (though more of a thinker) wrapped around a romance, without a single gun being drawn. Not one.
I confirmed this with Nolfi on Wednesday. “Nope, no guns,” he said. “I mean, come on. The Adjustment Bureau’s a supernatural force. They don’t need guns. And anyway, films should have the minimum amount of violence needed to tell the story.” He added that plenty of stories require plenty of violence. Just not this one.
Subconsciously, I suspect, the absence of firearms may have been the reason I was keen on taking my jaded 10-year-old sophisticate to “The Adjustment Bureau.” It’s an antidote to all the assaultive diversions aimed his way every week, on television and in the movies. The film contains a single use of the F-word, in a throwaway context, and a discreet, non-exploitative scene of lovemaking. Millions of Americans, more nervous about language and skin than I am, will wonder about the film’s appropriateness for a 10-year-old. But my concerns as a parent lie almost wholly with how much violence, and what sort, my kid is being fed by the media, as facilitated by his parents.
“The studio,” Nolfi said, “didn’t market the movie to young people at all, but when they did their market research they found it scored best with audiences younger than 21. They were shocked.” He told me he has received a surprising amount of mail from people who took their kids to “The Adjustment Bureau.” They’re grateful, he said, for the way the film handled the story.
“It doesn’t seem like a kid-appropriate film, yet there’s no reason to think kids aren’t interested in those large questions of fate and free will, or can’t be taken in by the love story … it’s an odd movie, no question. It’s uncynical, which for those expecting a harder science fiction movie is something to get angry about. Maybe that’s why some younger kids have responded to it: It isn’t a cynical, dystopian vision of the world.”
As my son begins to explore more and more films not necessarily marketed at his patronized, coarsened, coveted age group, the movies (even if they’re good, not great) that dare to engage without the usual bullying tactics will always get my money.