The Giver

You would think that even the most narcissistic teens -- as if there were any other variety -- would tire of reading novels about dystopian futures of authoritarianism and soullessness in which singular members of their ilk are born somehow "special" and therefore have the ability to change the entirety of society; but no, these ubiquitous book series -- from The Hunger Games and Divergent to Ender's Game and Percy Jackson to countless other titles -- tirelessly drum that same idea into the mushy brains of the pre-adult set.

After being continuously warped by this piffle, and then endlessly reinforced by flavor-of-the-week teen stars in a slog of film trilogies by desperate, opportunistic studios, who saw the power of the franchise teen series in Harry Potter and Twilight and never looked back, teens can be forgiven for never wanting to conform to the adult world, apparently run by litanies of rules, oppressive structure and autocratic control.

Even as these things go, however, the gyrations of The Giver, based on a celebrated novel by Lois Lowry, seem like pretty thin gruel. It doesn't help that what might have been a far more interesting concept in the original written form has been cynically adapted by Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide to fit ever-so-smoothly with the other films of its ilk. To begin with, our protagonist, Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), isn't the callow 11-year-old of the novel; he has been morphed into a gorgeous 17-year-old spending time with his two best friends, funnyman Asher (Cameron Monaghan), and beautiful love interest Fiona (Odeya Rush). They're living in a bland, emotionally controlled community that stands high up on a flattened mountain surrounded by heavy mists, on the cusp of the obligatory coming-of-age ceremony whereupon they will learn with what career course they have been assigned for the rest of their lives.

Everyone else gets their assignments -- ranging from "nurturer" to "drone pilot" -- but Jonas, who it has been observed, has the gift of "seeing beyond." He is chosen for the far more significant task of becoming the community's Receiver, essentially the single repository of human memory from before this would-be utopia was formed in response to what the film refers to as the "Ruin," whereupon life as we know it on the planet had been wiped out (or so we're led to believe). To this end, he gets his training from The Giver (Jeff Bridges), a sage elderly man, who grasps Jonas' forearms and virtually injects memories of long-forgotten things such as snow, break-dancing, vibrant wedding receptions, ocean yachts and crowd-surfing.

Also colors. A huge part of director Philip Noyce's methodology involves the utilization -- and lack thereof -- of color. When the film opens, Jonas and everyone else are seen in low-contrast black and white -- desaturated, as it were, from the life all around them -- but as Jonas becomes filled with memories from the collective human hive mind, he begins to see colors, tinting the rest of the community in various high-contrast filters.

If that seems a bit on the nose, the rest of the film's gawky symbolism isn't much better. Jonas and Fiona eventually develop deeper feelings for each other but only after walking through a small man-made waterfall, cleansing themselves of the dusty film of their previous emotionally stilted existence. Jonas, when he finally breaks free of the community in order to cross the "Line of Memory" -- therefore (in a way never explained to any satisfaction) causing all the area's inhabitants to see what they've been missing all these years of subservience and order -- must take a small infant with him in order to save the child, and carries him through what appears to be, in order, the California mountains, the windswept Utah desert and the snow covered mountains of the Rockies, en route to his final destination (all without food, shelter, water, or, most distressingly, diapers).

Even the showcase of grand American acting, including Meryl Streep and Bridges, can't save the film from this sort of offhand idiocy. The film's few pleasures can be found instead watching Katie Holmes, who plays Jonas' uber-repressed mother (and who might know a thing or two about oppressive religious societies in which she had to watch what she said), repeatedly hiss at him one of the basic rules of their tyrannical society: "Precision of language!" If only the filmmakers had been able to take that one to heart.

MovieStyle on 08/15/2014