I wish I had seen this movie, yet another based upon a story by…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:14 PM Permalink

…Philip K Dick, on the giant screen of a theatre. The movie is titled "The Adjustment Bureau" and stars Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Terence Stamp, and a cast of thousands (being shot in New York perforce means a cast of thousands, if not millions) and it surprised me as no other movie has in a long, long time.

Both the trailers and previews seem designed to lead you to the belief that this movie is naught but another Matt Damon action-filled, special effects laden tour de force and I guess by some measures it is. But if that should be all that you draw from this well-told and beautifully shot film I confess that it would somehow sadden me that you missed what I believe to be the point.

This is the most riveting love story of the triumph of love over the circumstances of Man, even if those circumstances be guided by an unseen hand, that it has been my pleasure to watch in many a year. I sincerely hope that those powers that decide which films come to be or not will look upon this film as what movies can bring to its viewers and how our lives can be enriched in the short time during which we experience such a treat.

Call me a hopeless romantic, I've been called much worse, but it brought to mind my true story of the trials and tribulations and suffering and longing and heartfelt agony through which I lived while my Warrior Woman and I were apart for the two years it took for me to obtain the Fiance's Visa by which she was able to rejoin me and we were able to continue the Great Journey Through Life we had begun on the Philippine Island of Luzon. Oh, how we suffered as the world it seemed kept us apart.

During those two years I learned it is indeed possible to survive on Instant Breakfasts, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the rare treat of a McDonald's hamburger or, my god!, a minuscule sirloin steak; leading a life of complete solitude outside of my work setting as I harbored no desire to surround myself with people whom I recognized would leave my life as leaves from the trees of fall.

I also experienced the heartache meted out to me by the government I had served with honor and a country I loved and truly believed welcomed citizens from another land to this great Melting Pot until I spent those two years banging my head up against one obstacle after another as I wrote my congressman, my senators, the members of the Armed Forces Committees in both houses of congress, the State Department and, naively, the President of the United States to get the help I needed to be with my sweetheart. The only real help I received was from the military liaison in the offices of former congressman John Moss, who has a Federal Building bearing his name on the Capitol Mall in Sacramento, California.

Like Matt Damon's character in the movie each contact I made, every door I opened, only sank me deeper into the labyrinths of the government that controlled this part of my fate until one day some jackass in the State Department fucked up and actually told me the truth.

I had called this insipid bureaucrat to relate that a captain with whom I had worked had applied for and received a Fiance's Visa and was happily wed to his German bride in under ninety days. I demanded to know what the difference was between his case and mine and why I had been forced to wait for almost two years.

"Well," the jerkoff said, "Germany is a much more sophisticated, wealthy country with more highly educated citizens on average than the Philippines so the captain's fiance is less likely to become a burden to our welfare systems."

My heart broke, and as it began to sink to the floor and through it to places unknown I got mad. Madder than ever before in my life. Rabid mad, killing mad. So mad I was blind with anger, ready to explode, ready to go to Washington, D.C., find that asshole using every iota of the innate skills I possess to find people and beat him to bloody death with my bare hands and a passion to kill I'd never felt before nor since. I feverishly dialed the number to the congressman's military liaison and still suffused with rage I told him what the ass at the State Department had said and screamed in his ear that my fiance and I were being discriminated against not because of who we actually were but for fact that my fiancee was from a poor country! I screamed, I ranted, I hurled more impersonal invective, raged to the skies, and cried my grief at the inequity of it all to that poor man than I ever had before.

Bless that man whose name I am chagrined to admit I have forgotten; not a single word of reproach passed his lips, never did he raise his voice nor try to stem the flood of the words of pain I howled. No, he listened. He listened and then told me in a voice so gentle and low and reassuring that finally, yes finally, I had gotten the break I had sought so long. That jackass at the State Department who spilled the truth had provided all the ammunition that the liaison needed to carry the matter directly to the congressman and to get results.

And get results he did. Within three weeks my Warrior Woman had the much prayed for visa; two months later (there is a separate story as to why it took that long) my honey and I were reunited, and within the month, wed.

Which brings me back to why I wish I had first seen this movie in a theatre. Because there, in the dark lit only by the passing images on that huge screen, there would I be sitting holding hands with my beloved wife of thirty-seven years, my Warrior Woman, she who speeds my heart and quickens my breath and shares with me my dream of growing old by each others side, together forever till death do us part, knowing beyond certainty that elsewhere in the cosmos we shall again be reunited for all eternity.

But I digress. If you haven't seen this wonderful film, see it. If you saw it alone see it again with someone you love, someone who swells your heart, makes your pulse race and your heart skip a beat and know that it is not only in the movies that love triumphs over all.

It's a great film.

Ciao, bella ámi.

Labels: life, love, mickey rourke, Warrior Woman