“It’s one of the most explicitly theological films of the last 25 years. Unfortunately, it proposes an extraordinarily bad theology,” writes Father Robert Barron of The Adjustment Bureau in his review for America.
If you're unfamiliar with it, the plot of the film is centered around the struggle between divinely imposed fate and individual human freedom. The movie tells the story of an up-and-coming young American politician (David) who meets a dancer he falls instantaneously in love with (Elise). David’s life, like everyone else’s in the world, is ‘controlled from above’ by a shadowy figure known only as the Chairman. David’s relationship with Elise counters the Chairman’s plan for them in such a way that angel-like figures are sent to intervene and ‘adjust’ the direction of their lives in order to keep them apart. At this point, David must decide if and how to resist the Chairman’s plan.
Here’s an excerpt from Father Barron’s review:
Freedom and fate, we tell ourselves, are mutually exclusive… In the modern telling, evident in the writing of thinkers from William of Ockham to Jean-Paul Sartre, God’s supremacy looms over against a self-assertive human freedom. The two wills—human and divine—are locked in a desperate zero-sum game, in which the more the divine will advances, the further the human will has to retreat. That is “the plan”—overwhelming, powerful, strictly enforced—against scrappy, determined human liberty.
None of this, however, has anything to do with classical Christian theology. One of the most basic truths that flows from the Incarnation is that divinity and humanity are not competitors. Jesus is not somehow less human because he is also divine. On the contrary, his divinity raises, perfects and enhances his humanity. Therefore God’s freedom does not suppress human freedom but rather enables and awakens it. Liberty is not repugnant to the plan; it is an ingredient in it.
Read more here.
Michèle Nuzzo-Naglieri
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