★★★☆☆
Three Stars
After eighteen years, actor/producer Jeff Bridges has finally accomplished what he set out to do to do: transform Lois Lowry’s beloved novel, The Giver, into a feature film.
To this day I recall sitting at my sixth grade desk, discovering aloud the significance of dystopian collectives, authoritarianism and euthanasia, since elders in the English department wisely championed Lois Lowry’s 1994 Newbery-winner as required reading. Predominantly faithful to its source, the film follows a teenage Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) tasked with the burden of becoming the Receiver of Memory under the tutelage of the shadowy Giver (Jeff Bridges) in a contained, superficially utopian community. Though held together by a talented ensemble cast, tenuously arranged emotional beats and overtly constructed scenes result in an adaptation that meanders in the elsewhere between mediocrity and evocative drama.
In his commune devoid of hatred, villainy and Tinder, Jonas must acquire and retain banished memories in the event the elders (led by Meryl Streep) might one day require his counsel. His training exposes him to unbeknownst qualities like color, and concepts like eros and family (fortunately, not at the same time). His ignorance compromised and his heart aching with passion, he concludes that this is no utopia; rather, it’s a calculated sociological experiment suppressing humanity’s most visceral elements—the good with the bad. Jonas alone begins to understand that he was assigned parents who enjoy him yet do not love him, for they know not how; since love, in any manifestation, holds no existence due to its inextricable association with pain. And there will be none of that.
The novel’s introspective prose makes for a daunting theatrical adaptation, as evidenced by the films desperate reliance on voiceover in hopes that Lowry’s literary touch might permeate the new medium. And though the filmmakers certainly capture the essence of the story, much of the dialogue seems constricted. Director Phillip Noyce extracts many of the novels intricacies in favor of preserving a Hunger Gamesian rhythm, which, in print is appropriately reserved only for the novels climactic ascension. Often we are whisked out of emotional investment in a beautifully performed and visually spectacular scene in a roaring wave of superfluous tempo, subjected to the irregular cadence of an impatient directorial ebb and flow. It is this, more so than its negotiated dialogue, which inhibits The Giver.
My own memory failing me, I cannot recall with any measure of certainty whether the novel featured aerial drones so ubiquitously. The movie’s visual design in such respect is surprisingly topical and still hauntingly dystopian, showcasing all the traditional conventions of the genre: a drained color scheme capturing soulless monoliths encircled by dismal atmospheric considerations. Performances by Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep—not so surprisingly—command attention and exude the rare, unannounced confidence of master artisans. Brendon Thwaites plays a convincing Jonas (although he is considerably older than his literary counterpart) and a brunette Taylor Swift appears out of thin air just in time to say hello, though she does so with aplomb.
The ingredients are undeniably there. In rare instances I found myself absorbed. Lost in something resembling foregone childhood awe for lessons unfolding before me. The Giver reminds us, in the face of incalculable societal problems, that good exists in this world. This was the film talking.
Or maybe it was only an echo.
