SYNOPSIS
The haunting story of The Giver centers on Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a young man who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the sole keeper of all the community’s memories, Jonas quickly begins to discover the dark and deadly truths of his community’s secret past.
With this newfound power of knowledge, he realizes that the stakes are higher than imagined – a matter of life and death for himself and those he loves most. At extreme odds, Jonas knows that he must escape their world to protect them all – a challenge that no one has ever succeeded at before.
The Giver is based on Lois Lowry’s beloved young adult novel of the same name, which was the winner of the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. (C) Weinstein
VERDICT
I read The Giver many years ago when I was still a student, and I fell in love with it and the genre. It was probably my first dystopian fantasy, way before Hunger Games, Divergent, and the rest.
“When people are given the freedom to choose, they choose wrong.” This is the premise behind why the communities in Jonah’s world was created. People have to take injections so they won’t develop emotions, and they live in structured dwellings with families that are not of their own blood. Babies are produced by birth mothers, women assigned to do this as a job, then assigned to “parents” who have applied for them. They live in an efficient society with no pain and hunger, but also no love. It has ceased to exist, the word becoming so antiquated, that most people don’t even know what it means.
I love the philosophical questions that the story elicits. If people were stripped of choice and emotions, can we live in a better world where there is no excess and pain? Sure, it will seem like a boring world indeed, but what if we didn’t know about what we were missing? What if our knowledge of all these, and all our capacity for emotions, were hidden or suppressed? Maybe if we don’t know what we’re missing, we won’t want for it, and therefore be content.
But then again, is a life devoid of pain and also all other emotions worth it? Maybe we need to feel, both good and bad, in order to live a life worth living. Because without those, is it called living or mere existing?
This movie has such a low rating from critics because the movie does not dig deep enough into the classic source, apparently, and because they deviated a bit by inserting Meryl Streep’s character and adding the love story angle with Fiona (her name was mentioned in the book, but she didn’t really have that much of a role there). I don’t think these additions are that upsetting, though. I understand why they were added, to make the story more interesting for the average moviegoer. And any movie with Meryl Streep in it immediately becomes watchable, don’t you think? This movie is star-studded, by the way, with Meryl and Jeff Bridges and Katie Holmes and even a bit part by Taylor Swift.
Besides, they kept the important parts intact, like the ending, and the general gist. So all in all I think the movie was worth watching. It’s not as exciting as other movies of its genre, though, so don’t expect too much.
Ratings: IMDB – 7.1, Rotten Tomatoes – 68%
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