Starring: Brenton Thwaites, Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep
Directed By: Phillip Noyce
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 94 minutes
The Weinstein Company
Our Score: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Before the screening of “The Giver”, people had the opportunity to watch the live Fathom event, the airing of the red carpet premiere of “The Giver”. While this may seem like a nonpoint in the critique of a film, it brought up a fact that I did not know and appeared to be a running motif throughout the live premiere. This is a film that has been through its own development hell. Jeff Bridges has spent 18 years trying to push this movie into production. While it may finally feel like a dream come true, I feel like nearly two decades of constant struggle should have been a sign that some things are better left unadapted.
Like most American high school students (or middle school students), I had a yearly curriculum consisting of classic literature and the occasional challenged book. I read “Of Mice and Men”, “The Scarlet Letter”, “Animal Farm” and “The Giver”. Teens still read thought provoking books right? “The Giver” is a unique amongst those books because it’s one of the few that has created its own dystopian society instead of simply mirroring the flaws in our own.
Just like the book, the movie portrays a society with no privacy, structured assigned jobs, and a community where every individual acts in a mechanical fashion and view feelings as irrational. Jonas, who’s supposed to be 11, but is instead played by the 25-year-old Thwaites, is the outlier in society. He sometimes has nagging questions and possesses an indescribable set of emotions that he’s unsure how to handle. While other kids go off to become future gears of civilization, Jonas finds himself as the perfect candidate to be the next receiver of memory and is taken in under the Giver’s (Bridges) wing.
The Giver’s job is to pass along all the memories of life, society, war, love and everything else in between. This set’s up the movie’s overall theme of love and loss, and why memories and feelings go hand-in-hand. With so many more themes in the book, it feels like they took the easy way out and went for the easiest one, but fumbled the pitch. Instead of a hidden message, the subject is railroaded and despite Bridges best acting efforts, it comes across as a bit tacky.
What makes “The Giver” a literary necessity in schools is the argument for individualism. Sure we all have memories and emotions, but it’s how each person interprets existence. The movie makes it feel more like a police state is constricting our human emotions more than the book’s notion that as we grow, we have to understand that others around us have different attitudes to this big world. We must not impose what life is and accept that reality is different for everyone. The movie fails by putting forth the notion that our main character is simply trying to share love with a few select people around him instead of sharing the experience of life as a community.
I’m not sure why the theatrical adaption lost that key element. Everything else it combined was fantastic. Bridges and Meryl Streep were spotless, the sharing of memory sequences were handled well, and the visual transition from a world of black and white to one filled with vibrant colors was very subtle and smooth. From a technical viewpoint this is a good movie and that might be why I can’t fully come out and loathe something so visually gorgeous yet so textually frustrating.
I know for some of you this is “the book fan” complaining about the movie with a predetermined viewpoint of distrust towards the adaptation, but there’s been plenty of movies based on books that know how to capture the magic and essence of the literature they’re adapting. This felt like a manipulated dream. If you’re looking for a young adult movie filled with young love and unnecessary action sequences wobbling towards the finish line, this is for you. Otherwise, unwind tonight and read the book.ividualism. Sure we all have memories and emotions, but it’s how each person interprets existence. The movie makes it feel more like a police state is constricting our human emotions more than the book’s notion that as we grow, we have to understand that others around us have different attitudes to this big world. We must not impose what life is and accept that reality is different for everyone. The movie fails by putting forth the notion that our main character is simply trying to share love with a few select people around him instead of sharing the experience of life as a community.
I’m not sure why the theatrical adaption lost that key element. Everything else it combined was fantastic. Bridges and Meryl Streep were spotless, the sharing of memory sequences were handled well, and the visual transition from a world of black and white to one filled with vibrant colors was very subtle and smooth. From a technical viewpoint this is a good movie and that might be why I can’t fully come out and loathe something so visually gorgeous yet so textually frustrating.
I know for some of you this is “the book fan” complaining about the movie with a predetermined viewpoint of distrust towards the adaptation, but there’s been plenty of movies based on books that know how to capture the magic and essence of the literature they’re adapting. This felt like a manipulated dream. If you’re looking for a young adult movie filled with young love and unnecessary action sequences wobbling towards the finish line, this is for you. Otherwise, unwind tonight and read the book.