The Giver (2014)
Certified: 12A
Duration: 97 minutes
Directed by: Philip Noyce
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgard, Katie Holmes, Emma Tremblay, Odeya Rush, Cameron Monaghan, Taylor Swift
KRS Releasing Ltd

The Giver is set in a utopian future where everything seems perfect. But events of terrible consequences had preceded this state of perfection. Now everything bad has been removed from society: every bad feeling and emotion have been eradicated. Everyone’s role in life is decided for them; that’s how they achieve perfection and stability.

Teenager Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) lives with his father (Alexander Skarsgard), mum (Katie Holmes) and his sister Lily (Emma Tremblay). He attends an annual ceremony where his role is to be decided. He is accompanied by his best friends Fiona and Asher (Odeya Rush and Cameron Monaghan).

At the ceremony, presided over by the Chief Elder (Meryl Streep), it is decided that Asher is to be a drone pilot, Fiona a nurturer of babies, while Jonas a receiver of memory.

The latter role is a rarity and means he has to work with the current receiver (Jeff Bridges) and assimilate and become the new keeper of the past and also contain within him all the good and bad humankind can be made of.

Jonas starts to discover that life is not just black and white – there is a grey area too, and that society the way he knows it is just masking what to be human really is. He wants Fiona to wake up to reality, while at the same time he has a young infant to take care of. He soon realises that he may be the only one able to change society.

The Giver brings to the screen the classic 1993 novel by Lois Lowry. This was a work which was ripe for adaptation considering today’s success of such young adult oriented movie adaptations such as The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner.

Under the experienced hand of Australian director Philip Noyce (Dead Calm, Salt, Rabbit Proof Fence) and the charismatic presence of Jeff Bridges, who here is also a producer, The Giver emerges to be a very solid movie with strong characters and many ideas upon which its audience may ponder on.

The Giver sets the right chords by starting off in black and white with colour coming in slowly each time the character becomes more and more free and independent. This harks back to the movie Pleasantville (1998).

The way colour is used to bring emotional depth is one of the film’s bonuses. Movie influences range from the likes of 1997’s Gattaca to George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to George Lucas’s film THX 1138 (1971), among others.

Bridges and Streep give the film two anchors and charismatic performances. As Chief Elder, Streep brings gravitas to the picture, while Bridges is simply inspired and places the right touch of celluloid magic. Holmes is left a bit in the shade, while Thwaite portrays well the hero who is just waking to reality.

The Giver sends several messages about power and authority, the balance in society and the obsession about the suppression of emotions that can help in raising serious discussion about society and the different shades that make it such a living and evolving organism.

Obviously enough, the way the film ends suggests that the story is not over yet and the fact that Lowry has written three other books following The Giver means there are more literary pages for Hollywood to plunder.

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