Film Review: The Giver **
I had such high hopes for The Giver, the latest in a seemingly endless string of dystopian Young Adult novel adaptations. I credit my excitement to the trailer, which was masterfully put together and used the theme from Requiem for a Dream to great effect. If only as much care and attention had been used to craft the film itself.
I knew that in order to adapt The Giver to screen some changes were going to have to be made to the novel. Although certainly not impossible to make a film entirely of internal struggle, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are great examples, it is not the strength of film to show the character’s mind but rather their actions. The Giver as a book is mostly an internal journey for Jonas who must come to terms with what he believes about the society around him. In order to adapt this into a film, the screenwriters were going to have to add some external conflict. They went overboard. The screenwriters gave Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) a much needed antagonist in the Chief Elder, brilliantly cast Meryl Streep who was unfortunately given nothing to do. There was such possibility in this decision. To make the Chief Elder played by Streep a contemporary and former friend of the Giver (Jeff Bridges) but now adversary could have given the film that chance to allow different mentors to pull Jonas in different directions but instead they do a horrible job building their backstory. Their relationship never really forms and the character of the Chief Elder seems one dimensional and rather plot driven.
The screenwriters also add a half-attempted love story between Jonas and his friend Fiona (Odeya Rush) which has high stakes, her life hangs in the balance as he convinces her to stop taking their daily drugs, but feels so hollow and fake the audience just can’t muster the energy to care. They add another conflict with Jonas’ best friend Asher (Cameron Monaghan) who is assigned to capture and perhaps kill Jonas when he flees the community. This conflict too could have worked as well if we believed or cared about their friendship which we don’t.
What that leaves us with is the heart of the novel: the friendship and mentorship between The Giver, brilliantly played by Jeff Bridges, and Jonas. In Jeff Bridges performance (who has been trying to bring this movie to the screen for over two decades) we see what the movie could have been. He seems like he is tired and carries the weight of the world on his shoulder. His voice is literally failing him and symbolizing that he needs someone new to take on the burden of being the Receiver of Memory.
Yes, Philip Noyce (a usually competent director) uses black and white to his advantage throughout the beginning of the film, sticking close to the novel, but with nothing really go on from the horrible screenplay, he is left to imagine the dystopian society of The Giver and ends up creating something out of Divergent or The Host or even Hunger Games. The problem with adapting the beginning of The Giver is that the society is supposed to be boring. Nothing happens in the beginning of the novel, The Giver. It is “perfect” society without conflict. The closest thing is an airplane unexpectedly flying overhead. A bolder choice by the filmmakers would have been to embrace that boredom like Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but alas big Hollywood adaptations are not places to look for courage.
It seems that no matter what choices Noyce made, they couldn’t overcome the greatest obstacle of the film: Brenton Thwaites (who is 25! this is worse than Andrew Garfield playing a teenage Peter Parker) and Odeya Rush are both bad. Their performances provide no insight. They create no real characters. Between them there is no true depth of feeling. Thwaites transformation when Jonas learns what the past holds, learns about color, and love, and joy and death are created with a cliche empty performance. The “love” story between the two of them is a joke. The only equal to their performances is how overwrought the score of the film is which if I could give an award for worst score of the year, The Giver would win hands down.
Steven Spielberg predicated the collapse of the Hollywood system in five years. He said that the system has grown too insular trying to protect its profits and make movies with a formula for success rather than allowing directors and writers to produce bold and sometimes original work. Nothing is wrong with adaptation if a director and writer are free to actually adapt that work to something daring and new, but when an adaptation like The Giver feels like every other Young Adult dystopian adaption something is terribly wrong.
